Making Sense - Sam Harris - #348 — The Politics of Antisemitism

Sam Harris speaks with Rabbi David Wolpe about anti-Semitism and free speech in the wake of Harvard University President Claudine Gay's testimony before Congress on October 7th, and the role of the anti-Zionist "Great Replacement Theory" as a means of delegitimizing the Jewish people, and what it means to be a Jew in the 21st century. David is a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School, a Rabbinic Fellow at the Anti-Defamation League, a Senior Advisor to the Maimonides Fund, and an Emeritus Rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. He was once named "The Most Influential Rabbi in America" by Newsweek, and is considered one of the most influential rabbis in the country. He is also a regular contributor to the New York Times and the Forward, and has been a frequent guest on the radio and television show "The Rachel Maddow Show" on Comedy Central. He is the author of several books, including "The Great Replacement Theory: A Guide to Anti-Semitism in American Life," and is a regular guest host on the show "Yeshivah" on the Chassidus Radio Network, where he also hosts a weekly show called "Rabbi David's Corner" and hosts a podcast called "The Rabbi's Corner," where he talks about Jewish life and culture. He's also a frequent contributor to The Forward and The Forward. and "The Forward." Sam Harris is a writer and host of the podcast "The Making Sense" and the host of "Making Sense" podcast, which he hosts a show on the podcast Making Sense: The Making Sense, a podcast about the intersectionality of ideas, culture, politics, and culture, culture and culture in the culture and history of the modern Jewish experience, and how they intersect across the political and spiritual worlds. He's been a long-term friend of the Jewish community, and a regular visitor to many of the world's most influential Jews. Make sure to check out the Making Sense Podcasts on social media by using the hashtag on Insta-tweet and the . to find out what he's been up to on the latest in the latest trending topics in the world of Jewish culture, and his thoughts on it all things Jewish and Jewish culture and their impact on the culture of today's culture and the culture in general. And be sure to subscribe to his feed in the Apple Podcasts!

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:46.480 Today I'm speaking with Rabbi David Wolpe.

00:00:49.880 David is a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School.

00:00:53.420 He is a rabbinic fellow at the Anti-Defamation League, a senior advisor to the Maimonides

00:01:00.360 Fund, and the emeritus rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.

00:01:05.840 And because he's at Harvard, he's had a front seat view of the recent controversy around

00:01:13.280 anti-Semitism and free speech.

00:01:15.840 I spoke to him before the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, resigned, in the aftermath of

00:01:22.500 that terrible testimony before Congress.

00:01:25.620 Elizabeth McGill, the president of Penn, resigned first, and Claudine Gay resigned last week, though

00:01:33.180 she's still a professor at Harvard.

00:01:35.480 She resigned for reasons that were unrelated to her testimony, however.

00:01:39.460 It seemed that she had an impressive pattern of academic misconduct, namely plagiarism.

00:01:46.480 Many people on the left are alleging that racism is the reason she was forced out.

00:01:51.240 That is clearly not the case.

00:01:53.580 I'm sure she was personally subjected to a lot of racist abuse in the aftermath of her testimony

00:01:59.300 before Congress.

00:02:00.980 I don't doubt that, and I'm sure that was awful.

00:02:03.120 But as for her being forced to resign from the presidency of Harvard, that was not a racist 0.83

00:02:11.100 mobbing of her. 0.89

00:02:13.620 The painful irony is that it was concern about racism and sexism, perhaps, that explains why

00:02:21.920 she occupied the position of the presidency of Harvard in the first place.

00:02:25.440 As many people have pointed out, it is very difficult to imagine a white man with her academic

00:02:32.020 record getting anywhere near the presidency of Harvard.

00:02:36.980 Nor would a white man, having been found out for academic misconduct, have been defended

00:02:42.600 so fulsomely by the institution, even in the wake of resigning.

00:02:48.740 Honestly, the whole episode, the more you look at it, is diagnostic for what is wrong with

00:02:53.600 the current DEI regime in her institutions.

00:02:57.700 And of course, DEI was largely responsible for the explosion of anti-Semitism.

00:03:01.540 We saw on our college campuses, including Harvard, where over 30 student organizations, on October

00:03:09.120 8th, before Israel had dropped a single bomb in Gaza, came out in support of Hamas, claiming

00:03:14.660 that Israel was, quote, solely responsible for the atrocities of October 7th.

00:03:19.820 This derangement of ethical and political thinking was the result of the DEI ideology, this oppressor 0.89

00:03:28.040 and oppressed narrative that has captured everything on the left.

00:03:32.740 Anyway, Rabbi Wolpe and I get into that.

