I AM I AM. YOU WHOEVER THINK Philip Slayton’s warning about the fight against online antisemitism.

Idecided to write a book about antisemitism mostly out of curiosity, to explore a subject I knew little about. In a long career as a law professor, practicing lawyer, and writer, I’d witnessed some antisemitism, and even occasionally experienced mild forms myself, but to me most modern expressions of this ancient prejudice seemed inconsequential and not very interesting.

The fact that I knew little about the subject seemed like a good thing. Perhaps, just perhaps, I could approach this difficult topic largely free from initial judgment and prejudice, without an axe to grind.

In the book I start with the surprisingly complex basics: Who is a Jew? What is antisemitism? Why does it happen? I explain how contemporary identity politics sidelines Jews in favor of other historically oppressed populations.

I describe the very different experiences, in history and today, of Jews in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and America, and the longstanding tensions between Jews and Muslims, and Jews and Christians. I examine the Holocaust, which brought the fight against antisemitism to new heights, and Zionism, which has set the fight back. I ask: Are modern Jews victims or superheroes? I tell of Jews as wanderers (the book is dedicated to “those who wander the world”). And, in the chapter excerpted here, I consider the relationship between Jews and the media. Most people think they know what antisemitism is, but their conviction doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Contemporary definitions—particularly the widely-endorsed 2016 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

(IHRA) “working definition” adopted by the Government of Canada—are weak, grasping unconvincingly for meaning and content, and are formulated principally in a political context to serve a political purpose. These definitions blur important distinctions, confuse issues, and inflame passions, sometimes intentionally. I argue that we need to think differently about antisemitism. We need to discard ideas and attitudes that have been routinely accepted without critical appraisal and have been encouraged by those on both sides of the argument in order to manipulate opinion and politics. We need to quit worrying so much about antisemitism in the form of incivility, conspiracy theories, and Holocaust denial, and concentrate on expressions that are organized, institutionalized, and violent. I try, in my book, to reframe the antisemitism debate.

Acquiring Identity

How a person and a community think of themselves, and how others think of them—the identity they acquire and possess—depends on how they are depicted. There will be competing depictions. A person and a community will describe themselves, but the world will see that as self-serving and apply a big discount. What really counts is what outsiders say. At the end of the day, we do not create our own identity. Others do it for us, directly and indirectly. Our identity is thrust upon us. Alain Finkielkraut quotes Sartre: “It is sufficient that others look at me for me to be what I am.” Or, as the central character in Luigi Pirandello’s play Right You Are (if you think so) puts it, “I am whoever you think I am.” When it comes to describing us and our community, outsiders may be prejudiced, misinformed, and badly motivated, perhaps cynically seeking some kind of strategic advantage. And they may disagree.

We may even disagree, amongst ourselves, about our identity. We may be unsure who we are. Outsiders may be more certain. It’s easier for them. And more fun. Once upon a time, starting in the 15th century, much creation and depiction of identity happened in print— books (particularly novels), pamphlets, then newspapers—and sometimes on the stage. The reach of these media, initially small, quickly became big. By 1500, in Europe, there were printing presses in more than 150 places, and probably at least 13 million books in circulation (Europe then had a population of about 100 million). It is estimated that 200 million books were printed in Europe in the 16th century. This was the beginning of what Benedict Anderson calls “print-capitalism.” Anderson argues that the biggest consequence of print-capitalism was the development of “national print-languages” allowing many people to read the same thing at the same time. Few more important things have happened in history. It made possible “imagined communities” leading to modern nation-states. Thus was born nationalism, a new and potent force. Nationalism begat xenophobia. Nationalism and xenophobia made a particular enemy of the Jews, a displaced people without a country. There was no room for Jews in somebody else’s nation-state. The only solution for Jews was to become nation- alists themselves and acquire their own nation-state. Zionism was the solution. Or so many Jews (not all) thought.

Print-capitalism was an enemy of Jews in another way as well. Newly developing media often depicted Jews in stereotyped, unflattering, hostile, ways, both reflecting and influencing society’s attitudes. Print-capitalism made these depictions widespread and easily available. The most notorious Jew in English literature is Shylock, the money-lender in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (circa 1597).

Shylock does not stand alone as a stereotype. There is Barabas in Christopher Marlowe’s play The Jew of Malta (1590); the pickpocket Fagin in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (1838); Steiner in Rudyard Kipling’s story “Bread Upon the Waters” (1898) (Kipling was a well-known believer in the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion); Anthony Trollope’s Ferdinand Lopez in The Prime Minister (1875); I.Z. Barnett in Hilaire Belloc’s Emmanuel Burden (1904) and subsequent Belloc novels; the financier Simon Rosedale in Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth (1905); and Dr. Gluck in G.K. Chesterton’s The Flying Inn (1914). The list goes on and on and on, over hundreds of years, in tens of thousands of books and plays, in many countries and languages (the examples I give are all from English literature). The nuances are few.

