JEWISH WORLD

By AARON LEIBEL I f you’ve been living in a cave for the past four years, or are one of those incurable cockeyed optimists of South Pacific fame who hasn’t noticed the steep rise in anti-Semitic rhetoric and violence in recent times, this book delivers a wake-up call in the form of a liter- ary smack in the face. This scourge, author Talia Lavin graphically posits in Culture Warlords , is growing, fed by rav- ings on the Internet and embold- ened by the controversial messages of former-U.S. president Donald Trump. A nti-Semites are innately vio- lent. “Everything about them goes back again and again to vio- lence, as a hummingbird to nectar; it is what they crave, it fills them with a fleeting sense of virility and meaning,” Lavin writes. It is the “ideological linchpin” of white supremacy, for white nationalists see Jews as the brains behind the campaign to enslave white people. There also is a definite link between misogyny and radical anti-Semitism, the author notes. Anti-Semites tend to hate inde- pendent women and feminism, but the reverse also is true. “Just as white supremacy leads to misogy- ny, the causal relationship could be reversed. No hate is an island.” What’s most discouraging is the continued proliferation of many fraudulent anti-Semitic screeds. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , which purports to be minutes of a secret Jewish council fixated on world domination, has been shown to be fiction — invented by Tsarist officials in 1903 to discred- it Jews — and has been debunked many times since. But it won’t go away. You still can easily purchase Henry Ford’s 100-year-old anti- Jewish diatribe The International Jew , which along with The Protocols has helped shape “white supremacist ideologies” during the last century “and into the present day,” according to the author. Then there’s the blood libel, the preposterous idea that Jews, for- bidden by Jewish law from con- suming animal blood, use Christian children’s blood to bake matzah. This absurd notion, whose creator apparently knew nothing about Jews or their customs and laws, is still hanging around almost 1,000 years since its inception. Most ironic of all are the pagan anti-Semites. “Jesus was a kike and deserves to be burned,” Lavin quotes one white supremacist as saying online. “Every Bible should be burned.” Another offers: “If he [Jesus] were in Auschwitz, I’d give him a tattoo.” Think about that for a minute. For 2,000 years, Christians have been dis- criminating against, perse- cuting — and even murder- ing — Jews because of Christian ideology: Their belief that Jews killed Jesus and their frustration over their largely unful- filled demand that Jews abandon their religion and become Christians. Now we have a pagan movement which rejects that faith and all it stands for — but enthusi- astically adopts Christianity’s anti- Semitism. A s the author notes, Christian racists have a tradition of anti- Semitism, but “heathen racists must create their own justifications for loathing Jews.” In addition to laying out the bases of modern anti-Semitism, Lavin chronicles her efforts to infiltrate the dark world of hate on the Internet and “out” the haters. She lays out the tremendous efforts she and others have made to discover the real people behind the phony online personas these indi- viduals create to protect themselves from the authorities and deceive their employers, who might fire them if their distressing activities became known, and their neigh- bors, who might shun them. After the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in January, we see that these extremists are a threat to more than just Jews. The man who wore the sweatshirt with “Auschwitz camp staff” emblazoned on the front made clear what his aspirations are toward Jews. But his presence in the mob shows his ambitions go beyond that. We must hope that the authorities in the U.S. and other democracies take that attack and books like Culture Warlords as a wakeup call. Aaron Leibel is a former editor at The Jerusalem Post and Washington Jewish Week. 16 JEWISH WORLD • MARCH 19-25, 2021 White Supremacy On The Internet New book sheds light on the insides of a dark topic She makes tremendous efforts to discover the real people behind online personas these individuals created. BOOK REVIEW Culture Warlords: My journey into the dark web of white supremacy By Talia Lavin (Hachette Books, 2020) 288p., $27 HENRY FORD with a Model T, 1921. One can still easily purchase his century-old diatribe ‘The International Jew.’