00:03:35.040 We talk about the global response to the atrocities of October 7th.

00:03:38.600 We discuss the difference between Israeli and diaspora Jews, the history and logic of anti-Semitism,

00:03:45.040 the role of conspiracy theories, so-called great replacement theory, reasons for Jewish success,

00:03:51.540 right-wing anti-Semitism, left-wing anti-Semitism, the response of Harvard University to October

00:03:58.580 7th, the college president's testimony before Congress, the future of DEI and civil discourse,

00:04:05.880 the BDS movement, anti-Semitism versus anti-Zionism, declining Jewish attendance at Ivy League universities,

00:04:14.240 the anti-Semitism that is endemic to Islam, foreign funding of U.S. universities, and other topics.

00:04:23.880 And now I bring you Rabbi David Wolpe.

00:04:32.160 I am here with Rabbi David Wolpe.

00:04:34.620 David, thanks for joining me.

00:04:36.480 Thank you.

00:04:36.920 So, you were once named the most influential rabbi in America by Newsweek, and I noticed

00:04:44.400 that this happened after we had our public debate, so apparently none of my atheist rhetorical

00:04:50.360 skills were able to diminish your stature.

00:04:52.920 You only rose in stature after I put into challenge your entire worldview, so much for that.

00:05:00.800 I used to say, you know, for about six years in the history of the Jewish people, there was a most 1.00

00:05:07.040 influential rabbi award. And it happened to be when I was like, after I, while I was doing all these

00:05:14.560 debates, had it been any other time in Jewish history, I never would have been able to put that

00:05:19.300 on my resume. But for that brief time, there were a couple of people who got together and decided to,

00:05:24.640 to give this award. So, yeah, I was, I was very lucky. But actually, people still say to me,

00:05:31.620 you know, I saw your debate with Sam Harris. Nobody says to me, and you won. So.

00:05:36.700 Well, for at least one of them, I had Hitch on my team, too, which was also an advantage.

00:05:42.300 Yes.

00:05:42.860 And that was, that was fun. Those were, those were fun debates. I've had many encounters that are,

00:05:48.520 that are not fun, and it's not fun on stage, and it's not fun in the green room, but it's always

00:05:53.100 been fun hanging with you.

00:05:54.580 Thank you. I feel the same.

00:05:56.120 But we, we've got other topics to touch here, and I don't, maybe we'll find something to disagree

00:06:02.100 about, but I don't think there'll be much. You've since been teaching at Harvard, and how's that

00:06:10.500 going? It's uneventful?

00:06:12.240 So, yeah, right. I remember I saw you, actually, before I went, and I told you that I was going,

00:06:19.780 and my, my aim was to do research and to write and to teach this coming semester, but then October

00:06:28.160 7th hit, and everything changed. I mean, for the, for the world, for Israel, certainly for Harvard,

00:06:34.640 and, and completely for me.

00:06:36.940 Yes, I, that's obviously what I want to get into. So for me, as someone who has considered himself a,

00:06:43.540 you know, somewhat distant student of, of Jewish history and, and anti-Semitism, I confess that I,

00:06:50.860 I always viewed the problem of anti-Semitism more or less in the rearview mirror. I mean, I just,

00:06:57.700 I viewed it as a problem of history rather than a, a present concern. I mean, I, obviously, I knew that

00:07:05.580 it still existed, and it's existed in various contexts that we'll talk about, but, you know,

00:07:11.500 I, I felt fairly blindsided by not October 7th itself, but the response to it that we, that we

00:07:19.640 saw the most gallingly in our nation's finest educational institutions, or what purport to be.

00:07:27.540 What changed for you after October 7th? I mean, did you, I think you, you're probably a,

00:07:32.960 a much closer, or have been a much closer observer of anti-Semitism than I've been being a rabbi.

00:07:39.200 How surprised were you in the aftermath of October 7th?

00:07:43.180 I think that you and I grew up actually in a strange interregnum in anti-Semitism because

00:07:50.540 post the Holocaust, I mean, my father, who was a conservative rabbi most of his life in Philadelphia,

00:07:57.800 for him, anti-Semitism was real and a going concern. And I remember when I was ordained in

00:08:02.840 afterwards, I thought, okay, anti-Semitism was the concern then, but now not so much. And the truth 0.88

00:08:09.620 is, for the last, I don't know, I would say starting maybe 20 years ago and back to, I don't

00:08:17.420 know, the 60s or the 70s, it was really a minimal concern compared to the way that Jews had been 0.73

00:08:26.020 obsessed and preoccupied with it for all of Jewish history. So I, like you, was, I had certainly more

