How Not to Fight Antisemitism
Responsa is an editorial column written by members of the Jewish Currents
staff and reflects a collective discussion. This responsa appears in our Spring 2021 issue. Subscribe now to receive a copy in your mailbox.
IN MAY OF 2020, the Jewish social justice group Bend the Arc partnered with organizers working under the name Jews Against White Nationalism to launch a new website, HowToFightAntisemitism.com. Pointedly borrowing the title of the pundit Bari Weiss’s 2019 book-length jeremiad, which is preoccupied with the specter of left-wing antisemitism, the project was clearly intended to invert a prevalent discourse around antisemitism that had been manufactured by the American Jewish establishment and adopted by the right writ large. By creating “a comprehensive timeline tracking antisemitism from far-right extremists & politicians,” dating back to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, the activists behind HowToFightAntisemitism.com aimed to gather a body of irrefutable evidence in support of a thesis the Jewish left has long advocated—that it is overwhelmingly the right, not the left, where American antisemitism arises, festers, and spreads.