Forcing hate on the raw block: will Canada be sculpted into an antisemitic society?
Sharing an article I wrote for the Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism
Sharing an article I wrote for the Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism (ALCCA):
Forcing hate on the raw block: will Canada be sculpted into an antisemitic society?
See also other materials on the ALCCA website:
Image: Oded Bar-On’s sculpture “Achitophel,” made of mahogany that was “scorned” as timber for the legs of billiard tables.
Its strange how, for all the discussion of “unconscious racial bias” in the air in the West over the last decade, no one seems to think that millennia of Jew-hate can have left any remnant of unconscious bias in Western minds. Strange.
I feel uncomfortable with the argument that “a society that normalizes antisemitism might also be making itself more vulnerable to islamophobia and to other forms of hate” which seems to imply that Jew-hate is not wrong in itself, just incidentally, as a harbinger of bad things to others. As Dara Horn put it, if they kill Jews, one day they’ll kill normal people.
I’m intrigued by your father’s sculpture and its name. Like the biblical Achitophel (and like antisemitism), it seems to me to be two-faced…
Thanks, Daniel. I agree that antisemitism is a problem in and of itself--not just as a harbinger. But at the same time, the harm done by antisemitism is not limited to Jewish people. If one kind of hate is allowed, other kinds of hate will also be more likely to be normalized. Excellent point about unconscious bias. Likewise, people tend to be open about struggling with many kinds of problems (addictions, mental health, etc.), but people rarely say that they struggle with a temptation to be antisemitic.