@joelhs
Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies, Sarah Lawrence College. PhD in Religious Studies, University of Chicago. Globalist elite and Thing-in-Itself-hating Jew. Husband of @petticoatshrink.bsky.social. He/Him/הוא/ער
In the same way blaming Israel solely for the Iran war is a way of offloading responsibility and maintaining belief in the goodness of the US, Tucker Carlson saying Jews want to build the Third Temple allows him to ignore how much more powerful Christian Zionists are. www.haaretz.com/us-news/2026...
Imagine viewing this and concluding that academic Gender Studies is no longer relevant as a field of inquiry.
Tweet from Candace Owens: "Tucker is telling the truth about the Chabad Lubavitch. Read the book “Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition”. Also be reminded that when I discussed the Chabad on Piers Morgan, Jews tried to have me murdered."
I'm fascinated by the idea that there is a link between Chabad and Freud.
"Florida college Republicans group chat reveals racist texts: ‘Avoid the coloreds like the plague’ In leaked chats, students at Florida International University referenced Nazis and made antisemitic and racist remarks"
I feel like if you say "Florida college Republicans group chat," saying that it is racist and antisemitic is somewhat redundant.
"Threats against Americans, especially Jews, skyrocketing since beginning Iran war, nonprofit says" abc7chicago.com/post/threats...
"Deliberately attacking a school or hospital or any other civilian structure would likely be a war crime... If a U.S. role were to be confirmed, the strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. conflicts in the Middle East." www.reuters.com/world/middle...
A lot of pro-Israel people are way too quick to deploy the term "blood libel" in debates about contemporary Israel politics. But if the term is ever appropriate in contemporary Israel politics, it is here. www.haaretz.com/us-news/2026...
Meant to say "outreach," not "outrage." Darn autocorrect.
And I really do not like the fact that we seem to be moving into an era where populist politicians on right and left prove their authenticity by thwarting the cabal of "elites" who supposedly want to take them down, where elites are going to so easily be coded as Jews.
Mamdani obviously upset some Jews (and plenty of non-Jews) through his views on Palestine-Israel, but that was because he had consistent politics on the issue. Upsetting Jews was not an end in and of itself for Mamdani. The fact Platner won't meet with Jewish groups suggests for him it kind of is.
There was MUCH less evidence for antisemitism from Mamdani than there is from Platner, but the fact that some Jews had concerns led Mamdani to do lots of Jewish outrage, meet with Jews, go to synagogues, and such. Platner is notably not doing that.
This is one of the most originary forms of antisemitism, but it will never be recognized as such by this administration’s supposed campaigns against antisemitism.
"Anyone who tells you that the way to fight antisemitism is to stop criticizing Israeli policy, or that the way to enable honest critique of Israel is to simply tolerate the antisemitism... is offering you a false and ultimately cowardly choice." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
In other words, Graham Platner is who you get when you imbibe the Zionist critique of the weakness and passivity of the Diaspora Jewish man, but don't actually like Zionism.
I think this is because these people think the Democratic Party is unmanly and needs to seem manly again, and Diaspora Jewish men represent effeminacy, and in the past they would have rejected this by being Zionists, but this is no longer viable in the Democratic Party, so they reject Jews entirely.
Obviously the way in which Tucker Carlson is specifically targeting Chabad is terrifying, but it is also a little bit funny to see Tucker Carlson try to explain Chabad to non-Jewish audiences, the way Orientalists tried to explain Islam after 9/11/01. forward.com/fast-forward...
Wrote about the difficult task of sorting through legitimate criticism of Israel versus antisemitism, at a time when both of those seem to be on the rise: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
"I gather that everyone here is 100% certain JD Vance is a racist who hates immigrants.
So, who here actually knew JD Vance's wife is a non-white woman born to immigrants?
And how does that influence your certainty?"
I also have not been able to find any reliable reporting confirming that Platner's wife is Jewish, and if it were, I suspect Jewish media that have covered Platner's links to antisemitism would have mentioned it. So I am skeptical of this unsourced claim.
I actually think Platner is more likely an online edgelord happy to court the far-right to assemble an anti-establishment politics against the center, rather than a committed Nazi. But "I want to f*ck someone from this group, therefore I can't hate this group" has never been a compelling argument.
Great piece!
@joelhs.bsky.social writes:
"What is uncomfortable about this time period is how easily legitimate questions about Israel’s role in stoking this war can slide into conspiracy theories. The lines are not always as easy to maintain as we might like."
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Thank you!
Thank you!
There is no clean solution. But anyone who tells you that the way to fight antisemitism is to stop criticizing Israeli policy, or that the way to enable honest critique of Israel is to simply tolerate the antisemitism that attaches itself to that critique, is offering you a false and ultimately cowardly choice.
This is so good, from @joelhs.bsky.social
The US-Israel relationship is finally facing a reckoning. It doesn’t need to slide into antisemitism
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Thank you!
Tweet from Tucker Carlson: "Could this be a religious war designed to rebuild the Third Temple on the ashes of Al Aqsa? Hope not."
Tucker Carlson is focusing on Jews in this monologue, because he knows that is who his audience wants to blame this stupid war on, but if any group in the US is obsessed with a war to build the Third Temple, it is evangelical Christian Zionists, not Jews.
We've gone from "The US needs to arm Ukraine" to "Ukraine needs to arm the US." www.newsweek.com/trump-drones...
There are a lot of legitimate questions to ask about Israel's role in lobbying the US to fight this war in Iran, and also a lot of antisemitic conspiracies about the "Zionist-occupied government" going around. I wrote about sorting through those fuzzy lines here: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Worth noting that US troops have complained about this stupid war being sold to them as part of a Christian Zionist religious plan, so if this is really a Jewish war, as Tucker Carlson believes, someone forgot to tell the US army that. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...
Tweet from Tucker Carlson: "Could this be a religious war designed to rebuild the Third Temple on the ashes of Al Aqsa? Hope not."
This form of anti-Zionism - not all anti-Zionism, but this form - is the anti-imperialism of fools. By absurdly framing this war with Iran as a Jewish religious war, Tucker Carlson gets to offload all responsibility to Israel, and thereby maintain his belief in the moral goodness of the US.