The Debate Link

Last month, I read an article in the JTA which described the Nexus Project as having been "launched ... as a progressive alternative to the Anti-Defamation League." I found that description interesting, because as someone who had been involved in Nexus since almost its inception, that is very much not how I would have characterized our origin story. In part that's because Nexus' original contribution was more on the debate over defining antisemitism (with IHRA as the foil -- though even there we did not cast ourselves as anti-IHRA). But also, Nexus' original group contained many people who had past or present affiliations with the ADL -- we had no quarrel with them.

It does seem true, though that Nexus is more and more being seen as a mainstream-liberal alternative to the ADL. This wasn't a niche we really sought out directly. Rather, it was a niche that just sort of developed a vacuum adjacent to us when the ADL decided to self-immolate over the past few years (see, most recently, its self-parodically mealy-mouthed statement on ICE abuses in Minnesota, where it calls for "de-escalation on all sides"). The ADL fell apart, and Nexus just was sort of ... there, and so now all of the sudden Nexus is standing in and occupying the role that the ADL used to stand for in the eyes of the mainstream liberal Jewish community.

This arc for Nexus just became even clearer with the story breaking today that a top ADL antisemitism researcher, Aryeh Tuchman, is decamping to join Nexus' new Center for Antisemitism Research. This is a substantial coup and a major mainstream credibility boost for Nexus. It also, I think, inevitably raises questions about ongoing reports about internal disarray at the ADL, with longstanding staff members departing or looking for the exit based on frustration that senior leadership (particularly Jonathan Greenblatt) have turned the organization away from its core mission in pursuit of right-wing accommodationism.

In fairness, both Nexus and Tuchman take pains not to directly fire upon the ADL.

“If we really wanted to repudiate the ADL, it would be hard to argue that the best way to do that was to hire one of their senior researchers,” said Alan Solow, the chair of the Nexus Project’s board of directors. “Our intent wasn’t to make a statement about the ADL. Our intent was to find the best person in the field to build something new.”

[....] 

“I have great respect for the work that comes out of the ADL and the Center on Extremism,” Tuchman said. “This isn’t about repudiating anything I did there. It’s about an opportunity to ask different kinds of questions and to focus exclusively on research in a way that I hope can move the needle.”

Nonetheless, it's hard not to see this as representing a belief that the work the ADL used to do is work it no longer is doing, and that people who hold affinity for the "old" ADL no longer find the ADL the best place to see those values. For example, Solow does take aim at the ADL's recent pivot away from fighting racism and bigotry generally as part of the campaign against antisemitism -- a major shift in the organization's historical mission that has been extremely controversial:

Solow said Nexus views coalition-building with other groups targeted by discrimination — including organizations fighting racism, Islamophobia and threats to LGBTQ and immigrant rights — as central to combating antisemitism, a strategy he noted the ADL has moved away from in recent years.

“That’s a point of departure between us and ADL,” he said.  

Obviously, there are plenty of people who never liked the ADL to begin with. But amongst the Jewish community, there are a lot more who retain affinity for what the ADL used to be and the role it used to play, who are more and more frustrated that the ADL has -- for whatever reason -- elected to dramatically change direction. Those Jews are looking for something to fill the void. And it looks like Nexus is -- however intentionally (or not) -- setting itself to do it.

I even had the thought that ADL : Nexus :: Twitter/X : BlueSky. If you miss "the old place", come over here! For an organization that I (again, speaking as an insider) often gently made fun of as "the other one" between IHRA and JDA, I have to say I am enjoying this "little engine that could" trajectory we're on. Even as the JDA feels played out, outflanked by even more extreme anti-Zionist critics, here comes Nexus establishing itself as the alternative for very much establishment-aligned Jews who nonetheless feel unrepresented by hidebound legacy organizations who don't realize "Bibi or bust" doesn't even play w/their historic base (let alone the next generation).

For example, few can forget the ADL's fulsome praise when the Trump administration unlawfully seized pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Kahlil and tried to place him in a lawless pit. In terms of values, it was transparently appalling. And yet, as pure, cold-hearted tactical thinking, it was somehow even worse. At a time where antisemitism is at a historic ascendence, the ADL's bold strategic pivot is to cut itself off from its historic allies, abandon its longstanding principles, and proudly declare it's every man for themselves. Can anyone guess why that might not be a winning play for a minority community representing less than 3% of the American population?

The underlying assumption, incredibly, seems to be that the Trump administration will be a reliable and steadfast force against antisemitism (remember: Jonathan Greenblatt fundamentally trusts Donald Trump). Anyone with a pulse could have told you this was a sucker's bet, but somehow the American Jewish community's premier advocacy org went all in on it.

And lo and behold: as explicit right-wing antisemitism continues its rise to dominate mainstream conservative institutions, the brief period where the Trump administration even pretends to care about "fighting antisemitism" is snapping shut in favor of stepping up the xenophobic racism even further. The latest development here is the decision to place travel sanctions on several European-based media monitors combatting hate and misinformation, many of whom cut their teeth fighting antisemitism in cyberspace. Indeed, one of the targets, Imran Ahmed (who actually is an American permanent resident), was most well known for trying to flag instances of left-wing antisemitism. Ironically enough, his lawyers are comparing his case to that of Kahlil -- both unified by the Trump administration targeting immigrants for arbitrary arrest, detention, and deportation on the basis of their speech.