00:08:34.540 experience with it day to day. A large part of my congregation in Los Angeles was from Iran, and they

00:08:42.640 had obviously fled anti-Semitism. But I was surprised at the explosive nature of anti-Semitism

00:08:52.220 racism all over America and the world, certainly on college campuses, but not only on college

00:08:59.140 campuses. Yeah, it a little bit shocked me and dispirited me because as we can talk about, you

00:09:07.620 know, it's not only coming from one political direction, even though on campus, it's almost

00:09:13.280 entirely from one direction. Yeah. So we'll focus on the various institutions in a minute. I definitely

00:09:21.300 want to talk about the college campus problem in particular, but I just want to get some more of

00:09:27.700 your experience here over the years. I mean, how much time have you spent in Israel? How close is

00:09:34.260 your connection there? I've spent a lot of time in Israel. I'm usually there at least a couple times

00:09:38.620 a year, and I lived there as a student, and I have constant touch with friends and colleagues in

00:09:45.800 Israel. And how do you view the relationship between Israeli Jews and diaspora Jews, I mean,

00:09:54.500 Jews elsewhere in the world, in particular in America? I mean, I can imagine that, you know,

00:10:00.320 post-October 7th, the experience for American Jews and really, you know, all Jews outside of Israel

00:10:07.400 is one of a sudden sense of implication in what's happening there that has never, I mean, it's always

00:10:14.200 been, it's possible to have felt that long before this moment, but this really was a September 11th

00:10:21.160 moment for all the world's Jews in a way. And again, it was not, you know, the atrocities aside,

00:10:26.940 it really was in how they were responded to that suddenly everything seemed upside down and in need of

00:10:35.860 a hard reset. So how do you think about the relationship between Jews inside of Israel and

00:10:41.860 everywhere else? One of the interesting things that happened as a result of October 7th is it

00:10:46.680 resolved a long, in some ways, a long debate in Jewish, you know, inner circles, which is how,

00:10:56.240 I mean, Israeli Jews, for understandable reasons, sort of felt disconnected from the diaspora.

00:11:01.820 They felt as, oh, look, we live in Israel. We're the ones who are living on the front lines of Jewish

00:11:06.620 history. We're the ones who are busy building a state. And you guys in Los Angeles or in, you know,

00:11:12.660 or in Wichita or Miami or Chicago or Paris or London, you're living nice lives and you're Jewish and

00:11:18.620 maybe every now and then you face something. But the truth is you're not in this boat together the

00:11:24.120 way we are. And October 7th changed to that. And it changed it for both directions. That is, as you said,

00:11:32.220 diaspora Jews finally said, oh my God, all of us have to take a position on this. We're all part of this.

00:11:37.900 We're all in this circle, whether we want to be or not. And Jews in Israel all of a sudden realized,

00:11:46.320 actually, the Jews of the diaspora are part of our enterprise, even though we don't normally think of

00:11:53.320 them that way. And it really matters what they say. And look what's happening on campuses because they're

00:11:59.220 Jews and they're supporting us or speaking about us. So in a strange way, you know, Abba Iban once

00:12:06.300 said, Jews like their clouds without silver linings. But there are sometimes some silver linings here. 0.80

00:12:12.740 And one of them is that I think it created a certain solidarity of Jews around the world because

00:12:19.700 nobody could be indifferent or almost no one could be indifferent to this, you know, dilemma.

00:12:26.960 And how do you think about anti-Semitism historically? I mean, it's just this ever

00:12:34.960 protean and perfectly durable hatred. It's been interesting to watch, again, in the aftermath

00:12:42.540 of October 7th, people grapple with the concept and try to understand it. I mean, it's just, it's,

00:12:49.360 you know, the history, I mean, I think we can trace the history, you know, loosely, you know,

00:12:53.940 from Christian theology 2,000 years ago. And I mean, there are a few salient landmarks in the last

00:13:03.100 two millennia. I mean, one in particular is the racialized form it took in the 19th century. I

00:13:10.820 think the term anti-Semitic first appears in the 1850s. And then we have the contributions of

00:13:17.660 Russia with the protocols of the elders of Zion forgery. And in America, we have Henry Ford and, 0.66

00:13:25.300 you know, the synergy between his mania and the Third Reich. And obviously, all of this takes 0.88

00:13:33.580 the most painful and consequential form with the Nazis and the Holocaust. But in the aftermath of 0.81

00:13:40.840 that, we have, at least, to my eye, three strands of anti-Semitism that we have to, we almost have

00:13:47.260 to talk about separately. One is the great reservoir of Muslim anti-Semitism, which was given, it has its

00:13:54.500 theological roots, obviously, but it was given a fair amount of topspin and inspiration from the Nazis.

