I appreciate where this article is coming from. Of course we should be concerned with double standards, and the right-wing antisemitism is utterly despicable. But may I respectfully suggest that maybe this isn't just about "punching down at pro-Palestine students of color"?
The reason for the vitriol directed at left-wing institutions is that leftists were the ones *dancing in the streets* when Jews were massacred. If we had seen celebrations in Nashville and Jacksonville instead of New York and London on October 8th, I think the Jewish community would have directed its rage at the right.
Moreover, I think this article whitewashes Hamas apologia as "pro-Palestinian" activism. I've spent some time on a left-wing campus recently. There was a demented feeling of glee in the air. "Pro-Palestinian" activists cheered on the massacre at the vigil for those killed on October 7th. As for the Harvard letter, I think any reasonable person could see why "Israel deserves to be terrorized" isn't simply pro-Palestinian sentiment.
Finally, many of us Jews (especially "elite" Jews) live and work in places that lie somewhere between AOC and Stalin on the political spectrum. I don't think it's odd that Jewish leaders have chosen to focus on left-wing antisemitism in this moment.
I go to Harvard so I've seen these protests firsthand. Some are antisemitic, some are not. Regardless, I'm glad we can agree that there's a terrible double standard here -- I think we need to call out antisemitism wherever it appears, on the right and on the left.
Maya, I think you’d agree that a movement where “only some” of the protests were antisemitic (or even excused Hamas) isn’t great. I very much doubt you’d excuse a rally where only some of the speakers applauded lynchings, or only some of them were Islamophobic.
Something is a double standard when it treats two identical activities differently. But organizing a large-scale public protest and a temporary personal tweet are two very different activities.
elon has more power than every pro palestinian student on every college campus in the US combined. rhetoric matters, and this isn't the first time ** "After buying Twitter, he reinstated prominent right-wing conspiracy theorists (many of whom are also white supremacists), including Nick Fuentes, Ye, Patrick Howley, Pepe Escobar, Santino Rice, Clif High, Scott Ritter, and Sam Hyde. After the Anti-Defamation League published a report that antisemitic hate speech had surged on Twitter after Musk’s takeover, Elon threatened to sue the ADL and accused it of being the “biggest generators” of antisemitism on Twitter. He also liked a tweet promoting the #BantheADL campaign.
Musk has repeatedly tweeted offensive Holocaust-related content. In 2022, he posted a picture of a Nazi soldier and a meme that compared Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Hitler. And last May, Musk compared Holocaust survivor and Jewish billionaire George Soros to Jewish comic book villain Magneto and said he “wants to erode the very fabric of civilization” — which many argued was antisemitic."
I'm going to just keep repeating this. The Attorney General of Texas is now opening an investigation into Media Matters based on Musk's tweet.
There is no way in the world any Attorney General in any state in America is opening an investigation to ADL, AIPAC or any other somewhat Jewish affiliated organization because of any of these campus protests.
Leadership’s rhetoric is not just empty words tho.
When Elon speaks, thousands of his minions obsessively agree, re-spew it, and take action based on those ideas.
I for one expect the people we collectively give with such extraordinary power to act far more responsibly. His speech is far far more impactful than a bunch of college students the world has largely tuned out long ago
Do you really think that the picture of the soldier with carrier pigeons (who would only be identified as a Nazi soldier by someone who is really into WWII military uniforms, as there are no details that would suggest the soldier is a Nazi) and calling Justin Trudeau (who called the trucker protestors Nazis, and who brought an actual Nazi to speak to the Canadian parliament) a Nazi are "Holocaust-related"?
Calling people Nazis has a long history in American politics. Has every violation of Godwin's Law on the internet been "Holocaust-related"? This seems like stretch.
Also, thanks for writing this and engaging with the comments, I don't think I agree with your take but I appreciate getting your perspective!
tbh I think those posts are nazi dogwhistles in the context of everything else he's written, but even if you disagree (which is fair), the other stuff stands for itself. and happy to engage!
This seems like something that could be answered by someone asking him straightforwardly. That said, the "this is the truth" tweet replying to a transparently conspiratorial message definitely doesn't look great.
I'm hyper skeptical about ferreting out dog whistle stuff because so much of it amounts to attempted mind reading, and people who hate others because of their ethnicity, race, or whatever other characteristic will usually come out and say if if they're pushed.
And I have to imagine if there were Charlottesville-like protests of hard right idiots dancing in the streets and cheering the death of Jews, business leaders would be just as adamantly opposed.
Yes, there is such a massive gap between cheering terrorism against Jewish people and criticizing Jewish Progressives for supporting DEI. But both can be considered antisemitism so they're the same.
This idea that there were “leftists dancing j the streets” does not comport to the reality I’ve experienced.
Rather, seems to me that there has been a blanket assumption that anyone with brown skin cheering Hamas is leftists. Meanwhile, from what I can tell, there has always been Muslim fundamentalists among the American population. They are not ‘leftist’ but rather they are religious extremists, generally associated with roght wong politics. But they get lumped with the left because black lives matter and all that. But they don’t have much to do with anything else left wing in America.
"some people have been pro-Hamas, but this is the minority of pro-Palestine protesters in my experience"
I'm not aware of a pro-Palestine protest on the campus at which I work (grad student) that did not repeat "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" ad nauseum.
Now, OK, maybe only a minority of them knew what that meant. But I should think the organizers who coordinated the chants did.
Now, OK, what that means isn't "pro-Hamas" per se. But it's just as bad.
Are there still people who don't know what that (or "Heritage not hate" or "All lives matter") means? I know that I disagree with Matt on this, but I'm pretty skeptical.
"Are there still people who don't know what that means?"
I'm not sure; I threw that line in to indicate that their knowledge (or lack thereof) is not necessary for my argument. But I also try not to underestimate stupidity.
I don’t get it. We can understand that not all of the anti-Israel protesters chanting “from the river to the sea” are pro-Hamas but saying Jewish academics and political funders supported an ideology that is fueling those protests is anti-Semitic?
I see assuming good faith on one side and bad faith on the other. Excusing the literal interpretation of one and extrapolating a nefarious interpretation of the other.
The celebration wasn’t just by “people with brown skin” and certainly not just by Muslim fundamentalists. The undergrads and law students and professors and DSA members who celebrated can for the most part be characterized as leftists.