In their complaint, Mr. Ahmed’s lawyers likened his case to those of other foreign nationals who have been targeted, such as Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident whom the Trump administration has sought to deport over his pro-Palestinian comments and activism that the administration equated with “antisemitic hate.”

For his part, Mr. Ahmed has said his organization was founded to look into the growth of antisemitism on the political left. He was among the activists who spoke about how to combat online antisemitism at a 2020 State Department conference during the first Trump administration. 

Who could have predicted that an administration dedicated to empowering racists and bigots of all stripes would use its claimed powers of arbitrary arrest and detention to help racists and bigots? (Everyone. Everyone could). 

And while there is some irony in Ahmed tying his case to Kahlil, the comparison between the two is an apt one. If nothing else it demonstrates that the bedrock motivator for the Trump administration is clearly and obviously not "fighting antisemitism" (or even a highly stipulated and partial "antisemitism" found only among the political left). The unifying thread is a desire to terrorize immigrants and create an open space for racism and White nationalism to spread. There was a brief window where the administration found "antisemitism" a useful fig leaf for its fascism, but that period is most certainly closed, and anyone who was gullible enough to believe it genuine in the first place should have the dignity to hide in shame forever.

But alas, this isn't a purely rhetorical question. Eugene Volokh reported the other day that the ADL has apparently settled a defamation case filed by a conservative activist who claimed that the ADL defamed him by calling him an "extremist" and saying he peddles "antisemitic beliefs" (details of the settlement don't appear public, but apparently the ADL has removed references to this activist from its website).

The ADL's statements are quintessential examples of protected opinion, but the presiding judge, far-right extremist (can I say that?) Reed O'Connor, twisted the law into knots to let the claim survive a motion to dismiss. Presumably reading the writing on the wall (including the fact that any appeals would go up to the equally lawless Fifth Circuit), the ADL elected to settle.

There's been a lot of discussion recently about the ADL's right-ward pivot over the past few years -- Noah Shachtman had a fantastic deep dive in New York Magazine, and I too have offered some of my thoughts. But one aspect that can be overlooked is the incredible pressure the ADL came under in recent years to stop calling out conservative antisemitism -- paradoxically, precisely because ideas once contained to the far-right were increasingly being embraced by "mainstream" conservatives, which (in the eternal-victim mindset of the right) proved that the ADL was "biased".

For a long time, this pressure mostly came in the guise of working the refs -- just repeating, over and over and over again, that the ADL was left-wing and biased and in thrall to the Democratic Party and ever so unfair to the conservative movement. One would never know from these critics that the ADL was facing mounting criticism from liberals (not the left, which always has loathed the ADL, but mainstream progressives who've long made up the ADL's base) for being too solicitous towards conservatives. Still, their efforts yielded results. Fox News parrots right-wing talking points about the ADL promoting "Critical Race Theory"; the ADL quickly promises a "thorough review" to placate them. Elon Musk demands the ADL denounce the anti-apartheid chant "Kill the Boer" (as part of his promotion of the "White genocide" conspiracy); the ADL immediately obliges.

But now, the conservative efforts are pushing past propaganda and into concrete legal action to harass anyone who tries to police conservative antisemitism. The abuse of defamation law (surely, the irony is intentional) is one manifestation. The Twitter/X lawsuit against Media Matters for (accurately) reporting that hateful content was appearing on the platform next to advertiser content -- also a Reed O'Connor special -- is another. And at least adjacent to the point is the threat by the Attorney General of Missouri, Andrew Bailey, to investigate AI chatbots for daring to give Donald Trump low marks on antisemitism -- literally arguing it is a form of fraud and misrepresentation to not give Trump his flowers on the subject. Bailey insists that giving Trump a superior grade on antisemitism is a matter of "objective historical facts," even as less than a third of American Jews approve of Trump's handling of antisemitism and more than half think is personally antisemitic.

So the pressure is very, very real -- which is not at all to justify bending to it, but we need to pay heed to what is actually going on. The right is committed to abusing its legal power to decimate any organization -- absolutely including any Jewish organization -- which dares try to call out conservative antisemitism. This can and should be called what it is: a declaration of war on the Jewish community, and an existential threat to our security and well-being.

Finally, one cannot miss the parallel here between the ADL and the American university -- another institution whose reputation for liberalism was not entirely unearned but certainly greatly exaggerated.  There, as here, venerable American institutions were slammed over and over again with complaints about "bias". There, as here, that decades long rhetorical war has now crested into the most flagrant abuses of authoritarian power we've seen in my lifetime. And there, as here, the attempt to appease the fundamentally authoritarian with humiliating acts of supplication will not work -- they will never trust you, they will always demand more, and you will never be a better fascist than the true believers.