00:14:01.360 And then we have, especially, you know, in an American context, especially, but it's, you know, I guess

00:14:07.120 is true throughout the West at the moment. We have on, you know, both anti-Semitism on the far left and

00:14:13.460 on the far right. And they're different. It's a deeply inconvenient fact for Jews that if you go far

00:14:21.660 enough in either direction on the political landscape, you meet stark anti-Semitism and for

00:14:28.260 opposite reasons. So there really is no winning. I mean, to speak about it loosely, you know, on the far

00:14:32.740 left, Jews are considered to have an extra helping of white privilege. And on the far right, Jews are

00:14:39.400 considered not to be white and therefore are condemned and hated as non-white, you know, interlopers 1.00

00:14:46.340 in the otherwise pure society. I mean, that's a very quick gloss of how I've been seeing things, 0.58

00:14:52.500 but give me your picture of anti-Semitism.

00:14:54.800 I will end up in the same place, although I'll take a couple different stops in the destination to

00:14:59.540 get there. First of all, I think it's important to remember that one driver of anti-Semitism,

00:15:06.880 and as you said, it is a protean hatred. I mean, people hate Jews for being capitalists,

00:15:12.220 for being communists, for being stateless, for being in a state, for wandering, for being in a 0.86

00:15:18.180 place, for being powerless, for being powerful. There's nothing for which you cannot hate Jews on 1.00

00:15:23.000 the left, on the right, as you said. But as you said, first of all, the fact that Jews were other

00:15:29.340 was really significant all through history because they were the minority in other people's lands

00:15:36.360 ever since they were kicked out of their own. And, you know, as I said once or twice in debates,

00:15:43.520 actually, you know, if you think that human beings are basically good, you should visit a playground.

00:15:48.800 And when you go to a playground, a new kid comes on the playground, they don't say,

00:15:54.340 oh, look, a new child, you know, let us share our toys. No, there's something about otherness

00:15:59.560 that makes us uncomfortable. That was then given really, as you said, theologic rocket fuel because

00:16:07.300 of Jews and Jesus. Because Jesus was Jewish, the Jews did not accept him as the Messiah. And now just 0.59

00:16:15.280 think about this psychologically. If God walks on earth and you don't, and he's standing right next

00:16:22.420 to you, and after all, he's part of the Jewish community, and you don't see him as God, you're 1.00

00:16:26.940 either foolish or wicked. There are no other choices because it can't be that God's not impressive or that 0.99

00:16:32.880 God's not God. And so what is really a family quarrel, which is what it was with Jesus, because

00:16:39.880 everybody was Jewish, a family quarrel, which are sometimes the most toxic, got enshrined in sacred 0.98

00:16:48.660 books. And that, here I will make a concession to your side of the debate, that's not a good thing

00:16:54.920 because that doesn't change. And so Christian, the roots of Christian antisemitism, Hyman Maccabee,

00:17:02.740 the English scholar, had a theory about this that's very interesting. He said, Judaism is one of the few

00:17:08.860 hatreds where you're both subhuman and superhuman. Because to kill a God, you have to be a devil. 0.99

00:17:15.640 You can't just be a bad person. And so from the beginning, hatred of Jews was supercharged. And 0.97

00:17:23.240 then, by the way, and many people are not aware of this, Muhammad made the same assumption that early

00:17:29.120 Christianity did, which was Jews would convert to Islam. And when they refused to convert, you get in 0.99

00:17:36.820 the Quran as well, not with the same degree of toxicity as the New Testament, but it's still, 0.66

00:17:44.460 there are some pretty awful verses in the Quran about Jews. And I just want to say, before we get

00:17:49.940 too complacent, that Jews are probably lucky that no Canaanites are still around, because, you know, 1.00

00:17:56.020 the Bible has its moments too, but Jews are still around. And the Amalekites especially, yeah, if you 1.00

00:18:02.100 want to go to the darkest. But Jews are still around. And so in land after land after land, they were a 1.00

00:18:09.800 minority with the Christians, a minority with the Muslims, and the other. And the reason that America 0.87

00:18:15.680 has always been different, I think, is that there were Frenchmen and Jews, there were Germans and Jews,

00:18:22.060 there were Russians and Jews, but there aren't Americans and Jews. There are so many different groups that

00:18:27.860 Jews were not the identified other. But on the fringes, they're still seen for different reasons as the

00:18:36.580 other. And as you said, today, we get those three strands. You get the far right, you get the far left, and the

00:18:44.400 Islamists. And all three have different reasons, but form weird alliances in their hostility, which is 0.99

