. . .When Yeezus Talked - an essay
Kanye West and Kyrie Irving opened up a painful wound with their recent bigoted comments about Jews, but censoring them will only make it worse.
Headlines about anti-Semitism are sprouting once again thanks to some comments made by rapper Kanye West regarding attempts to muzzle his opinions on topics of politics, race, and fashion. And while many are eager to jump onto this topic in order to take advantage of an A-list celebrity caught using disturbing language, personally I think any effort to "fight" anti-Semitism by sanctioning Kanye West is a waste of time. My entire life has been lived as an American Jew except for five years abroad in Israel that included mandatory military service thanks to my parents' citizenship there. I've seen and heard different sides of this issue from a first hand perspective, and I'm here to say that allowing "hate speech" as part of the political discourse isn't just a necessary evil, it pales in comparison to the problems caused by attempts to control it.
The reason so many fear West's comments is because he is a tremendous social icon through his music, fashion, and public appearances. As someone who isn't deeply knowledgeable about his music or career since the College Dropout album, I still hold that any attempt to censor him actually hurts the goal of fighting Jew hatred. This doesn't mean that people can't voice their objection to his comments or denounce him in their own way, but measures such as banning his Instagram and Twitter accounts or booting him from Chase bank and his product endorsements only serve to validate the beliefs of people who agree with what he said.
As I stated previously, my "lived experience" (cringe with me folks) includes several different iterations of Jewish life. When I was born both of my parents were secular Jews, and my mom remained one until her passing ten years ago. My dad later returned to the religious Zionist tendency of Orthodox Judaism, and I have many friends from ultra-Orthodox streams. I have other relatives including a brother who are members of the more progressive Conservative and Reform streams of Judaism. During the pandemic I visited the towns of Monsey, NY and Lakewood, NJ for business. I was in awe that such places exist in the United States where entire neighbourhoods look like they might as well have been transported from Bnai Brak, the quintessential ultra-Orthodox suburb of Tel Aviv. I also wondered what was the perception of the people living near these areas that aren't Jewish. As I've been told by people that have lived there, many of those neighbours do feel encroached upon by the crowds of visitors with their intrusive parking, the invasive construction, and imposing behaviour of new Jewish families, and the complaints often spill into bigoted terminology. Visiting the Brooklyn neighbourhoods of Crown Heights and Flatbush it became clear to me why often tensions develop, in particular between black and Jewish residents. People in these neighbourhoods often subsist at barely tolerable levels and feel like their greatest enemy is their immediate neighbour.
But make no mistake, you don't have to "look" or "dress Jewish" for people to let you know what they think about it. I've experienced first hand particularly casual digs and actual naked hatred by peers, many of whom I considered to be my friends. It had nothing to do with "Zionism", because usually the person was unaware that I lived in Israel and have family there. There were only two other Jewish students in my entire college, and I was the only one in my degree program. Surprisingly some of the best friendships I had at the time were with foreign-born or second generation immigrants from Arab nations like Egypt and Lebanon. I got to know a lot of great people of many other backgrounds: Croatian, Thai, Ukrainian, Irish, Iranian and Polish to name a few. When someone would make a comment about me being cheap, or simply teasing me for being Jewish, I naturally thought about whether this was a prejudice they got from home, school, or the media. At one point one of my friends irritated me so much that I snapped and got into a verbal argument with him while we were studying on campus one evening well after class hours. But sometime during my junior year I resolved that none of it mattered, because I wasn't going to school in order to change societal attitudes that have a long and complicated history going back thousands of years.
"OK", you might ask, "so given all of that, why should we just give a pass to abhorrent views and hateful behaviour? Just because we've had to put up with it until now?" The simplest answer is that there is no way to compel people out of bad behaviour without creating a coercive, strangling social atmosphere. That’s not a solution, let alone a sustainable one. As kids, many Jewish Americans are raised learning the sordid history of the Holocaust. I think it's an essential topic, but at times I feel like the emphasis on it blots out other important aspects of our history as Americans as well ] as Jews in America. Let me move the focus to the the 1930s, but in America, not Germany. Here were some interesting coinciding narratives from the time:
The father of the assembly line and much of the modern auto industry, Henry Ford, was a vocal Jew hater, at one point handing out copies of The International Jew, an anti-Jewish English language adaptation of the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion with every car. Ford even received the Order of the German Eagle in 1938 from Adolf Hitler.