The Israeli government, spearheaded by Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, decided to use this conference as a high profile inauguration of Israel reversing its longstanding boycott of far-right political parties in Europe. Title notwithstanding, Chikli has always evinced pure contempt for diaspora Jews, so it is unsurprising that he'd raise this particular middle finger to Jewish safety around the world.

I first learned about folks pulling out of the conference from David Hirsh's announcement that he was doing so. Hirsh is one of the world's leading scholars on Contemporary Left Antisemitism and an incisive critic of the global BDS movement, so his departure is no small thing. He has been joined by figures including German antisemitism czar Felix Klein, French Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, and British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis.

As of right now, ADL chieftain Jonathan Greenblatt is still on the speakers list, which certainly checks out (the decision to platform the European far-right was harshly criticized by Greenblatt's predecessor, Abe Foxman).

I consider the decision by Hirsh and his colleagues to be a brave and inspired one. The only thing I'll add is that I know Hirsh does not consider this to be an example of "boycotting Israel" and it does a disservice to his record and his choices to present it as such (whether as praise or condemnation). Much like with Natalie Portman, we should respect Hirsh's own understanding of what he's doing -- and what he's doing is not claiming that the mere presence of Israelis or an Israeli connection makes a conference tainted beyond salvation, but rather saying that the particular choices of this particular conference and its particular roster of speakers mean he cannot take the stage. Of course, it's possible to make "particular" choices that are so expansive in who they lock out that they are tantamount to a nationality-based sweep. But that's not what's happening here. 

There is no reason for diaspora Jews to endorse the Israeli government's clear decision that it cares more about allying with Europe's far-right than actually standing with the world's Jewish community, and as immiserating as that choice by Israel is for someone like me, I'm glad people like Hirsh are recognizing it for what it is and are responding accordingly.

UPDATE: Greenblatt has backed out too. Good on him.

I know nothing about Kahlil personally or his involvement in the protests (I've seen differing accounts of his role, but I haven't dug deeper because it honestly doesn't matter right now). And on a moral level, so much of what happened here sickens me. It sickens me that a permanent resident could be summarily snatched from his home and detained in clear retaliation for his expression. It sickens me that Jewish organizations putatively "fighting antisemitism" appeared to have played a direct role in his arrest. It sickens me that the ADL has fulsomely praised the operation, tacitly endorsing draconian anti-immigrant legislation that in a prior life it recognized as "the worst kind of legislation, discriminatory and abusive of American concepts and ideals" (I am heartened that other Jewish groups are speaking out against it). It sickens me to see Trump use the word "shalom" as a taunt. It sickens me to witness people trying to argue that this is ultimately Columbia's fault for not cracking down on the protests more aggressively, as if there is some straight line between potential underenforcment of the student codes of conduct and arbitrary arrest and deportation (news flash: university disciplinary issues -- even if you think they're mishandled -- should not be seen as deportable offenses!). 

And finally, it sickens me to see folks trying to finesse the issue by adopting a "well, let's see what the courts say before we rush to judgment" handwash. Partially, that's a problem because the entire seizure of Kahlil is a sterling example of the Queen of Hearts' justice: "sentence first, verdict later." If you've got Kahlil on a deportable offense, go through the legal process and prove it; don't start with the obviously speech-motivated arrest and then after the fact grope around for some figleaf of a legal justification. Everyone and their mother knows that whatever legal argument gets dredged up will be a pretext; the Trump administration is not remotely hiding the fact that it is targeting Kahlil for his speech.

But the bigger problem with waiting for the process of law to take its course is that I don't think people fully realize what a legal blackhole immigration law truly is.

I am not an immigration lawyer. But I do have some experience with immigration law, mostly during my judicial clerkship. My assessment of immigration law following that year can be summarized in two parts: (1) it was some of the most meaningful and impactful work I did, and (2) I never, ever wanted to be involved in it again. The explanation behind both halves of that equation is one and the same: immigration felt like a lawless pit. Our immigration law and doctrine is supersaturated with opportunities for governmental abuse that is largely immunized from any sort of meaningful review. To anyone with a passing familiarity with this system, it is outlandish to assert that our immigration system is too generous to migrants. Our immigration system is cruel, and arbitrary, and unfair, and in many respects essentially lawless. I was involved with it for a very limited amount of time, and to a very limited extent, and it still traumatized me in ways I continue to feel to this day.

So when I read Steve Vladeck's assessment of actual legal questions surrounding Mahmoud Kahlil's detention, I was not surprised, but I was alarmed. Vladeck does not argue that Kahlil's detention is lawful. But he does think it is not as clearly unlawful as is being asserted. The reason why, to be clear, is not that the Trump administration has some secret reasonable argument that's been occluded by the media firestorm. It's that our immigration law is so stacked with vague and abusive rules and dangerously deferential precedents that even misconduct as egregious as this might not be clearly forbidden. The lawless pit holding Mahmoud Kahlil is not something new. The Trump administration might be more brazen in exploiting these opportunities for abuse, but doctrinally speaking it had many tools lying around waiting to be picked up.