00:18:54.320 to end up in a place that you did not end up in, which is where you get those strange signs like

00:18:59.840 queers for Hamas, which is totally inexplicable unless you understand that they're united by antipathy. 0.68

00:19:06.300 Yeah. I mean, that's where it all becomes an SNL sketch, which is probably written by a

00:19:12.520 disproportionate number of Jews. Let's start with the far right component of this, because I think 1.00

00:19:18.480 the far left component will take us to college campuses where we should focus. But how do you

00:19:25.860 understand the antisemitism of the right? And I guess the American context is the right one to think 1.00

00:19:33.020 about. And some of this has been in the news in pieces of late, really having nothing to do with

00:19:38.320 October 7th. So you have people like Tucker Carlson and Vivek Ramaswamy, you know, flirting with,

00:19:45.400 and beyond flirting, actually just fully endorsing so-called great replacement theory. You know,

00:19:51.560 many people were bewildered to hear those good Americans in Charlottesville with their tiki torches 0.51

00:19:57.740 chanting, Jews will not replace us. And I didn't know what that was about. But there's this idea that

00:20:03.880 Democrats in general, leftists in general, but really Jews in this insidious backroom way are 1.00

00:20:11.960 consciously trying to engineer a future electoral victories by just letting the dispossessed people 1.00

00:20:21.620 of the world flood the country through open borders, as though that were a reliable way of producing,

00:20:27.900 you know, democratic victories in elections. We're noticing now that this is, you know,

00:20:34.100 there's a fair number of Arabs, yeah, a fair number of Arabs now who are not inclined to vote

00:20:39.780 democratic in the aftermath of October 7th. How do you think about the far right problem?

00:20:44.880 So for one of the, I almost want to say interesting, if it weren't so tragic, it would be interesting.

00:20:50.700 Things about antisemitism, unlike other hatreds, again, is it's almost always a conspiracy theory,

00:20:56.800 which is a feature. I mean, look, you and Michael Shermer and others have explored the conspiratorial

00:21:03.920 mind. All I can say about it is, for whatever reason, almost always you will find among antisemites

00:21:12.020 that Jews are somehow conspiring to do something terrible in the world. And whatever it is they fear, 0.97

00:21:19.020 it is the Jew that has created that which they fear. And so if you're right-wing white American who 0.97

00:21:28.800 fears being replaced by minorities, obviously it's engineered by the Jews because things can't happen 1.00

00:21:37.840 without an explanation. And there's always the Jewish possibility and Jews being such a small 1.00

00:21:45.700 population. I mean, 2% of America, like 0.02% of the world, their prominence allows conspiracy theories

00:21:55.460 to have, you know, life on social media and in people's minds because, as an example, like they

00:22:04.660 would point to Paul Wolfowitz and say, ah, you see, you know, the war in Iraq is a Jewish conspiracy,

00:22:09.160 regardless of the fact that the president and the vice president and the secretary of state and so on,

00:22:13.980 none of them were Jewish, but that's irrelevant because it's always got to be the person who is 0.96

00:22:21.900 tied to this international conspiracy. And that's what's happening right now with the quote unquote

00:22:28.400 great replacement theory. It's engineered by the Jews, which is a bizarre, but very persistent 1.00

00:22:35.540 feature of antisemitism. You mentioned the protocols, the elders of Zion, that was a Russian forgery about 0.65

00:22:41.960 Jewish bankers who control the world. And weirdly, I am told, I don't know this firsthand, you can find 1.00

00:22:48.480 that book in hotel rooms in Jordan, like, you know, the way Gideon Bible was given. And, and so there is

00:22:56.580 this, it links all people who want to believe that everything bad in their life is due to someone else

00:23:04.560 planning it, that it would be bad. And it's almost always the Jew. I mean, just think of the caricatures 1.00

00:23:11.200 of the Jew, like as a predator holding the globe and spinning it, you know, to their will. 1.00

00:23:18.060 Yeah. I remember this is now jumping to the Muslim context for a minute, but I remember our friend,

00:23:22.080 Ayaan Hirsi Ali, telling me that when she was in Somalia and, uh, you know, by her account had,

00:23:29.920 had never met a person who had ever met a person who had met a Jew, still they knew they hated the 0.99

00:23:35.860 Jews because of all their, their evil work in the world. Yeah. No, you don't need our presence to hate 0.90

00:23:41.060 us actually. It's, it's astonishing. Just to take the flip side of this, how do you explain Jewish 0.81

00:23:49.140 prominence in either high status cultural contexts or powerful positions in governments? I mean, you know,

00:23:58.260 obviously the, the point you just made still stands that, you know, even, even if we're overrepresented

00:24:03.780 in really any of these contexts, we're still never the majority in those contexts, right? Because

00:24:10.600 you're talking in the, in the, in America, if 2% of the population, if we, if we're 20% in any field,

00:24:16.480 well then that's a tenfold quote over representation, but you know, we're still not the majority of

00:24:22.120 anybody, you know, doing the work anywhere outside of a synagogue, I would imagine.