Sure these tiny handful of cases exists. But If you check out “the people dancing in the streets” immediately following this attack, I think you’ll have a hard time documenting more than a small handful of what you say. Far far more of the people celebrating were quite obviously Muslim.
The DSA, sure. But even that doesn’t fit the grand narratives about decolonization. Same group is against US involvement in Ukraine.
All antisemitism is bad. But there has been a kneejerk reaction to point fingers at the left and conflate Muslim fundamentalism with left wing politics. It doesn’t fit at all
If US Muslims are predominantly aligned with the political right, how come Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who are among the most leftwing members of Congress, were elected from the districts with the country's highest proportions of Muslim voters?
I didn’t say US Muslim’s were aligned with the political right in the USA. As a minority group, Muslim’s are associated with the left, which is an unusual situation given the conservatism baked into Islam.
I said Muslim extremists exist in the US and are typically associated with right wing politics rather than left wing politics. Religious fundamentalism and nationalism movements are generally considered right wing, based in tradition, hierarchy etc, rather than equality, progress etc
Religious fundamentalism of any sort -- Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or whatever --is obviously conservative in the most general sense, and I think it's true that most Christian fundamentalists in the US tend to vote for Republicans. But Christian ethics are really more compatible with leftwing than rightwing politics -- particularly the idea that amassing wealth is sinful, that charity is especially virtuous when bestowed on someone of alien ethnicity, and that passivity in response to aggression is better than retaliation. Indeed, in light of the Sermon on the Mount, it might well be said that Marxism is a neo-Christian ideology (albeit without the preference for passivity).
Yes, I agree, Christian morality informs liberalism, born out of the Enlightenment and Protestantism. It is very much left wing, founded within an oppressed, occupied society enduring brutal Roman occupation.
I’d never thought about how Muslim morality is perhaps more aligned with right wing sentiment. But seems something is there.
Its important also tho regarding religion and politics….that morality often takes a back seat to the traditions, group interests and institutional interests. Those forces tend to align with right wing politics. Today, we have a real tension between the two. Christian nationalism vs liberalism. It is not a new tension tho — it is hundreds of years old now.
The idea that moneymaking is bad for the soul did not originate with Christianity. Plato elucidated it in Book 8 of The Republic more persuasively than Christ does in gospel accounts of the sermon on the mount. Plato was definitely leftwing -- indeed, proto-Marxist. He said that wealthy citizens typically contrive to exclude the poor from any say in government by establishing a minimum wealth requirement for voting or other participation in civic governance and that as a result the polity is riven into two mutually hostile factions: those meeting the wealth requirement and the disenfranchised others. And because the wealthy oligarchs mistrust the disenfranchised citizens of lesser means they are unwilling to allow them to bear arms or provide them with military training; consequently such oligarchic states are vulnerable to conquest by foreign invaders. In Plato's ideal state neither the rulers nor the "guardians" -- an elite warrior class that would also perform police functions -- would seek enrichment. Indeed, the guardians would have no private property; they'd share common quarters, would have no right of exclusive sexual relations with particular women, and the offspring of their sexual encounters would be raised communally, not knowing who their parents were, nor would their fathers know which of them they'd sired. Can't be much more "collective" than that!
Of course the mere fact that Plato was in favor of X, Y, or Z doesn't prove that X, Y, or Z is either feasible or desirable. He states reasons for drawing his conclusions, but I often find his reasoning confusing or based on premises that seem dubious.
I think many Muslims would tell you that the core tenants of Islam - loving your neighbor as yourself, being kind, taking care of the poor, and struggling against oppression of any kind are also value that would tend to overlap with progressive policies and values in many ways. Muslims in the US have voted for Democrats in elections over the last year at rates of about 69% to 82%. In some cases this might be motivated by fear of Republican policies toward immigration but I think they would say it was primarily because of a perception that Democrats value cultural diversity and freedom of religion AND that their domestic policies about providing a safety net for the poor and protecting God's creation are a better match to what their theology says is morally correct. For some Muslims there is definitely a tension between these overall beliefs and more conservative specific beliefs about topics like the morality of abortion or homosexuality. But the majority of Muslims in America do support same-sex marriage and abortion being legal is almost all circumstances and the vast majority of muslims who express those more liberal views also describe themselves as highly religious, engage in daily prayer, and attend mosque at least once a month. And they have much higher rates of supporting bigger government vs smaller government, more environmental regulation, and belief that public financial support of the poor is beneficial than Catholics, Mainline Protestants, or Evangelical Protestants. So I think an argument could be made that in the US, Muslims are following their religious views to more liberal places than Christians. Obviously there is a contrast between those views and the views in areas where fundementalist Islam is the primary social norm but that is the case for fundamentalism in all faiths. Interestingly the religious group that is most similar to Muslims in the US is Jews in the US.
Yes. My brother lived there for some time. These days it’s populated mostly by rich people with boring politics. It’s not very scary.
And if your lived reality is that a tiny handful of trust fund kid who writes for N+1 magazine are a threat of even politically important, I’d say getting some perspective is in order.
Have you not been paying attention? There was a contingent that celebrated the October 7th as resistance against oppression. A Cornell Professor, speaking at a rally in support, said he felt exhilarated when he heard the news. These were minority sentiments to be sure, but they were still vocally stated and widely reported on. It doesn't take some kind of underground research to have seen all of this.
"Where's all the other support for the Houthis and Hezbollah and ISIS?" Are you being serious? None of those groups invaded the only Jewish state on earth to slaughter and rape Jews. You're intentionally ignoring the context of what this is about. Not to mention ignoring that there literally were Westerners who supported things like ISIS (some of whom flew to the Middle East to literally join their ranks). Your comment seems to stem from willful ignorance of the context of all the points you raised in rebuttal.
Then prey do so. Jews are under unprecdented attack in today's US from both left and right. Feeding into the partisan tendency to ignore the antisemtisim on one's own side via whataboutism about the other side is precisely the no. 1 reason jews feel more isolated than ever. Unfortunately you are exactly playing into this trend. We'd all be better off if each of us called eveyone one out but *especially* the shites in our *own* camp.
Sure, there's always more context, and you're framing the issue with very specific contexts (while leaving out others) to create a narrative to justify certain activities.
It's not like folks were dancing in the street for the Tree of Life shooting. It's not like anyone is celebrating Kristallnacht. It's not like the JVP is being organized against by other pro-palestinian protestors. The broad statements here about motivations are purely fictional.