Social Media

Print-capitalism has been replaced by social media capitalism. Traditional media have been crushed; they barely exist. The main means of identity construction and depiction are now social media — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp (both owned by Facebook), TikTok, etc.—all with vast audiences and influence, operating globally and chaotically, transcending national languages (but, interestingly enough, not entirely subverting, sometimes reinforcing, traditional nationalism). Facebook has over three billion users, more than a third of the planet’s population. The New York Times, arguably the world’s pre-eminent English language newspaper, has by comparison a trivial circulation of about eight million, almost all for its digital edition.

Social media has replaced personal contact. Perceptions of identity come from social media posts, not from inter-

WHAT IS ANTISEMITISM?

action with real people. The anthropologist Aomar Boum’s observation about Morocco was that older Moroccans had intimate knowledge of Jews, or received such knowledge from their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, while younger Moroccans have never met a Jew and get their ideas about Jews solely from media. A 2021 survey in Germany found that about half of German citizens say they have never had any contact with Jews or Jewish life. “Close to one in two respondents—46 percent—said they had never had any personal contact with a Jewish person or with Jewish life more broadly, with just 16.6 percent saying that they had Jewish friends or acquaintances… For 55 percent of those surveyed, their perceptions of Jewish life were predominantly shaped by political and historical events. Nearly 20 percent of respondents cited the Nazi Holocaust as their frame of reference, with 14.2 percent

WHY DOES IT HAPPEN?

citing the present rise of antisemitism in Germany and nearly 22 percent citing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. By contrast, just under 12 percent mentioned Jewish contributions to German arts and culture or science as their frame of reference.” A bizarre scheme called “Meet a Jew” was created in 2020 by the Central Council of Jews in Germany. It seeks to introduce Jews to non-Jewish people. The project coordinator says, “It is really important to be visible to achieve the goal of normalcy, so Jewish people aren’t perceived as something unknown or foreign… ” Social media, replacing personal contact, are used to express individual opinion, promote the opinions of others, form groups committed to a particular belief or course of action, and disseminate alleged “facts” and “information.” There is little or no editorial curation of these opinions and assertions, this despite the weak protestations of social media bosses, the invocation by them of fatuous self-invented “community guidelines,” “rules,” and measures to “improve the user experience,” the self-righteous tut-tutting of academic and social commentators, the chest-thumping of confused politicians seeking an issue, and flailing ineffectual government hearings and attempts at regulation. In 2017 Tom Friedman of the New York Times described the Internet as “an open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information.”

Friedman was right then and his description still applies. Absurd and inflammatory views, lies, and abuse, appear on social media and girdle the globe in an instant, pushing opinion this way and that.

Increasingly there are pleas and plans for government to regulate or repress postings of this kind or require that this be done directly by social media platforms themselves. For example, in December 2021 a U.K. parliamentary committee recommended that social media companies “design their systems to identify, limit the spread of, and remove antisemitic material quickly after it is reported.” In 2022 the U.K. government introduced a broad Online Safety Bill (running to several hundred pages) that, among other things, would impose a “duty of care” on tech firms requiring them to protect their users from, for example, racism and sexual exploitation—indeed, anything that is deemed “harmful.” The Canadian government has proposed similar legislation and referred the matter to an advisory panel which was unable to agree even on how to define “online harms,” let alone on how to regulate them.

We should be highly cautious about proposals like these. It is a bad idea to try and censor what some regard as wrong or offensive posts on social media, or ban allegedly egregious individuals or organizations from participating in these platforms. Censorship by government is particularly dangerous, easily used by unscrupulous leaders in pursuit of an unsavoury agenda. The price of freedom of expression, for being able to express your own views, is allowing a platform for the views of others, views that you may consider threatening, untrue or repellent. After all, these other people may regard your views the same way as you regard theirs. The correct response to misinformation is to give facts; the correct reply to a bad argument is a good argument. There are very few justifiable exceptions to freedom of expression on social media. (One is the regulation of bot networks generating mass automatic posts. The aim of such bots is often to subvert free and democratic societies by, for example, tricking voters during an election.)

What if the social media depiction of Jews, the Jewish community, or Jewish affairs, is dangerous, untrue, or repellent? Is that a special case, like bot networks, demanding regulation? In the face of antisemitism, what should prevail, pleas for stringent regulation or appeals for freedom of expression? It helps to consider the kind of antisemitism we are talking about. Most social media antisemitism has lack of civility as its essence. Civility in society is highly desirable, but not essential. Incivility is unpleasant, but seldom dangerous, and will always be with us. Civility should not be enforced at the expense of freedom of expression. It is not the purpose of law to enforce civility; that is a job for civil society, using social pressure. Although, in some circumstances, lack of civility can incite violence, even mass violence. Then the calculus is different. Freedom of expression does not permit incitement to violence. n