Indeed, one interesting thing about Kahlil's case is that it demonstrates a fascinating and underappreciated bivalence in the political salience of pro-Palestinian advocacy. On the one hand, it is very clear that Kahlil was targeted and made vulnerable by virtue of his pro-Palestinian speech. However, it is also clearly true that Kahlil's situation has mobilized and galvanized popular attention also by virtue of the fact that his case involves pro-Palestinian speech. Kahlil's case more clearly demonstrates both the distinct vulnerability but also the distinct power held by pro-Palestinian advocates I can remember in quite some time.

Again, the core problem of abuse in our immigration system -- the ability to arbitrarily and (functionally) lawlessly detain and deport immigrants for any reason or none at all -- is nothing new. I'm sure immigration activists could hand you hundreds or thousands of comparable stories of lawful residents snatched and detained for the most absurd or malicious of reasons. And while I have little doubt that most persons protesting on Kahlil's behalf would, if you gave them those stories, express genuine outrage over them as well, there's little doubt that the reason this abuse and this outrage captured public attention in the way that it did was because it involves an attempt to suppress pro-Palestinian speech, specifically.

This, to be clear, is not a bad thing. It is a good thing -- anything that encourages people to recognize the wild, lawless abuses latent in our immigration system generally and in the Trump administration's enforcement specifically is a good thing. But it is worth noting the more complex relationship with power that is being demonstrated here. Mahmoud Kahlil's story is about how the Trump administration feels empowered to destroy the lives of pro-Palestinian advocates by any means necessary; it also (sickeningly) is a story about how some Jewish organizations are cheering on the project. But it is also a story about how a connection to Israel/Palestine makes people care about things more often and more intensely than they often otherwise would. That is expression of power, and one that has implications that go well beyond this case.

Shortly before the election, I posted about the alarming fact that (a) Trump seems to admire Hitler and (b) Republicans don't seem to care that Trump admires Hitler. In the course of that post, I asked rhetorically what the ADL's response to this news was going to be, observing that the actual answer appeared to be covering their eyes with a "lalala" see-no-evil approach. This was of a kind with the new direction Jonathan Greenblatt had taken the organization, which was steadfast and resolute in never, ever, giving offense or more than the most mealy-mouthed critique to the American right no matter how open their antisemitism became.

Fast forward a few months and some increasingly pathetic acts of ADL supplication, and we reach inauguration day, where Acting President Elon Musk appears to have given a Nazi stiff-arm salute (the Nazis sure think so). 

Is the ADL on the case? Only if dismissing the case counts!

But of course, none of that matters. The ADL has, over the past few months, made it abundantly clear that it views the American far-right as its friend, and so will extend infinite grace to them no matter how obvious their antisemitism becomes. It's disgusting. It's despicable. It is a grotesque abdication of the ADL's core mission. And the worst part it is, it's no longer even surprising.

I spent today taking care of my newborn, doing my best to keep him fed, warm, and safe. My only thought on the inauguration I wanted to have was that it was a shameful, shameful day. Which it was -- but it didn't occur to me that the ADL would add to that shame. 

Maybe it should have.

What a shameful, shameful display.

It wasn't just my people though. Senate Republicans also seem rather blindsided by the pick:

The selection of Mr. Gaetz blindsided many of Mr. Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill. The announcement was met with immediate and unvarnished skepticism by Republicans in the Senate who will vote on his nomination. Senator Susan Collins of Maine said she was “shocked” by the pick — and predicted a difficult confirmation process.

[....]

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, when asked about Mr. Gaetz’s selection, said, “I don’t know the man other than his public persona.”

Mr. Cornyn said he could not comment on the chances that Mr. Gaetz, or Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, would be confirmed: “I don’t know — we’ll find out.”

“He’s got his work cut out for him,” Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, said as other senators dodged questions from reporters.

Representative Max Miller, Republican of Ohio, told reporters that many members of the G.O.P. conference were shocked at the choice of Mr. Gaetz for attorney general, but mostly thrilled at the prospect that he might no longer be a member of the chamber.

The House, Mr. Miller added, would be a more functional place without Mr. Gaetz.

He predicted a bruising confirmation fight, adding that if the process revealed evidence to corroborate the allegations of sex trafficking against Mr. Gaetz, he would not be surprised if the House moved to expel him, as it did with Representative George Santos. Mr. Santos lost his seat after the Ethics Committee documented violations of the chamber’s rules and evidence of extensive campaign fraud.  

But things aren't all bad. You'll never guessed who raced ahead of the pack to greet Trump's failson pick with open arms:

One of the few lawmakers to offer a positive assessment was a staunch Trump ally, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who called Mr. Gaetz “smart” and “clever” but predicted tough confirmation hearings.

So, how long will it take for the Senate GOP caucus to fall in line? I'm guessing it'll happen before the first confirmation hearing. (That is, if we have confirmation hearings).