The context is the very real history the middle east has with theocratic ethnostates states and the perpetual carving up of it by imperialist powers. If there's a level of willful ignorance here, it's easy to see why you're projecting it.
Just as an aside re Kristallnacht, there was a pro-Palestinian rally at McGill scheduled for Kristallnacht advertised with an image of someone breaking the glass window of (presumably) a business. https://nitter.net/lymanstoneky/status/1722670897050337483#m
If this is coincidental, the organizers were really extraordinarily unlucky.
Edit: Looking at this a little more, some of the responses say that it's not a business that's getting its glass smashed, it's maybe a university building.
You specifically stated that the things I mentioned weren't happening and hadn't happened, then asked why those things hadn't happened with other groups. I pointed out examples of how they had happened, and had happened with those other groups.
Of course one of the most complicated conflicts in history has more context, and far more than could be covered in a comments section. I'm not "creating a narrative". You seem to be reading more into my and OP's comments than is there.
I did none of those things and you're now definitively creating a narrative, and telling a fabricated story, on multiple fronts. Please stick to reality if you want this to be productive.
You: Really? Dancing in the streets? "Whitewashes Hamas-apologia as "pro-palestinian"?
Me: There was a contingent that celebrated the October 7th as resistance against oppression. A Cornell Professor, speaking at a rally in support, said he felt exhilarated when he heard the news. These were minority sentiments to be sure, but they were still vocally stated and widely reported on. It doesn't take some kind of underground research to have seen all of this.
You: If that's true, where's all the other support for the Houthis and Hezbollah and ISIS?
Me: None of those groups invaded the only Jewish state on earth to slaughter and rape Jews . . . Not to mention ignoring that there literally were Westerners who supported things like ISIS (some of whom flew to the Middle East to literally join their ranks).
I'm not sure how to make it clearer that I was responding to your explicit claims. I mean, I literally put one of the direct quotes I was responding to in my initial response to you.
"What I heard from some people who cheered 10/7 was that they cheered Palestinians finally breaking through the wall that kept them enclosed in Gaza, not the slaughter that followed."
Yeah, who could have predicted that if Hamas broke through the IDF units, they would slaughter Jews. Extremely surprising.
To use an admittedly extreme analogy, this is kind of like saying that people were just excited that the 9/11 hijackers made their flights on time. The whole point of breaking through the lines was to slaughter and rape innocents.
Having said that, I'm fine with saying that people are idiots and missed the clear purpose of breaking through the lines. But Danny is ignoring the not insignificant number of people who celebrated the resistance while fully acknowledging the slaughter. Some people were ecstatic to see Jews killed, and Danny ignores that. But other people were ecstatic about the resistance demonstrated by Hamas and were merely indifferent or perfectly fine with the killing of innocents. Danny seems to be ignoring those people too.
I'm so perplexed and horrified by the fact that this has to be debated. My initial comment recognizes that these are small minority positions. But they're very real, and easily found. You don't even have to search for them, you just have to not consciously bury your head in the sand when they were reported on. But here we are, pretending like nobody was actively celebrating Hamas' attack. It's mind boggling to me.
Weird that they would celebrate "breaking through the wall" when tens of thousands of Palestinians were "breaking through the wall" by going to Israel to work every day prior to Hamas' attack.
“The end of the British mandate was inseparable from the Nakba” is not really comparable to “we cheered them breaking through the wall but not the attacks on civilians,” since the attacks on civilians were the entire purpose of breaking through the wall.
"What I heard from some people who cheered 10/7 was that they cheered Palestinians finally breaking through the wall that kept them enclosed in Gaza, not the slaughter that followed."
Not buying it. These folks aren't too big on nuance.
Twitter leftists have been spending several years holding up the Yemeni civil war as evidence of the U.S. doing bad, so yeah, there's a lot of tacit support for Houthis out there too.
Your judgement based on "Twitter leftists" is not only bad reasoning, but characterizing the anti-war proposition that America not underwrite either side in the Yemeni civil war, is not "tacit support for Houthis."
Sure, US just doesn't mind ignoring Saudi involvement, and arms trade into the area, because the Saudi's are actually reliable allies or something. Same story where we endorse tyrants and people assume the enemy of my enemy is my friend and enemies of my friends are my enemy.
I completely agree. It’s also easy to punch down at college students because they have limited economic power. Musk on the other hand is still incredibly wealthy even after burning $40 billion dollars. It’s much more difficult to criticize him if he is tangentially involved with your work.
Like we can rail on sexual assaulter Elon Musk because frankly, we have little power.
Disagree. Harvard students are among the most privileged people in human history and should give up the victimhood posture. They are old and smart enough to be accountable for their actions. The fact that Elon Musk isn’t held accountable is a separate matter and not a defense of Harvard students.
I don’t see how this is relevant to “business leaders find it easier to criticize people when there are no consequences than it is to criticize someone who could potentially harm their business.”
Punching down or up usually relates to the status of those speaking.
What you said isn’t false, there just might have been a more relevant comment elsewhere in this thread. I don’t get why it exploded. Maybe it’s a free thread?
My critique of Maya’s piece basically boils down to “cheap talk” as an explanation for why Musk doesn’t get as much criticism from folks in his peer group as those antisemetic college students.
It was crazy that anyone ever believed that titans of capitalist industry were left-wing. That idea was created by right wing pundits annoyed that big tech was trying to slow the flood of misinformation on their sites, because in the process they were shutting down a lot of Trumpist propaganda. The only really left wing thing the tech CEOs did was to push DEI, and that only because they were vulnerable to bad press over their overwhelmingly male and white employee populations. But they really aren't and never have been left wing. They're a little left of center on social issues but decidedly right on economic issues. And CEOs outside of tech are much further to the right than tech.
I can't deny that Slow Boring pieces written by women do seem to draw more ire from the peanut gallery, and I kind of wish I could self-righteously point that out. And yet, *as a woman*, I also can't deny that several of the pieces written by women that got pile-ons have also bothered *me* quite a bit. Is it a coincidence? Is Matt equally willing to challenge and critique draft pieces submitted by women as he is from men? I am not sure. I hope so.