00:24:26.360 Yeah. Let me tell you a funny story about that, that will actually illustrate, I think both how

00:24:31.240 we got there and what's happening to that. So I got, I got COVID a couple of years ago,

00:24:37.440 maybe a little bit less. And, and I was supposed to do a doctor's daughter's wedding. And I called

00:24:43.960 him and I said, listen, I just want you to know this is in Los Angeles. I have COVID. He said,

00:24:49.780 I'm getting you to Cedars tomorrow morning and you're going to get monoclonal antibodies.

00:24:52.980 So next morning I'm at Cedars because he wanted me to do his kid's wedding, which I did in the end.

00:24:57.000 And the nurse is giving me monoclonal antibodies. She goes, how did you get here so quickly? I,

00:25:01.360 you know, usually it takes a couple of days. And I said, well, honestly, if you're going to,

00:25:05.140 if you're going to get monoclonal antibodies, it is good to be clergy to the Jews. And she said, 0.99

00:25:09.520 that's true. But in a decade, you're going to want to be clergy to the Indians.

00:25:13.240 And I thought, and I thought that's part of the point is, yes, this is a certain moment in history

00:25:19.380 where the skills that Jews have happened to be very suited to the kind of skills that are needed 0.99

00:25:28.500 to succeed in the modern world. But there are a lot of other groups that haven't actually had the

00:25:34.320 opportunity that now have the opportunity that are going to, you know, flood the market essentially.

00:25:39.900 And that's going to change. But the reason my explanation, at least for why Jews have been 1.00

00:25:46.060 so successful is their culture trained them to it. It was a portable culture. It was a literate

00:25:51.980 culture. It was a culture where scholarship had greater status than anything else. And then you come

00:25:59.960 into economies where numeracy and literacy and brain work matter much more than physical labor.

00:26:09.900 And it's almost as if we were primed by our tradition to do well.

00:26:16.060 Okay. So back to the right and the alt-right and the far-right. I mean, one thing that's so

00:26:22.680 confusing about our current information landscape, and you just look at what's happening in the media

00:26:28.980 and on social media, you have various characters seeming to play well with each other. I mean,

00:26:35.780 they signal boost each other. They are clearly on friendly terms. I'm thinking of people like

00:26:41.680 Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson and Vivek Ramaswamy and Jared Kushner. I mean, these are all people who

00:26:48.420 are either in Trumpistan or Trumpistan adjacent. They're, I think, united in their hatred of so-called 0.87

00:26:59.180 elites, all the while being among the elites. These are people that are standing outside our

00:27:05.420 various institutions and condemning them as irretrievably corrupt. And, you know, everyone I

00:27:11.920 just mentioned, with the exception of Jared Kushner, I would be reasonably sure, is someone who has

00:27:19.500 either said, great replacement theory is absolutely real and is just, you overlook it at your peril,

00:27:26.420 or there's been some flirtation with it. Again, none of this is the far-right, you know, white

00:27:34.740 nationalist, quasi-neo-Nazi fringe, but it's also not hostile to that either, right? So all of these

00:27:43.600 people focus, you know, 100% of their energy in decrying what we're about to decry, the moral

00:27:50.860 confusion of the far-left, and they spend exactly none of it worrying about the various monsters at

00:27:57.640 their backs on the right. My view is that we can keep both of these problems in view at the same

00:28:03.260 time. What's your sense of the right-of-center problem in American political life? And, I mean,

00:28:11.660 you take it at any strata of society you want, but I mean, I just, there seems to be a populist

00:28:17.100 moment on the right that is heavily infected by, if not frank anti-Semitism, a disinclination to see

00:28:27.960 the anti-Semitism further to the right. I think that it's even more, I mean, you're being careful

00:28:37.100 in the way you frame it. It's a sort of delight with flirting with that anti-Semitism without

00:28:45.960 pronouncing it yourself, giving openings to it and seeing it sort of rise up, which is

00:28:52.280 kind of amusing and fun. And it's not only in America, of course, you know, I was recently in

00:28:58.160 Hungary. The same game is going on there as here and in other countries as well, where the populist

00:29:09.060 and the energy of populism and, let us be honest, the votes of populism and the engine of fundraising

00:29:16.960 and other things and all of that is in some ways intersecting with anti-Semitism and public figures