Oh, and speaking of organizations that have put their dignity in a lockbox, we did finally learn what bridge is too far for the ADL, which blistered the Gaetz selection because of his "long history of trafficking in antisemitism," including "defending the Great Replacement Theory." How he's distinguished from the ADL's glowingly-praised Elise Stefanik, who also promoted Great Replacement Theory, was left unsaid.

* Gaetz hastily resigned his seat following the announcement, also getting ahead of a planned House Ethics Committee report that was set to issue findings on Gaetz's myriad, er, "controversies" -- including allegations of sex trafficking minors. Score one for QAnon!

But of course, that's the short answer for a lot of people.

Nonetheless, I know more about the Jewish situation, so here's my best assessment of what the near-future will look like for Jews. I'll start with Israel (since, contrary to what some would have you believe, Israel contains many Jews and its future is relevant to discussions about Jews), and then shift over to the American Jewish community.

With Israel, the chalk pick has always been that Trump will allow Israel to do absolutely whatever it wants to Palestinians with gleeful abandon. And, to be sure, there are a lot of good reasons to lay money on that bet. But I think the range of plausible, if not necessarily probable, outcomes are wider than many people realize.

To begin, I think there is a good chance that upon Trump's inauguration Israel does end its war in Gaza (or at least transitions to something that it can say with a half-straight face constitutes ending the war). Trump wants it, and getting it might (fairly or not) instantly solidify the significant inroads Trump made amongst Muslim voters this election.

The real question is whether Bibi will give it to him. The answer to that question, as to literally every decision Israel has made for the past several years, depends entirely on Bibi's craven assessment of his personal self-interest. To that point though, I genuinely believe that Bibi does not care about Gaza. I mean that in the most bloodless way possible -- he does not care if Gaza rebuilds or is razed to the ground, he obviously does not care about Palestinian life, he does not care about some significant security posture, and he certainly does not care about the hostages. If Bibi wanted to, he could declare victory right now. He's not "doing" anything in Gaza anymore (other than killing and immiserating thousands upon thousands of people, of course), there's nothing he's trying to accomplish other than whatever he thinks will save his political skin.

So the question is whether he thinks giving Trump something to crow about will be in his interest. Obviously, I think Bibi benefits in many ways from sucking up to Trump. And because Bibi's supporters (in Israel and abroad) are hacks, dupes, or sycophants, they'll happily agree to any declaration of victory (whereas if something similar occurred under a Biden or Harris administration, they'd be raging about how Israel was "forced" to "surrender" before "the job was completed").

Beyond that, though, things get murkier. Again, the most likely scenario is that Trump lets Israel run riot for four years. But unlike some I never thought this was guaranteed. Trump is a mercurial sort; past alliances are no guarantee of future loyalty. He has certainly noticed that Jews have continued to oppose him despite what he's done for, er, "our country". And he also noticed the spike in support from prominent Arab and Muslim politicians -- there's a reason why Arabs and Muslims, and not Jews, got a positive shoutout in his victory speech. More broadly, the isolationist, nativist, and flat-out antisemitic branch of the Trumpist movement has always been present and continues to grow in influence. J.D. Vance tried to disaggregate abandoning Ukraine from abandoning Israel, but the underlying logic from an isolationist "America First" standpoint is the same. And while obviously there is an ideological affinity between the right-wing authoritarians running Israel and the right-wing authoritarians taking power here, when it comes down to brass tacks doesn't Trump have just as much in common with the murderous religious fanatics in Hamas, or the incompetent kleptocrats of Fatah?

All of which is to say, while I'm skeptical that Trump would go flat-out "pro-Palestine", it is not absolutely inconceivable that if the going ever gets tough he'll leave Israel to twist. It goes without saying, of course, that he'd make this decision for all of the worst reasons -- a mix of antisemitism, isolationism, xenophobia, and good-old-fashioned pettiness. Still, right-wing Jews who voted for Trump because he's "good for Israel" may well be wise to look out for leopards.

So that's my Israel story. What about American Jews? Unsurprisingly, it's going to be if anything even grimmer.

First and foremost, we will continue to see the rise of antisemitic harassment and targeting by a far-right that correctly sees Trump as an avatar and legitimator of their ideology. Antisemitic conspiracies -- regarding "globalists", "cultural Marxists", Soros money, and more -- will gain even more traction in the center of American public life. Bomb threats, vandalism, assaults, and more will remain facts of life for Jews nationwide. Christian dominionism will continue to crest and will continue to isolate and marginalize Jews in public spaces, and the nominal "religious liberty" turn of the Supreme Court will not deign to protect us or even recognize us as real Jews. Orthodox Jews, who have increasingly de facto seceded from the broader American Jewish community, will greet these developments with apathy at best and enthusiasm at worst -- they will happily sacrifice religious equality in the public schools most Jews (but not them) attend if it means more public money funneling into their private religious academies. More and more blatant public antisemitism will be tolerated, mainstreamed, and incorporated into centers of power. Indeed, "far-right antisemitism" will increasingly become an anachronistic term, because it won't be "far" from anything -- it will be near-and-dear to the epicenter of the Republican Party.