Like Ford many senior American industrial leaders were deeply sympathetic to Germany before the war or interested in supporting its war aims for self-interested reasons. Among them were James Mooney, Ford's rival as CEO of General Motors and Sosthenes Behn of ITT as well as politicians like Charles Lindbergh and major diplomats like Amb. Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.
Three Jews, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, and Felix Frankfurter, served at various times on the Supreme Court with colleagues that were fiercely anti-Jewish: justices James McReynolds and Willis VanDevanter. Can you imagine the frustration that would have been the daily grind of working out complex legal arguments with a person like McReynolds who refused to even acknowledge the presence of his Jewish colleagues?
Most of the mass political movements of the 1930s were headlined by Jew haters that had real street followings and sometimes real political power, not mere subscribers and fans. Names included Gerald LK Smith, William Dudley Pelley, and Fr. Charles Coughlin. Two of their movements even are the namesakes of modern ones that have no direct connection: Smith's America First Party and Coughlin's National Union for Social Justice. Coughlin's audience alone was estimated to reach 25% of the US population.
In the '30s many Americans contemplated whether fascism would or should replace representative democracy in the US as it had in Germany and Italy. Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can't Happen Here in 1935 hypothesizing about a fascist American future, while Louisiana Gov. Huey Long when asked if the system could take root in the US is reported to have quipped "sure, only they'll call it 'anti-fascism'".
There was constant finger pointing between supporters of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his right-wing critics over who was destroying democracy, reaching a point where Marine Gen. Smedley Butler accused a shadowy group of business leaders of plotting to overthrow FDR and put him in charge of a military junta. Meanwhile the defeated Republicans both in Congress and via sympathetic justices on the Supreme Court railed that FDR's New Deal was itself the advent of fascism in America.
Kyrie's brick from the far corner
I cite all of these examples of major society moving events in the 1930s to show that the new hysteria about dangerous expressions of Jew hatred is not new. That doesn't mean I'm pleased about Kanye West or Kyrie Irving (it's gonna be really awkward wearing that Kyrie face t-shirt from now on). I think it's terrible that there are big cultural figures who believe in Jewish plots to enslave black Americans, but those theories have also been around for decades as well through movements like the Nation of Islam. I'll summarize my reaction to the modern upsurge in celebrity anti-Jewish propaganda and my free speech supporting response in this way:
1. Kyrie Irving and Kanye West have built a lot of cachet with heterodox crowds across the spectrum, because both have spurned media narratives on other previous issues. West was one of the few prominent celebrities to openly embrace dialogue with former Pres. Donald Trump while others like NBA star Steph Curry and women's soccer player Meghan Rapinoe openly encouraged boycotts of him. Irving defied the NBA's vaccine mandate throughout the 2021-22 season earning him the admiration of many along the same lines as Aaron Rodgers and Novak Djokovic. I supported their stances on both of those issues.
2. The ideas being funneled by Irving and West are not new or innovative, yet media organizations and "advocacy" groups like the ADL are behaving as if they require constant attention and emergency response, and the silencing of the speaker. Many observers often take this reaction to be a signal that the objector is not just trying to silence speech, but to conceal the truth.