00:29:26.680 understand that they don't have to be anti-Semites to get the, I mean, like frank anti-Semites, 0.58

00:29:34.660 open anti-Semites, to get the boost from the populist approval because a wink and a nod is

00:29:41.380 sufficient. You only have to say, you know, look, I really think that, you know, I'm not, that

00:29:48.440 intellectual sophisticates are betraying us. And people know that you're saying Jews. People know

00:29:55.500 that cosmopolitans means Jews or that the intellectual elite means Jews. And so you can get tremendous 0.82

00:30:03.360 support and encouragement from this. There's a nice Hebrew word, which means kind of strengthening

00:30:10.220 from it without needing to say anything explicitly anti-Semitic. So I think Elon Musk has done this

00:30:18.760 numerous times. And I don't believe for a moment that he doesn't know what he's doing when he says

00:30:26.080 things that encourage anti-Semites to say, go Elon. And he's not alone. So I, look, I mean, even something

00:30:36.500 as contentious and contended as there are fine people on both sides. Well, if you're marching with

00:30:42.940 Nazis, you're probably not a fine person. But if you say that, then, and then you say, but I'm condemning

00:30:50.320 Nazis, you have played that double game of encouraging people that want to understand 0.82

00:30:56.600 you're on their side without saying explicitly, I'm on your side. And this game has been played

00:31:03.120 on the right to the Jews' detriment now a lot. And it's, as you said, it's being done by people who

00:31:13.100 have tremendous cultural influence and sway. Let me bend over backwards to defend two people who I'm

00:31:18.380 really not in the habit of defending now. So with Trump, I mean, the fine people on both sides

00:31:24.140 moment, there's no question that there was a clip from a press conference there that was edited to

00:31:29.220 make it seem like he was just, without caveat, endorsing the white supremacists as fine people.

00:31:36.040 Which, yeah, which he wasn't. No, I totally agree with you. He was not doing that.

00:31:39.660 So there's that. But I take your point that he's sloppy enough that you think that there,

00:31:44.400 in the end, there must be some method to his madness where he's

00:31:48.380 unwilling to, in a very straightforward way, disavow people who support him,

00:31:55.000 who really any decent person would just, at every opportunity, disavow. I mean,

00:32:00.180 whether it's anti-Semites, or it's David Duke, or it's white nationalists, or there's the Proud Boys,

00:32:05.440 or it's QAnon. I mean, whenever he's posed a, you know, really an ultimatum, like, tell us exactly

00:32:11.760 what you think about X, he will say something mealy-mouthed of the sort that is invariably,

00:32:19.800 you know, a testament to his own narcissism. I mean, the formulation is usually something like,

00:32:24.260 well, they really seem to like me, so they can't be all bad. Or, I mean, it's like,

00:32:27.700 he just turns it back to himself. Right. If you say to me,

00:32:30.980 is Trump an anti-Semite? I think, no. I don't actually think that that's what's going on.

00:32:36.300 And I don't, I don't, I have no, look, also, I can't look into people's hearts.

00:32:40.240 I don't know what he thinks, or what Elon Musk thinks in their heart. But I don't,

00:32:44.320 I don't see them as being explicitly haters. That's not the issue. The issue is exactly what

00:32:51.360 you said, which is, if I can just wink and get people to buoy me up, then, you know, that's-

00:32:58.980 Let's say, I just don't see, perhaps I'm naive, but I just can't imagine. I mean,

00:33:03.700 in Trump's case, I really don't have a theory of mind. It all just breaks down. It's like,

00:33:08.600 you know, you're getting sucked into a black hole and the normal physics changes. But with Elon,

00:33:15.580 it just seems to me that there's no possible advantage for him to be confusing his fans about

00:33:22.620 what he thinks with respect to Jew hatred. You know, I don't know if you've seen him going after

00:33:28.040 George Soros. I don't know enough about George Soros to know exactly what he's focused on there. But

00:33:33.480 I'm imagining that, you know, George Soros funds lots of left-wing groups and causes. And for that

00:33:40.360 reason, many people right of center view him as fairly culpable for having delivered us the

00:33:46.300 monstrosity of diversity, equity, and inclusion, such as it now exists. And we'll be talking about

00:33:52.140 that. So insofar as that's true, if he is a major funder of district attorneys who won't jail anyone,

00:33:59.640 you know, even if they're, you know, ransacking a CVS near you, provided the color of their skin is 0.61

00:34:05.640 the appropriate shade. Well, then it's easy for people to just say, okay, this is an awful

00:34:11.420 degradation of our society being funded by this billionaire. Let's criticize him for that. And

00:34:18.620 it's perhaps unfair to say that is given that he's, this guy is famously maligned by real anti-Semites

00:34:26.420 that now you're party to the anti-Semitism that is casting a shadow over the whole thing.