I am endlessly impressed by the SB interns' intelligence, maturity, and hustle, Maya included. However, Maya, there is a large disconnect between your strong, black & white language claiming "most" business leaders are "ignoring" anti-semitism on the right, and the available evidence. I was genuinely shocked that this piece flat-out ignored the tidal wave of companies pulling advertising dollars from X based on this single tweet alone, and making strong statements condemning Elon in the process. Your entire argument hinges on the claim that this isn't happening. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/17/elon-musk-x-companies-pulling-ads-anti-semitism/ I'd love to hear whether this factored into you assessment of the situation and whether it alters anything.
Thanks for putting this out there, being willing to face a lot of critique, and being willing to share an opinion that you know will be outnumbered. I think it's good for us to get challenged regularly. Happy Thanksgiving!
Yep companies pulling ads is important -- but I think the silence from Ackman/most of his prominent peers is very important to note, and the focus of the piece
I guess “some cherry picked business leaders are ignoring Musk anti-semitism whereas many others are divesting from his businesses in a way that does him, personally, enormous financial damage” is not as pithy a headline?
It would be terrible if any of the commenters are punching at Maya *because* she's female, and any so doing should feel ashamed. But it would also be terrible if commenters are pulling their (valid) punches *because* she's female, as there's nothing more patronizing than that.
It's probably a combination of things, and it's probably related to experience more than any other identity trait.
When Matt (a seasoned journalist) generously offers any of his employees (usually a student) the chance to voice their opinion, it's to be expected they aren't the same quality as the thing we've all agreed to pay money for, and that bothers people. That's probably super charged by the fact the guest articles are written by women, who are young, from a different milieu. Some people are just going to have a visceral reaction to this perspective that's so far away of their priors. Judging from the quality of these comments, very little of it has to do with constructive criticism for being a young writer, and mostly relying on strawman characterizations and false conflations, just to dunk on her for stepping out of line.
Maybe it’s just my bad memory, but it seems like Maya leans into culture war stuff a lot more previous interns, that may be what you’re picking up on. Regardless of how well it’s argued, you’re going to annoy some fraction of the audience if you debate whether group X is “punching up or punching down” against Group Y rather than going through the fine details of Trumps economic policies.
I've been writing a lot on Israel recently as a Jewish undergraduate at a school at the heart of the culture wars. It's been important to me to share my perspective, especially as a left-wing Jew with nuanced views on this issue. Feel free to also check out my work for The Forward on this issue -- https://forward.com/authors/maya-bodnick/
The first three were on the NBA, on chatGPT, and on high school debate. They were great, imo, and two of them at least really took advantage of her unique perspective. The last one on Ramaswamy and this one, however, have been more standard partisan fare.
Beat me to it. That debate article in particular was just eye opening and mindblowing to me. And I'm always up for talking more sports, I still think Sports Sunday by Maya would be plenty of fun.
Great point. This feels like a big miss. Maya's post seems to have really over-generalized from what just Bill Ackman said and how much Kara Swisher (& by proxy Scott Galloway) hates Elon.
Additionally, the business leaders are *so loud* they're calling on Linda to resign in protest:
I think it's a good point that businesses have reacted strongly to antisemitic content on Twitter but it's also true that businesses have mostly not reacted overtly to specifically Elon Musk's antisemitic statements, and definitely not in the overt way that some reacted to campus leftist stupidity after 10/7.
Marie: Your writing on Post-Woke is some of the best I've seen, and I can't help but notice that you haven't been active in the last year plus. Are you just overwhelmed by work/family (in which case I have to forgive you)? I hope you get back to it . . .
Aw, man, thanks! I think about getting back to it all the time, I still have quite a few ideas I want to discuss. Life has gotten busier for sure, but also I am a bit more at peace with the fact that "people are wrong on the internet"- I used to feel a sense of urgency that I needed to convince people to change their minds on these things, and I basically came to terms with the fact that people are pretty stubborn. But, hey, maybe I will find some time over the holidays to write.
She seems to be hell bent on ignoring the facts to put her head in the sand for the rabid antisemitism in her own institution via a a failed attempt at whataboutism. There could be many psychological explanations but it’s not promising for her as a thinker and writer and a sad fail for Matt as an editor- he failed us subscribers and he failed her in allowing her to embarrass herself like this.
"pro-Palestinian activism crosses the line into antisemitism, a debatable (though perhaps accurate in some cases)"
Perhaps accurate???
At Harvard after the 7/10 massacre, 33 Harvard organizations blamed Israel for a terror attack committed by Hamas.
Down Mass Ave, at my alma mater, Jewish students were warned not to enter the Institute via Lobby 7, the main entrance, for their own safety, and the Institute did not suspend those threatening Jews and refused to leave. This is after groups chanted "intifada" in front of the student center.
Perhaps antisemitic.
I have no love for Elon Musk, and his tweets were disgusting. He should get criticism for what he said.
But I'm not afraid of Elon Musk assaulting me at my alma mater or cheering the murder and kidnapping of my friends.
Ah, so hate speech, bullying, threats to shoot up Jewish spaces on campus, and so on are not a big deal. Interring attitude. I wonder how much of that would be acceptable if those students were anything but Jewish.
I appreciate where this article is coming from. Of course we should be concerned with double standards, and the right-wing antisemitism is utterly despicable. But may I respectfully suggest that maybe this isn't just about "punching down at pro-Palestine students of color"?
The reason for the vitriol directed at left-wing institutions is that leftists were the ones *dancing in the streets* when Jews were massacred. If we had seen celebrations in Nashville and Jacksonville instead of New York and London on October 8th, I think the Jewish community would have directed its rage at the right.
Moreover, I think this article whitewashes Hamas apologia as "pro-Palestinian" activism. I've spent some time on a left-wing campus recently. There was a demented feeling of glee in the air. "Pro-Palestinian" activists cheered on the massacre at the vigil for those killed on October 7th. As for the Harvard letter, I think any reasonable person could see why "Israel deserves to be terrorized" isn't simply pro-Palestinian sentiment.
Finally, many of us Jews (especially "elite" Jews) live and work in places that lie somewhere between AOC and Stalin on the political spectrum. I don't think it's odd that Jewish leaders have chosen to focus on left-wing antisemitism in this moment.
I go to Harvard so I've seen these protests firsthand. Some are antisemitic, some are not. Regardless, I'm glad we can agree that there's a terrible double standard here -- I think we need to call out antisemitism wherever it appears, on the right and on the left.
Maya, I think you’d agree that a movement where “only some” of the protests were antisemitic (or even excused Hamas) isn’t great. I very much doubt you’d excuse a rally where only some of the speakers applauded lynchings, or only some of them were Islamophobic.