In terms of the left, at one level I think we will for better or worse see a partial ebbing of the centrality of anti-Israel protest as attentions shift and people's priorities turn inward. That said, I think we will still see significant targeting of Jews in "left" spaces -- such as college campuses -- for the simple reason that they are convenient and available targets. A lot of people are very angry, and the actors and institutions they really want to hurt are largely immune and out of reach. Jews are considerably more proximate and considerably more vulnerable, and punching a Jew (metaphorically or occasionally literally) is a lot more satisfying than punching your pillow. Indeed, while various campus protests and movements relating to Israel have had, let's say, a range of approaches towards how they oriented towards their mainline Jewish peers (i.e., those who are by no means Israel über alles but still have significant care and concern for Israel's future and believe in its legitimacy as a Jewish state), I expect over the next several years the center of gravity will shift further away from effective and nuanced organizing that at least conceptually could include mainstream but Israel-critical Jews, and more towards inchoate, exclusionary lashing out. This will be bad, and it will further isolate and alienate young Jews especially at a time when they desperately need solidarity and allyship.

Finally, there is the question of how the Jewish community is positioned to respond to all of this. Here I daresay Jews have never been weaker in our ability to effectively mobilize and defend ourselves in the public square. And on that point my story is one that can largely be told around the current status of the ADL.

In recent years, I've taken to analogizing the ADL to Hobbes' Leviathan: It is the giant, overbearing sovereign that we must nonetheless offer allegiance to because the anarchic alternative is too terrifying. 

Agree or disagree with the normative prescription, we may be about to test my prediction about what the alternative looks like. Because right now, the hegemon is crumbling.

In 2017, the ADL was able to position itself as a central pillar in the resistance to Trumpist predations, a focal point of mobilizing the political agency and priorities of Jews rightly terrified about what Trumpism meant for us and for our friends and neighbors. It certainly cannot do so now, not the least because it suffers from a terminal case of Washington Post syndrome. Jonathan Greenblatt has spent quite a bit of time cozying up to Trump and his cronies, and the effusive welcome he gave to Trump's victory (that saccharine congratulatory message was the last email I got from the ADL before I unsubscribed from their listserv) shows he is ready and eager to comply in advance. Even if it were welcome in the progressive organizing spaces that are going to try to rally against Trump, it's far from clear the ADL is even interested in participating this time. I can't imagine it's going to see a repeat of the donation wave it received after 2016.

Some have chalked up the ADL's position to the increasingly untenable position of the Jewish "center" (in quotes because "center" for Jews is still left-of-center for Americans). Certainly, increased polarization (inside and outside the Jewish world) has placed pressure on legacy mainline institutions. But I think this story gives the ADL too much credit -- it could have pivoted to stick with the Jewish center-of-gravity, it just decided not to. Nothing -- not campus protests, not BDS activism, not "drop the ADL" chants -- forced the ADL to call Elon Musk a modern-day Henry Ford (as a compliment!), and nothing forced them to just be okay with Donald Trump treating Hitler as a fount of inspiration. Its missteps and mistakes are choices, not compulsions.

But here's the thing: if the ADL no longer can serve as the focal point for Jewish self-advocacy, none of its competitors -- from J Street to JFREJ, IfNotNow to Ameinu, JVP to DMFI -- are anywhere close to being able to replace it.

For starters, none of them are comparably resourced. None have the penetration and influence at all levels of American political life that the ADL does (even after everything I said above, if my kid experienced antisemitism at a Portland school, I still have no idea who I'd reach out to other than the local ADL branch). When it comes to the security threats faced by synagogues contemplating another Colleyville, nobody out there can replace what the ADL offers -- and I'm sorry, but if you think the "safety through solidarity" chants are right now an adequate substitute you are divorced from reality.

And even if we could get past that, no other group can come close to claiming to be a comprehensive or umbrella representative of the American Jewish community writ large. An increasingly common critique of the ADL was that it is not truly "representative" of the entirety of the Jewish community because its staunch pro-Israel attitudes necessarily didn't include the anti-Zionist Jewish minority. I'm dubious that any group can truly be uniformly representative; I do think that for many years the ADL was sufficiently tied to the median American Jewish position that it could credibly claim the label. But however far that criticism applies to the ADL (now or throughout history), it applies tenfold to its leftward alternatives, all of which occupy even more partisan, provincial, and particularistic lanes of American Jewish life. That's not a criticism -- it's fine to have a point of view -- it's only to say that these groups necessarily cannot replace the ADL's role as a sufficiently unified voice of the Jewish community writ large. The ADL may or may not at any given point failed to satisfy its mandate of being a broad tent, but there's no disputing that essentially every alternative out there is self-consciously narrower, not broader, in who it purports to speak for.

So what we are looking at over the next several years is an American Jewish community that simultaneously is under unprecedented threat and is wracked by unprecedented internal division. What I expect to see, then, is that a depressingly large proportion of Jewish political action will take the form of fratricidal squabbling and internal jockeying for position. If the suzerain is falling, the border lord upstarts are going to race to annex as much territory as possible.