3. One could plausibly say that given Irving and West's cultural influence in the black community they could spark an upsurge in anti-Jewish hatred and even street violence, but it would be hard to prove. Why? Because those things have been happening anyway. Already in 2019 there were reports of increasing waves of anti-Jewish street violence by black assailants in Brooklyn. In fact this same situation happened in 2020 when Philadelphia Eagles WR DeSean Jackson used the same quote mis-attributed to Adolf Hitler on Instagram that was featured in the movie shared by Kyrie Irving. This did not cause the wave of racist assaults against ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, mainly men who are the easiest to identify, by young black men, but it certainly didn't help. These athletes and entertainers are not sowing hatred within the black community towards Jews, they're actually more appropriately digesting what's always been there and regurgitating it.Â
First Amendment problems demand free speech solutions
I'd also like to address the issue of censorship of celebrities in the media, and who actually benefits from it. A common refrain among Jew haters falsely cited to Voltaire is that "to know who rules you, learn who you are not allowed to criticize", pointing the arrow towards Jewish control of the media. Most responses to this statement have been limited to condemning it as anti-Semitic hate speech. I think there's a tightrope that is often walked concerning when to object about bona fide Jew hatred as opposed to being over-sensitive. One of my all-time favourite TV shows was The Wire which aired in the early 2000s due to its gritty no frills realism that contrasts with other crime dramas. One of the characters in the show was Maurice Levy, a Jewish criminal defense attorney whose cut-throat unscrupulous approach keeps many of the homicidal main characters like Avon Barksdale from facing justice. During the show's run, some Jewish commentators objected to the almost entirely negative portrayal of Levy (played by Jewish actor Michael Kostroff) on the show, where he basically showed himself to be an almost conscience-less mercenary in his law practice. But as the show's Jewish creator Dan Simon responded he had set out to recreate the world of Baltimore's criminal drug underworld, and that included many real life Maurice Levys.
In America the place of free speech is protected not solely by our First Amendment but on broadly accepted Supreme Court precedents that rejected legal infringements on it with respect to protest, flag burning, and "hate speech". In the matter of hate speech the unanimously decided case of Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) upheld the right of Ku Klux Klansmen to publicly demonstrate, with even Thurgood Marshall the first black justice agreeing with the court's opinion. The author of the court’s opinion on the case is reputed to have been Assoc. Justice Abe Fortas who was for a time the only Jewish justice on the court, but he had resigned by the time it was handed down. When it concerns private platforms the freedoms guaranteed by the 1st Amendment run up against a number of grey areas such as whether the owner of the platform can determine his own rules, but the perception among those censored becomes that their freedom of speech is being muzzled even if their legal rights have not been infringed. So rather than telling others how to express what they think about Jews and Judaism, I feel like the answer instead is to dispute this viewpoint by pointing at reality and presenting a more complete picture. Think about sports entertainment itself; is it really true that the Jews have total control and cannot be crossed while black athletes are forced to shut up and play? Here are some facts that I want to lay out:
In 2014 LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling (Jewish) was forced through a vote by his fellow team owners to sell his team due to leaked phone conversations with his mistress (who was black) in which he made racist and sexist comments about black athletes, women, and others. He was also banned for life from the league, presumably meaning he cannot even attend games as a spectator. The move had come after several Clippers players like Chris Paul declared they would not play as long as Sterling remained the team owner. The Sterling affair, which was tinged with many embarrassing details about Sterling's personal and sex life, was a major eyesore for the NBA and while many agreed he was a terrible representative of the league some questioned whether his private conversations truly were relevant to the public interest.
Also in 2014 Bruce Levenson (Jewish) sold his ownership stake in the Atlanta Hawks having self-reported an email in which he discussed increasing ticket sales by brainstorming different interest areas and customer motivations based on racial groups.
Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver (Jewish) is currently in the process of selling the club after having been disciplined with a fine and one year suspension for off colour workplace remarks that he had made including repeating the slur "n**ger" in the context of quoting others. Sarver's conduct was deemed to be much milder than Sterling's, but once again NBA players like Chris Paul and LeBron James felt he needed to punished much more harshly. In effect this means that Paul, who plays for the Suns, has fired his Jewish boss two times in his career!
In other sports when a Jewish person is caught acting inappropriately there are similar reactions from their employers or peers.
 Daniel Snyder (Jewish) may be forced to sell the Washington Commanders. Snyder has been the subject of criticism for similar inappropriate behaviour and running a toxic workplace culture, Snyder had earlier been compelled after a long campaign to change the team's name and branding symbols from the "Redskins".
ESPN tennis broadcast commentator Doug Adler (Jewish) was fired unceremoniously in 2017 for praising Venus Williams for her "guerrilla effect", a common term for aggressively charging the net. A New York Times reporter tweeted his objection to what he considered racist terminology because he misunderstood Adler as having called her a gorilla. Adler sued the network for wrongful termination and reached a settlement but was never reinstated.