"a terrible double standard here"
Something is a double standard when it treats two identical activities differently. But organizing a large-scale public protest and a temporary personal tweet are two very different activities.
elon has more power than every pro palestinian student on every college campus in the US combined. rhetoric matters, and this isn't the first time ** "After buying Twitter, he reinstated prominent right-wing conspiracy theorists (many of whom are also white supremacists), including Nick Fuentes, Ye, Patrick Howley, Pepe Escobar, Santino Rice, Clif High, Scott Ritter, and Sam Hyde. After the Anti-Defamation League published a report that antisemitic hate speech had surged on Twitter after Musk’s takeover, Elon threatened to sue the ADL and accused it of being the “biggest generators” of antisemitism on Twitter. He also liked a tweet promoting the #BantheADL campaign.
Musk has repeatedly tweeted offensive Holocaust-related content. In 2022, he posted a picture of a Nazi soldier and a meme that compared Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Hitler. And last May, Musk compared Holocaust survivor and Jewish billionaire George Soros to Jewish comic book villain Magneto and said he “wants to erode the very fabric of civilization” — which many argued was antisemitic."
"elon has more power than every pro palestinian student on every college campus in the US combined."
So? That doesn't mean he exercises that full power in each and every one of his actions. He posted a Tweet.
"rhetoric matters, and this isn't the first time"
Sure. But rhetoric matters less than physical actions, and deserves proportionately smaller consequences.
I'm going to just keep repeating this. The Attorney General of Texas is now opening an investigation into Media Matters based on Musk's tweet.
There is no way in the world any Attorney General in any state in America is opening an investigation to ADL, AIPAC or any other somewhat Jewish affiliated organization because of any of these campus protests.
Leadership’s rhetoric is not just empty words tho.
When Elon speaks, thousands of his minions obsessively agree, re-spew it, and take action based on those ideas.
I for one expect the people we collectively give with such extraordinary power to act far more responsibly. His speech is far far more impactful than a bunch of college students the world has largely tuned out long ago
Do you really think that the picture of the soldier with carrier pigeons (who would only be identified as a Nazi soldier by someone who is really into WWII military uniforms, as there are no details that would suggest the soldier is a Nazi) and calling Justin Trudeau (who called the trucker protestors Nazis, and who brought an actual Nazi to speak to the Canadian parliament) a Nazi are "Holocaust-related"?
Calling people Nazis has a long history in American politics. Has every violation of Godwin's Law on the internet been "Holocaust-related"? This seems like stretch.
Also, thanks for writing this and engaging with the comments, I don't think I agree with your take but I appreciate getting your perspective!
tbh I think those posts are nazi dogwhistles in the context of everything else he's written, but even if you disagree (which is fair), the other stuff stands for itself. and happy to engage!
This seems like something that could be answered by someone asking him straightforwardly. That said, the "this is the truth" tweet replying to a transparently conspiratorial message definitely doesn't look great.
I'm hyper skeptical about ferreting out dog whistle stuff because so much of it amounts to attempted mind reading, and people who hate others because of their ethnicity, race, or whatever other characteristic will usually come out and say if if they're pushed.
(FWIW, you posted this in response to me, not Maya.)
😬 oops
And I have to imagine if there were Charlottesville-like protests of hard right idiots dancing in the streets and cheering the death of Jews, business leaders would be just as adamantly opposed.
Yes, there is such a massive gap between cheering terrorism against Jewish people and criticizing Jewish Progressives for supporting DEI. But both can be considered antisemitism so they're the same.
This idea that there were “leftists dancing j the streets” does not comport to the reality I’ve experienced.
Rather, seems to me that there has been a blanket assumption that anyone with brown skin cheering Hamas is leftists. Meanwhile, from what I can tell, there has always been Muslim fundamentalists among the American population. They are not ‘leftist’ but rather they are religious extremists, generally associated with roght wong politics. But they get lumped with the left because black lives matter and all that. But they don’t have much to do with anything else left wing in America.
+1 -- some people have been pro-Hamas, but this is the minority of pro-Palestine protesters in my experience
"some people have been pro-Hamas, but this is the minority of pro-Palestine protesters in my experience"
I'm not aware of a pro-Palestine protest on the campus at which I work (grad student) that did not repeat "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" ad nauseum.
Now, OK, maybe only a minority of them knew what that meant. But I should think the organizers who coordinated the chants did.
Now, OK, what that means isn't "pro-Hamas" per se. But it's just as bad.
Are there still people who don't know what that (or "Heritage not hate" or "All lives matter") means? I know that I disagree with Matt on this, but I'm pretty skeptical.
"Are there still people who don't know what that means?"
I'm not sure; I threw that line in to indicate that their knowledge (or lack thereof) is not necessary for my argument. But I also try not to underestimate stupidity.
I don’t get it. We can understand that not all of the anti-Israel protesters chanting “from the river to the sea” are pro-Hamas but saying Jewish academics and political funders supported an ideology that is fueling those protests is anti-Semitic?
I see assuming good faith on one side and bad faith on the other. Excusing the literal interpretation of one and extrapolating a nefarious interpretation of the other.
This column is what it attacks in others.
The celebration wasn’t just by “people with brown skin” and certainly not just by Muslim fundamentalists. The undergrads and law students and professors and DSA members who celebrated can for the most part be characterized as leftists.
Sure these tiny handful of cases exists. But If you check out “the people dancing in the streets” immediately following this attack, I think you’ll have a hard time documenting more than a small handful of what you say. Far far more of the people celebrating were quite obviously Muslim.
The DSA, sure. But even that doesn’t fit the grand narratives about decolonization. Same group is against US involvement in Ukraine.
All antisemitism is bad. But there has been a kneejerk reaction to point fingers at the left and conflate Muslim fundamentalism with left wing politics. It doesn’t fit at all
I would say that a movement that cares deeply about racial equality should not tolerate antisemitic Muslim fundamentalists.
If US Muslims are predominantly aligned with the political right, how come Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who are among the most leftwing members of Congress, were elected from the districts with the country's highest proportions of Muslim voters?
I didn’t say US Muslim’s were aligned with the political right in the USA. As a minority group, Muslim’s are associated with the left, which is an unusual situation given the conservatism baked into Islam.
