How do we react to hate? In the March 24, 2017 edition of the Intermountain Jewish News, Anti-Defamation League Mountain States Regional Board Chair Jim Kurtz-Phelan explains in his “Lively Opinion” column that we do not wait.

 

 

 

 

We are not waiting to see whether troubles may or may not occur in the future.  We are not waiting to see what happens tomorrow, or next week, or next year.  We are living in troubled times now.

 

Over 160 Jewish Community Centers, Jewish Day Schools, and Jewish communal organizations have received bomb threats, forcing the evacuation of babies, toddlers, students, adults in athletic gear, and office workers.  Headstones in Jewish cemeteries have been desecrated and damaged.  Swastikas have been spray painted on synagogues, mosques have been burned, and people have been threatened, assaulted and killed because of their perceived religion and others have been told to “get out of my country.”  Immigrant children and parents whose only “crime” was to enter this country without proper papers are frightened that ICE will deport them and tear apart their families.  Something is seriously amiss in the United States.

 

We should not allow ourselves to be frightened; what we should be is vigilant and determined and active; determined to fight back, to stand up, to speak out, and to stop the hate.  This is a time for action, not a time for fear.

 

There is much rhetoric in the air about why extremists have suddenly been emboldened to speak and act openly.  Some people argue that we are seeing the beginning of an authoritarian turn similar to Germany in the 1930’s when social, economic and political conditions allowed Hitler and his Nazi forces to gain control.  I don’t think that’s the right analogy; I think our time is more like the United States in the 1920’s and 1930’s when the original “America First” movement and isolationism gained traction.  Immigration was severely limited.  Jewish refugees were denied admission to this country, just as the current administration has proposed for refugees from several predominantly Muslim countries.  It was the time of Father Coughlin’s vitriolic anti-Semitic radio broadcasts and rallies, anti-immigrant attitudes, and Charles Lindberg’s rallies sponsored by the America First Committee, where Lindberg urged that the United States stay out of the war.  Isolationism was not just against entanglements in foreign wars; it was a turning against foreign peoples, foreign cultures and foreign trade.  This inward-looking turn emboldened fascist regimes in other countries, just as we see anti-foreign rhetoric today emboldening far right attitudes in this country.

 

I don’t believe we are seeing something new in our country.  I believe these far right forces have been afield for a long time.  I remember the John Birch Society bookstore in my hometown in the 1950’s and 1960’s and the outrageous rhetoric and lies in their publications.  For a number of decades these forces have been kept at bay, operating mostly underground and below the surface, but always there.  They surely believe their time has now come.

 

How we got here is not as important as understanding the current social climate and determining how we will react to the atmosphere of hate abounding in our country.   The challenge is not partisan or political.  In the Jewish community, as with so many other communities, we have recognized the challenge is how to preserve and protect our people, our institutions, our values, and how to help stop the attacks on other minority peoples, religions and institutions.  Our challenge is to devise strategies, programs, projects, and actions to jointly move forward in protecting those values and policies that we all believe to be essential to the freedom and security that our community and others desire and deserve.

 

The Anti-Defamation League is devoting significant time and resources to this effort, just as we have for over 100 years with as great an urgency as ever.  We are building coalitions, enlisting support from many people to challenge the hate when it happens, to teach our children to fight bullying, to speak up for our values.  We urge others to join together in this urgent project.