00:34:31.880 I agree with you. I mean, he's retweeted one or two things and said one or two things that have been

00:34:36.260 more explicit, but I think the same, it's actually not so much a point about Donald Trump or Elon Musk.

00:34:44.720 It is a point about the fact that the anti-Semitism on the right looks for any opening that suggests

00:34:55.340 that there is encouragement of the ideology and it finds it in, I think, lots of places,

00:35:03.320 even if the putative encourager is not themselves, you know, anti-Semitic or trying to goose anti-Semitism,

00:35:12.160 but you can call the rhetoric sloppy. You can call it, you know, conscious winking. I don't know,

00:35:19.340 but it's clearly there and you see it in the responses that people get on social media.

00:35:25.840 And I see it in my own feed where people will write, you know, as Elon Musk said about you people,

00:35:32.600 or as Donald Trump said about you people. So, and I, I look, I try very hard to stay apolitical.

00:35:40.420 I am not telling people they should vote for this person or that person. I obviously have my

00:35:45.780 preferences as I know you certainly have yours, but I really, I never, I try to be like consistently

00:35:54.340 vigilant against anti-Semitic provocations and they clearly exist among the characters we've

00:36:02.580 mentioned, whether by design or inadvertence. Yeah. Well, it's often in what isn't said,

00:36:09.100 right? I mean, so it's, it's the fact that, you know, in Trump's case, when asked about the Proud

00:36:13.760 Boys, he just, all he can say is, you know, stand back and stand by, right? Like, which is just

00:36:18.960 not the, it's not what you would say if you recognize the problem of right-wing militia lunatics

00:36:27.380 in our society, you know, agitating for their own power, right? I mean, you would completely disavow

00:36:34.500 them and you would leave, leave nothing left to the imagination. And so it is with, with Elon.

00:36:39.660 One of the things though, that I have actually seen is that people on the right don't, I mean,

00:36:45.700 people who are clearly not anti-Semites on the right, don't take anti-Semitism on the right

00:36:50.660 that seriously. And people on the left who are not anti-Semites by and large have not, maybe now is

00:36:57.200 changing, taken anti-Semitism on the left that seriously. Right, right. Yeah, it's really, it's 0.76

00:37:04.380 the single focus to the other side of the aisle, which I think is so corrupting of one's ethical

00:37:10.860 compass. Yeah. Okay, well, let's go leftward. Right. And get a picture of, of what's happening

00:37:19.180 there. I mean, this is, you know, the difference for me has always been, you know, if you go far

00:37:24.100 enough right, you meet just frank Nazis, right? You literally meet people with swastikas on their 0.62

00:37:30.400 foreheads. If you go far enough left, you have met, you know, up until the recent weeks, you have met

00:37:38.840 people who were not at all violently disposed toward Jews. They're just confused people whose 0.99

00:37:48.220 social justice hysteria has caused them to view everything in terms of, you know, a very American

00:37:56.320 framework of, you know, oppressor and oppressed dynamics that just really break down along the

00:38:03.320 lines of the African-American experience. Like, everything gets mapped to that. It's what people

00:38:08.720 like Ibram X. Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates have done to our civil rights thinking, where, you know,

00:38:15.160 you can't just not be racist, you have to be anti-racist. And, you know, white guilt is a kind

00:38:22.380 of original sin, which can never be expiated. And everything, you know, including, you know,

00:38:28.300 objective standards in education is a matter of power and oppression and privilege. And you force

00:38:36.060 everything through that filter. And what falls out the other end, if you're a Jew, is, again, the view 0.92

00:38:44.340 that you're not only not among the oppressed, you're among the most privileged, and you're a,

00:38:50.060 you know, worse still, you're this model minority against whom African-Americans and other minorities 1.00

00:38:57.640 are always subject to invidious comparisons based on the success, you know, the success of the Jews in

00:39:04.000 all walks of life. And so it's just, there's this animus toward Jews, but it never seemed to be the

00:39:11.280 kind of thing that would give us our next Kristallnacht until October 8th, right? Where

00:39:19.180 we then, we feel, okay, now this is now supercharged in its alliance with people who are actually

00:39:25.020 celebrating, explicitly celebrating the murder of Jews.

00:39:29.480 Right. Exactly. So I used to say, and not, not me alone, this, it's hardly original with me that 0.92

00:39:35.920 the antisemitism...

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - January 05, 2024

#348 — The Politics of Antisemitism

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