I said Muslim extremists exist in the US and are typically associated with right wing politics rather than left wing politics. Religious fundamentalism and nationalism movements are generally considered right wing, based in tradition, hierarchy etc, rather than equality, progress etc
Religious fundamentalism of any sort -- Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or whatever --is obviously conservative in the most general sense, and I think it's true that most Christian fundamentalists in the US tend to vote for Republicans. But Christian ethics are really more compatible with leftwing than rightwing politics -- particularly the idea that amassing wealth is sinful, that charity is especially virtuous when bestowed on someone of alien ethnicity, and that passivity in response to aggression is better than retaliation. Indeed, in light of the Sermon on the Mount, it might well be said that Marxism is a neo-Christian ideology (albeit without the preference for passivity).
Fascinating.
Yes, I agree, Christian morality informs liberalism, born out of the Enlightenment and Protestantism. It is very much left wing, founded within an oppressed, occupied society enduring brutal Roman occupation.
I’d never thought about how Muslim morality is perhaps more aligned with right wing sentiment. But seems something is there.
Its important also tho regarding religion and politics….that morality often takes a back seat to the traditions, group interests and institutional interests. Those forces tend to align with right wing politics. Today, we have a real tension between the two. Christian nationalism vs liberalism. It is not a new tension tho — it is hundreds of years old now.
The idea that moneymaking is bad for the soul did not originate with Christianity. Plato elucidated it in Book 8 of The Republic more persuasively than Christ does in gospel accounts of the sermon on the mount. Plato was definitely leftwing -- indeed, proto-Marxist. He said that wealthy citizens typically contrive to exclude the poor from any say in government by establishing a minimum wealth requirement for voting or other participation in civic governance and that as a result the polity is riven into two mutually hostile factions: those meeting the wealth requirement and the disenfranchised others. And because the wealthy oligarchs mistrust the disenfranchised citizens of lesser means they are unwilling to allow them to bear arms or provide them with military training; consequently such oligarchic states are vulnerable to conquest by foreign invaders. In Plato's ideal state neither the rulers nor the "guardians" -- an elite warrior class that would also perform police functions -- would seek enrichment. Indeed, the guardians would have no private property; they'd share common quarters, would have no right of exclusive sexual relations with particular women, and the offspring of their sexual encounters would be raised communally, not knowing who their parents were, nor would their fathers know which of them they'd sired. Can't be much more "collective" than that!
Of course the mere fact that Plato was in favor of X, Y, or Z doesn't prove that X, Y, or Z is either feasible or desirable. He states reasons for drawing his conclusions, but I often find his reasoning confusing or based on premises that seem dubious.
I think many Muslims would tell you that the core tenants of Islam - loving your neighbor as yourself, being kind, taking care of the poor, and struggling against oppression of any kind are also value that would tend to overlap with progressive policies and values in many ways. Muslims in the US have voted for Democrats in elections over the last year at rates of about 69% to 82%. In some cases this might be motivated by fear of Republican policies toward immigration but I think they would say it was primarily because of a perception that Democrats value cultural diversity and freedom of religion AND that their domestic policies about providing a safety net for the poor and protecting God's creation are a better match to what their theology says is morally correct. For some Muslims there is definitely a tension between these overall beliefs and more conservative specific beliefs about topics like the morality of abortion or homosexuality. But the majority of Muslims in America do support same-sex marriage and abortion being legal is almost all circumstances and the vast majority of muslims who express those more liberal views also describe themselves as highly religious, engage in daily prayer, and attend mosque at least once a month. And they have much higher rates of supporting bigger government vs smaller government, more environmental regulation, and belief that public financial support of the poor is beneficial than Catholics, Mainline Protestants, or Evangelical Protestants. So I think an argument could be made that in the US, Muslims are following their religious views to more liberal places than Christians. Obviously there is a contrast between those views and the views in areas where fundementalist Islam is the primary social norm but that is the case for fundamentalism in all faiths. Interestingly the religious group that is most similar to Muslims in the US is Jews in the US.
Dancing in the streets? You live near Stalinists? This all seems rather off.
The dancing in the streets is true, but I admit the Stalin comment was just a joke!
There are many Marxist-Leninists in departments of wasted human potential and unemployment studies.
Yes. My brother lived there for some time. These days it’s populated mostly by rich people with boring politics. It’s not very scary.
And if your lived reality is that a tiny handful of trust fund kid who writes for N+1 magazine are a threat of even politically important, I’d say getting some perspective is in order.
Really? Dancing in the streets? "Whitewashes Hamas-apologia as "pro-palestinian"?
If that's true, where's all the other support for the Houthis and Hezbollah and ISIS?
Have you not been paying attention? There was a contingent that celebrated the October 7th as resistance against oppression. A Cornell Professor, speaking at a rally in support, said he felt exhilarated when he heard the news. These were minority sentiments to be sure, but they were still vocally stated and widely reported on. It doesn't take some kind of underground research to have seen all of this.
"Where's all the other support for the Houthis and Hezbollah and ISIS?" Are you being serious? None of those groups invaded the only Jewish state on earth to slaughter and rape Jews. You're intentionally ignoring the context of what this is about. Not to mention ignoring that there literally were Westerners who supported things like ISIS (some of whom flew to the Middle East to literally join their ranks). Your comment seems to stem from willful ignorance of the context of all the points you raised in rebuttal.
This is obviously antisemitic, and we should call that out.
Then prey do so. Jews are under unprecdented attack in today's US from both left and right. Feeding into the partisan tendency to ignore the antisemtisim on one's own side via whataboutism about the other side is precisely the no. 1 reason jews feel more isolated than ever. Unfortunately you are exactly playing into this trend. We'd all be better off if each of us called eveyone one out but *especially* the shites in our *own* camp.
Sure, there's always more context, and you're framing the issue with very specific contexts (while leaving out others) to create a narrative to justify certain activities.
It's not like folks were dancing in the street for the Tree of Life shooting. It's not like anyone is celebrating Kristallnacht. It's not like the JVP is being organized against by other pro-palestinian protestors. The broad statements here about motivations are purely fictional.
The context is the very real history the middle east has with theocratic ethnostates states and the perpetual carving up of it by imperialist powers. If there's a level of willful ignorance here, it's easy to see why you're projecting it.