Now consider the following coinciding pattern of facts:
In 2020 during a playoff series Clippers forward Montrezl Harrell (black) called Dallas Mavericks’ Slovenian forward Luka Doncic a "bitch ass white boy". While criticized for his on-court behaviour, Harrell was never disciplined.Â
DeSean Jackson was never disciplined for his 2020 remarks despite media calls for a suspension. He later consulted with some Philadelphia area Jewish community members in order to learn more about anti-Semitism. Other athletes like former NBA player and Black Lives Matter activist Stephen Jackson actively voiced support for Jackson's original post while expressing some of their own.
As mentioned earlier Kyrie Irving took a stance of challenging the New York City vaccine mandate and NBA attempts to comply with it, and lost tens of millions of dollars in earnings from missed games because of his stance. The Brooklyn Nets hesitated before suspending him for his anti-Jewish remarks, causing some former players like Reggie Miller and Shaquille O'Neal to condemn the league response as too weak.
In other cases athlete behaviour went far beyond the level that caused the banishing of Sarver or Sterling.
In 2004 Indiana Pacers forward Ron Artest brawled with both players and fans in Detroit in what was called the "Malice at the Palace", causing him to be suspended for 86 games.
Recently Golden State forward Draymond Green physically assaulted teammate Jordan Poole during practice, receiving only a monetary fine as punishment.
In 2001 Suns point guard Jason Kidd was arrested and charged for domestic violence against his wife but did not receive a suspension. He has gone on to a long playing and coaching career, currently as head coach of the Mavericks. These are only a small sample.
Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka was recently suspended for having a workplace sexual relationship with another team employee's wife. Since then he has been hired by the Brooklyn Nets where he will be coaching Irving and Durant.
I could go on listing incidents, but I feel that the point has been made: Bad or questionable behaviour by Jewish club owners is increasingly facing accountability in pro sports including total bans. In the case of Bruce Levenson the fear of being scrutinized on his part prompted him to out himself and voluntarily quit the league, meaning that the sport may have lost a good ambassador over a relatively benign matter. But black players don't necessarily face any consequences. The league even acquiesced when players for the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take the court for a game in the protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in nearby Kenosha, Wisconsin, even though investigations later proved that Blake had been menacing a woman that he had sexually assaulted during an earlier incident and was carrying a knife when he was shot. When the local prosecutor refused to charge the officer that shot Blake, the Bucks condemned his decision even though video evidence and his own statements proved he was attempting to retrieve a knife during the altercation.
Cancel the censorship
But beyond all of the facts being laid on the table the question that will come up is "What should be done about Jew hatred in the public sphere?" I would submit that the reflex to reach for silencing athletes, entertainers or anyone else should be off the table. In the public discourse, censorship is like the Swiss Army knife that turns always turns on its handler. ADL Director Jonathan Greenblatt has met with Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai and a representative of Irving, and as a result the offending Instagram post has been removed by Irving. Mission accomplished, right? On the contrary, the scab was picked shortly afterward when Irving had a bizarre press conference where he refused to admit saying anything wrong. This caused the ADL to hastily backtrack and decline his donation, causing their critics to slam them for wanting to exploit the issue for monetary gain.
No one likes to hear someone else voice terrible disparaging comments about him, but that doesn't afford the offended party the right to silence the comments in the first place. The best options available are to address and rebut the objectionable speech head on or choose to ignore it, because while the situation may be different the expression regarding Watergate that "the cover-up is worse than the crime" applies here. This past week the FBI and Department of Homeland Security were exposed by The Intercept for leaning on Big Tech companies like Twitter and Facebook to silence or conceal content that the government labels as "disinformation". The blow-back from this revelation has caused more damage to the reputation of our government than the actual content it had sought to suppress.
I'm often reminded of one of the most haunting verses in the entire Bible, Jeremiah 29:18 where he writes: "And I will pursue them with the sword, the famine, the pestilence, and I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, for an oath, for astonishment, for hissing, and for a reproach among all the nations where I have exiled them". Here the prophet foretold the scattering of Jews among the other peoples of the world and the scorn that would meet them there. It's an uncomfortable feeling, but since reading that verse I have believed that the Bible predicted what we now call academically "anti-Semitism" and placed it into our lives as part of the human condition. That doesn’t mean we should be happy and complacent when encountering it, but it would be dangerously naive to believe that it can be eradicated.