In fact, not only will Jewish organizations largely end up concentrating on fighting internal political battles, I also expect to see a crabs-in-a-bucket effect where different Jewish factions actively try to sabotage the ability of others to garner external influence. I noticed this a bit in the whirlwind attempt to kneecap Josh Shapiro as a Vice Presidential contender -- an anti-campaign that in its initial manifestation was largely pushed forward by other Jews. This endeavor was nominally justified by  Shapiro's Israel positions, but I don't think that really is the full explanation (in part because Shapiro's record on Israel is, if anything, arguably to the left of Tim Walz's). Rather, the problem was that if Shapiro became the VP nominee, he would immediately be positioned as perhaps the highest-profile emblem of what “Jews” (and Jewish liberals) are, and what they believe, in the public imagination. In a world of identity capitalism, where significant power flows from who is seen as "representing" a group, that possibility threatened the influence of competing factions of Jewish progressives whose views don’t align with Shapiro’s in a way that Walz could not replicate even if Walz’s substantive positions on Israel were materially indistinguishable from Shapiro’s. In short, while a VP candidate with Josh Shapiro's views on Israel would be acceptable to left-wing Jews (and indeed, more or less, that's what we got), a Jewish VP candidate with Josh Shapiro's would be a disaster because those Jews (correctly) understood that Shapiro's elevation would solidify the power of a rival faction internal to the Jewish community.

I expect to see this dynamic to be replicated and proliferated across all areas of Jewish political action. One faction's attempt to document campus antisemitism will be met with another's counter-letter decrying the initiative. Adopting one group's definition of antisemitism will lead to others' furious denouncements and demands to select an alternative. Even as external threats grow ever grimmer, Jews will relentless concentrate on our own internal power plays -- trying to grab space for ourselves and prevent the growth of our rivals.

Now again, maybe you think that the status quo hegemony of the ADL-type organizations was sufficiently awful that this transition is necessary and salutary, notwithstanding the growing pains. I won't argue the point here. But necessary or no, during the anarchic interregnum it's hard to imagine Jews being able to leverage much in the way of political influence. We are weak externally, and we are weak internally, and that is a very scary position to be in no matter how you slice it.

UPDATE: This post was already so long, I forgot one more point that's probably pretty obvious -- the Democratic Party is going to have a nasty fight over Israel in the near future. To some extent it will be about policy, but I think much of it will rhetorically take the form of debates over a tactical blame-game regarding who is responsible for losing the 2024 election. On one side there will be those who say that blind, lockstep support for Bibi's war on Gaza cost Democrats key voting blocs and possibly the election, and that we need to purge the party of people who thought defending genocide was a higher priority than keeping the presidency. On the other side will be those who believe that radical performative edgelording about refusing to commit to opposing an existential threat to American democracy was recklessly irresponsible, and that anybody who indulged in such antics should be shot into the sun as de facto Trumpist collaborators. I don't know who will (or should) win that fight, but it's going to be terrible too.

And precisely because the fight will focus on electoral tactics and not policy, it also is going to primarily end up being about securing factional gains rather than trying to recraft an Israel/Palestine policy that is sensible, broad-based, and genuinely attentive to and protective of the valid interests, fears, and aspirations of Jews/Israelis and Arabs/Palestinians alike. So even to the extent Democrats very much could use a genuine rethinking of our approach to Israel/Palestine -- one that recognizes that we're not going to snuggle Bibi into accepting Palestinian equality without swinging over into treating Jews and Israeli as inhuman invaders who need to be wiped off the map -- I think such efforts will be swamped by factional knife-fighting within the party.

How are Republicans responding to the news? In a variety of ways. Door #1, from the Trump campaign itself, is just to declare it all a lie:

Trump’s campaign categorically denied The Atlantic’s reporting and blamed Harris for encouraging Trump’s assassination. Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesman, said Harris “continues to peddle outright lies and falsehoods that are easily disproven. The fact is that Kamala’s dangerous rhetoric is directly to blame for the multiple assassination attempts against President Trump and she continues to stoke the flames of violence all in the name of politics.”

I actually respect this response the most, since it at least concedes the premise that Trump being pro-Hitler is a bad development that should be shunned. 

Not every Republican agrees. Behind Door #2 is New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who said that Trump supporting Hitler is "baked-in to the vote at this point." In other words, Republicans already had figured Trump was a Hitler supporter and were fine with it. No surprises here.

And then finally, there's Fox News' Brian Kilmeade, who's response was to say "actually, Trump was making a good point!"

On Fox News, anchor Brian Kilmeade said Trump was justifiably frustrated by aides who refused to carry out orders they deemed illegal.

Kilmeade said, “I can absolutely see him go, ‘It’d be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do,’ maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis or whatever.”

"...or whatever," indeed. What sort of president wouldn't want generals who blindly follow executive orders to commit the most horrific atrocities humanity has ever witnessed? (Answer: the sort of president who isn't interested in replicating the most horrific atrocities humanity has ever witnessed).