Just as an aside re Kristallnacht, there was a pro-Palestinian rally at McGill scheduled for Kristallnacht advertised with an image of someone breaking the glass window of (presumably) a business. https://nitter.net/lymanstoneky/status/1722670897050337483#m
If this is coincidental, the organizers were really extraordinarily unlucky.
Edit: Looking at this a little more, some of the responses say that it's not a business that's getting its glass smashed, it's maybe a university building.
You specifically stated that the things I mentioned weren't happening and hadn't happened, then asked why those things hadn't happened with other groups. I pointed out examples of how they had happened, and had happened with those other groups.
Of course one of the most complicated conflicts in history has more context, and far more than could be covered in a comments section. I'm not "creating a narrative". You seem to be reading more into my and OP's comments than is there.
I did none of those things and you're now definitively creating a narrative, and telling a fabricated story, on multiple fronts. Please stick to reality if you want this to be productive.
You: Really? Dancing in the streets? "Whitewashes Hamas-apologia as "pro-palestinian"?
Me: There was a contingent that celebrated the October 7th as resistance against oppression. A Cornell Professor, speaking at a rally in support, said he felt exhilarated when he heard the news. These were minority sentiments to be sure, but they were still vocally stated and widely reported on. It doesn't take some kind of underground research to have seen all of this.
You: If that's true, where's all the other support for the Houthis and Hezbollah and ISIS?
Me: None of those groups invaded the only Jewish state on earth to slaughter and rape Jews . . . Not to mention ignoring that there literally were Westerners who supported things like ISIS (some of whom flew to the Middle East to literally join their ranks).
I'm not sure how to make it clearer that I was responding to your explicit claims. I mean, I literally put one of the direct quotes I was responding to in my initial response to you.
This seems analogous to defending the confederacy for “supporting states rights” and waving a confederate flag, ignoring what the “right” was
Perfect analogy, thank you.
Have you ever heard of the term "false analogy."
"What I heard from some people who cheered 10/7 was that they cheered Palestinians finally breaking through the wall that kept them enclosed in Gaza, not the slaughter that followed."
Yeah, who could have predicted that if Hamas broke through the IDF units, they would slaughter Jews. Extremely surprising.
To use an admittedly extreme analogy, this is kind of like saying that people were just excited that the 9/11 hijackers made their flights on time. The whole point of breaking through the lines was to slaughter and rape innocents.
Having said that, I'm fine with saying that people are idiots and missed the clear purpose of breaking through the lines. But Danny is ignoring the not insignificant number of people who celebrated the resistance while fully acknowledging the slaughter. Some people were ecstatic to see Jews killed, and Danny ignores that. But other people were ecstatic about the resistance demonstrated by Hamas and were merely indifferent or perfectly fine with the killing of innocents. Danny seems to be ignoring those people too.
I'm so perplexed and horrified by the fact that this has to be debated. My initial comment recognizes that these are small minority positions. But they're very real, and easily found. You don't even have to search for them, you just have to not consciously bury your head in the sand when they were reported on. But here we are, pretending like nobody was actively celebrating Hamas' attack. It's mind boggling to me.
correction, we can *hope* they are "small mihnority positions" but i see no strong evidence for that.
Weird that they would celebrate "breaking through the wall" when tens of thousands of Palestinians were "breaking through the wall" by going to Israel to work every day prior to Hamas' attack.
“The end of the British mandate was inseparable from the Nakba” is not really comparable to “we cheered them breaking through the wall but not the attacks on civilians,” since the attacks on civilians were the entire purpose of breaking through the wall.
"What I heard from some people who cheered 10/7 was that they cheered Palestinians finally breaking through the wall that kept them enclosed in Gaza, not the slaughter that followed."
Not buying it. These folks aren't too big on nuance.
Twitter leftists have been spending several years holding up the Yemeni civil war as evidence of the U.S. doing bad, so yeah, there's a lot of tacit support for Houthis out there too.
Your judgement based on "Twitter leftists" is not only bad reasoning, but characterizing the anti-war proposition that America not underwrite either side in the Yemeni civil war, is not "tacit support for Houthis."
Get real dude.
America is not doing that. The anti-war side has brain worms.
Sure, US just doesn't mind ignoring Saudi involvement, and arms trade into the area, because the Saudi's are actually reliable allies or something. Same story where we endorse tyrants and people assume the enemy of my enemy is my friend and enemies of my friends are my enemy.
That's the brain rot here.
I completely agree. It’s also easy to punch down at college students because they have limited economic power. Musk on the other hand is still incredibly wealthy even after burning $40 billion dollars. It’s much more difficult to criticize him if he is tangentially involved with your work.
Like we can rail on sexual assaulter Elon Musk because frankly, we have little power.
Disagree. Harvard students are among the most privileged people in human history and should give up the victimhood posture. They are old and smart enough to be accountable for their actions. The fact that Elon Musk isn’t held accountable is a separate matter and not a defense of Harvard students.
I don’t see how this is relevant to “business leaders find it easier to criticize people when there are no consequences than it is to criticize someone who could potentially harm their business.”
Ah, sorry. I have no argument with that statement. Just the characterization of “punching down”
Punching down or up usually relates to the status of those speaking.
What you said isn’t false, there just might have been a more relevant comment elsewhere in this thread. I don’t get why it exploded. Maybe it’s a free thread?
My critique of Maya’s piece basically boils down to “cheap talk” as an explanation for why Musk doesn’t get as much criticism from folks in his peer group as those antisemetic college students.
If anyone at all actually "danced in the streets" then obviously they all did, or at least they all did it in their heads /s
It was crazy that anyone ever believed that titans of capitalist industry were left-wing. That idea was created by right wing pundits annoyed that big tech was trying to slow the flood of misinformation on their sites, because in the process they were shutting down a lot of Trumpist propaganda. The only really left wing thing the tech CEOs did was to push DEI, and that only because they were vulnerable to bad press over their overwhelmingly male and white employee populations. But they really aren't and never have been left wing. They're a little left of center on social issues but decidedly right on economic issues. And CEOs outside of tech are much further to the right than tech.
I can't deny that Slow Boring pieces written by women do seem to draw more ire from the peanut gallery, and I kind of wish I could self-righteously point that out. And yet, *as a woman*, I also can't deny that several of the pieces written by women that got pile-ons have also bothered *me* quite a bit. Is it a coincidence? Is Matt equally willing to challenge and critique draft pieces submitted by women as he is from men? I am not sure. I hope so.
