Echoes of 1933?

In 2021, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) announced that the number of reported incidents of antisemitic harassment, propaganda, and assault in the US had reached the highest levels ever recorded in more than forty years of documenting these crimes.

In 2022, the ADL announced that the number of reported incidents of antisemitism had outpaced even the record levels the year before.

The ADL documented 3,697 incidents in 2022, up 36% from 2021.

• This amounts to 10 antisemitic incidents a day, EVERY DAY, throughout the US, in 2022.
• On average, someone was harassed every few hours.
• Or a synagogue was vandalized.
• Or someone faced physical violence fueled by anti-Jewish hate.

Ten antisemitic incidents a day, 3,697 incidents in all, the highest level ever recorded.

Antisemitic incidents have doubled since 2018. The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism reports that “religion hate crime” in major U.S. cities rose 27% last year, with anti-Jewish incidents accounting for 78% of the total.

PBS reports that this trend “shows little sign of abating worldwide as political radicals have gained mainstream popularity,” and “antisemitic hate?crimes rose in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, home to the country’s three largest Jewish populations.”

High-profile entertainers, athletes, and political figures are spreading hate.?

From?AP: “Former President Donald Trump?hosted Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust-denying white supremacist,?at Mar-a-Lago. The rapper Ye (Kanye West) expressed love for Adolf Hitler in an interview. Basketball star Kyrie Irving?promoted an antisemitic film?on social media.”

Shootings of Jews. In October 2018, a shooter killed 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue in the worst act of violence against Jews in US history. The shooter told a police officer that

he wanted all Jews to die because Jews were committing genocide against his people.

Six months later, there was a shooting in a synagogue in Poway, California, near San Diego. The shooter made a 911 call minutes after fleeing the scene and he said, "I'm defending my nation against the Jewish people, who are destroying the white race."

On January 15, 2022, a shooter entered Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, taking the rabbi and three congregants hostage during a Sabbath service.

These shooters refer to “white genocide,” a conspiracy theory among neo-Nazis and the alt-right who believe there is a Jewish plot to overthrow white Christian rule and to make whites extinct.

Some perspective:

• Jews are 2.4% of the US population and 0.1% of the population in the entire world – not even 1%.
• The proportion of Jews in Germany in 1933, when Hitler came to power? 0.7 percent. In all of Europe in 1933? 1.7%.

People throughout Nazi-occupied Europe were mobilized to hate that small percent of people – simply because they were Jews – and then ultimately to exterminate them.

The Southern Poverty Law Center monitors hate groups throughout the US. The SPLC reports that the number of hate groups has climbed to nearly a thousand. Most are white supremacist and neo-Nazi, and they perceive “the Jew” as their major enemy.

Hate is spreading and social media feeds it.

For three months beginning on Oct. 27, when Elon Musk bought Twitter, there were 325,739 antisemitic tweets – almost 3,500 antisemitic tweets EVERY SINGLE DAY.

What to do? Report hate crimes to the police and to the FBI. Stand up with and for those who are harassed.

1933: the year that Hitler came to power. The murder of 6 million Jews didn’t begin at Auschwitz. It began with words and incitement and smaller acts of violence. And we know how it ended.

Today’s antisemitism must stop – before it’s too late.