I am endlessly impressed by the SB interns' intelligence, maturity, and hustle, Maya included. However, Maya, there is a large disconnect between your strong, black & white language claiming "most" business leaders are "ignoring" anti-semitism on the right, and the available evidence. I was genuinely shocked that this piece flat-out ignored the tidal wave of companies pulling advertising dollars from X based on this single tweet alone, and making strong statements condemning Elon in the process. Your entire argument hinges on the claim that this isn't happening. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/17/elon-musk-x-companies-pulling-ads-anti-semitism/ I'd love to hear whether this factored into you assessment of the situation and whether it alters anything.
Thanks for putting this out there, being willing to face a lot of critique, and being willing to share an opinion that you know will be outnumbered. I think it's good for us to get challenged regularly. Happy Thanksgiving!
Yep companies pulling ads is important -- but I think the silence from Ackman/most of his prominent peers is very important to note, and the focus of the piece
I guess “some cherry picked business leaders are ignoring Musk anti-semitism whereas many others are divesting from his businesses in a way that does him, personally, enormous financial damage” is not as pithy a headline?
Does any of this take away from the vile antisemitism of those ‘progressive’ student groups?
It would be terrible if any of the commenters are punching at Maya *because* she's female, and any so doing should feel ashamed. But it would also be terrible if commenters are pulling their (valid) punches *because* she's female, as there's nothing more patronizing than that.
It's probably a combination of things, and it's probably related to experience more than any other identity trait.
When Matt (a seasoned journalist) generously offers any of his employees (usually a student) the chance to voice their opinion, it's to be expected they aren't the same quality as the thing we've all agreed to pay money for, and that bothers people. That's probably super charged by the fact the guest articles are written by women, who are young, from a different milieu. Some people are just going to have a visceral reaction to this perspective that's so far away of their priors. Judging from the quality of these comments, very little of it has to do with constructive criticism for being a young writer, and mostly relying on strawman characterizations and false conflations, just to dunk on her for stepping out of line.
Maybe it’s just my bad memory, but it seems like Maya leans into culture war stuff a lot more previous interns, that may be what you’re picking up on. Regardless of how well it’s argued, you’re going to annoy some fraction of the audience if you debate whether group X is “punching up or punching down” against Group Y rather than going through the fine details of Trumps economic policies.
I've been writing a lot on Israel recently as a Jewish undergraduate at a school at the heart of the culture wars. It's been important to me to share my perspective, especially as a left-wing Jew with nuanced views on this issue. Feel free to also check out my work for The Forward on this issue -- https://forward.com/authors/maya-bodnick/
Maya has five pieces so far: https://substack.com/profile/103976442-maya-bodnick
The first three were on the NBA, on chatGPT, and on high school debate. They were great, imo, and two of them at least really took advantage of her unique perspective. The last one on Ramaswamy and this one, however, have been more standard partisan fare.
Beat me to it. That debate article in particular was just eye opening and mindblowing to me. And I'm always up for talking more sports, I still think Sports Sunday by Maya would be plenty of fun.
Yea the debate article was a standout - introduced me to something I had no clue about but was really fascinating
glad y'all liked it, I got a lot of blowback for that one but it was important for me personally to write as it's an issue i feel strongly about
This story just broke yesterday, so probably too late to be included in her article, but it's another example of investors responding negatively
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/20/tech/tesla-elon-musk-suspension/index.html
Great point. This feels like a big miss. Maya's post seems to have really over-generalized from what just Bill Ackman said and how much Kara Swisher (& by proxy Scott Galloway) hates Elon.
Additionally, the business leaders are *so loud* they're calling on Linda to resign in protest:
https://www.axios.com/2023/11/20/linda-yaccarino-elon-musk-advertising-resign-x-twitter
I'm just bitter that she can get through to Kara Swisher and that hedge fund managers joke with her.
I think it's a good point that businesses have reacted strongly to antisemitic content on Twitter but it's also true that businesses have mostly not reacted overtly to specifically Elon Musk's antisemitic statements, and definitely not in the overt way that some reacted to campus leftist stupidity after 10/7.
Fellow woman here. I agree with everything you said.
Marie: Your writing on Post-Woke is some of the best I've seen, and I can't help but notice that you haven't been active in the last year plus. Are you just overwhelmed by work/family (in which case I have to forgive you)? I hope you get back to it . . .
Aw, man, thanks! I think about getting back to it all the time, I still have quite a few ideas I want to discuss. Life has gotten busier for sure, but also I am a bit more at peace with the fact that "people are wrong on the internet"- I used to feel a sense of urgency that I needed to convince people to change their minds on these things, and I basically came to terms with the fact that people are pretty stubborn. But, hey, maybe I will find some time over the holidays to write.
She seems to be hell bent on ignoring the facts to put her head in the sand for the rabid antisemitism in her own institution via a a failed attempt at whataboutism. There could be many psychological explanations but it’s not promising for her as a thinker and writer and a sad fail for Matt as an editor- he failed us subscribers and he failed her in allowing her to embarrass herself like this.
"osuschologcpa" → sociological?
Yikes. My phone typing can be horrendous. Fixed. Thanks !
I do agree that Slow Boring pieces written by women seem to face more opprobrium, but the sample size is small.
"pro-Palestinian activism crosses the line into antisemitism, a debatable (though perhaps accurate in some cases)"
Perhaps accurate???
At Harvard after the 7/10 massacre, 33 Harvard organizations blamed Israel for a terror attack committed by Hamas.
Down Mass Ave, at my alma mater, Jewish students were warned not to enter the Institute via Lobby 7, the main entrance, for their own safety, and the Institute did not suspend those threatening Jews and refused to leave. This is after groups chanted "intifada" in front of the student center.
Perhaps antisemitic.
I have no love for Elon Musk, and his tweets were disgusting. He should get criticism for what he said.
But I'm not afraid of Elon Musk assaulting me at my alma mater or cheering the murder and kidnapping of my friends.
serious question, how many jewish students at ivy league plus colleges have been killed or injured by pro Palestinian activists?
It's obviously not a serious question, and not relevant to the discussion.
the scale of harm is always serious and relevant
Ah, so hate speech, bullying, threats to shoot up Jewish spaces on campus, and so on are not a big deal. Interring attitude. I wonder how much of that would be acceptable if those students were anything but Jewish.
If the students being accosted were Black, do you think the same nothing would happen to the people accosting them?