Meanwhile, yesterday on Bluesky I snarked that I couldn't wait for the inevitable "Jonathan Greenblatt response that contains three paragraphs of effusive praise for Trump’s allyship towards the Jewish community sandwiching a vague gesture that 'this sort of rhetoric isn’t helpful.'" That drew off of this post which observed how Greenblatt's recent treatment of Trump has been defined by a fundamental trust in Trump as a true "ally of the Jews," the commitment to which he regrettably occasionally falls short of realizing.

So was my prediction on Greenblatt's response correct? Answer: We don't know, because as far as I can tell the ADL hasn't issued a statement on this news at all! What a sterling performance by America's preeminent antisemitism watchdog.

Unsurprisingly, these comments were met with outrage by many Jewish institutions and leaders. That's appropriate and well-earned. Donald Trump and the MAGA movement he leads is a menace to the American Jewish community, and Jews have never hesitated to identify it as exactly what it is. But in that context, I have to flag the particular statement by ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt, which stood out for its unimaginable fecklessness, particularly from the putative leading voice against antisemitic hate. Here's what Greenblatt wrote:

Here we go again.

I appreciate that former President Trump called out antisemitism and recognized its historic surge. 

He's right on that. 

But the effect is undermined by then employing numerous antisemitic tropes and anti-Jewish stereotypes — including rampant accusations of dual loyalty.

Preemptively blaming American Jews for your potential election loss does zero to help American Jews. It increases their sense of alienation in a moment of vulnerability when right-wing extremists and left-wing antizionists continually demonize and slander Jews. This is happening on college campuses, in public places, everywhere. There are threats on all sides, period.

Let’s be clear, this speech likely will spark more hostility and further inflame an already bad situation. Calling out hate is important, but I can’t overstate how the message is diluted and damaged when you employ hate to make your point.

What is striking about this is how it bends over backwards to assume Trump is actually an ally of the Jews. He's a good guy! He's our friend! It opens, incredibly enough, by lauding Trump for having "called out antisemitism", and closes by praising him for "calling out hate". The framing is entirely centered around a premise that Trump is trying his level best to help the Jews, but is sadly undercutting his own best efforts by ill-chosen rhetoric or misplaced blame.

This is the theme. His efforts against antisemitism are "undermined" by his antisemitic tropes -- not that his antisemitic tropes are promoting exactly the sort of antisemitism he intends to promote. His setting up Jews to take the blame "does zero to help American Jews" -- again, assuming the goal is to help American Jews and he's failing, not that he's trying to threaten American Jews and succeeding. There's the de rigueur (for Greenblatt) pivot to taking a shot at left-wing antizionists who, whatever their sins, have nothing to do with this conversation. And finally, he concludes by saying that Trump's efforts are "diluted" and "damaged" by his forays into hate -- again, a framing that takes as a given that Trump is intending to be a friend of the Jews but is inexplicably hurting his own cause.

This is a framing I've seen regularly in how Greenblatt talks about Trump's antisemitism (and Elon Musk, for that matter). And it stands in obvious contrast to how he speaks of perceived antisemitism on the left -- say, from campus pro-Palestine encampments -- whom, it should be said, also frame their actions as in pursuit of a broader paradigm of opposing bigotry and inequality, antisemitism included. Needless to say, antizionist protesters accused of antisemitism are not given Trump's courtesy treatment of a compliment sandwich. One cannot imagine Greenblatt opening his remarks about antisemitic invective in collegiate encampments by frontloading his appreciation that they "called out antisemitism." One can scarcely fathom him framing his criticisms of antisemitic tropes or actions in terms of the protesters "undermining" their attempts at showing solidarity with Jews, or "doing zero to help" the Jews on campus, or "diluting" their anti-racist message, or anything else that suggests that the protesters' antisemitism is some sort of accidental stumble at odds with their true intention of being allies of the Jews.

Now one could say that the reason Greenblatt doesn't speak of the campus protesters in those terms is that he does not see any basis to credit their self-avowed bona fides as opponents of antisemitism. They have not earned such trust in the face of their actions. Leave aside whether that's a fair dismissal; leave aside whether he's right in what he adjudges antisemitic at all. The point is that if the defense of Greenblatt not giving the anti-Zionist left praise and gratitude before criticizing their usage of antisemitic tropes is that he does not believe they have earned Jews' trust, then it follows the reason he's so gentle with Donald Trump is that Greenblatt believes Trump is fundamentally trustworthy. I can think of no more damning indictment of his judgment, as a putative leader in the fight against antisemitism, than that. And that colossal failure of judgment is ultimately why Greenblatt has proven himself utterly incapable of effectively rallying against the rapidly rising tide of antisemitism overtaking the American right. 

As an organization, the ADL, I have to reemphasize, has many people doing absolutely invaluable work on antisemitism. They have some incredible staff who are doing amazing things. I still do not see any other group in the American Jewish space capable of replacing what the ADL does for us.

But as the ADL's head, Greenblatt has proven, time and time again, that when it comes to Donald Trump and mainstream conservative antisemitism he cannot rise to the demands of the moment. Ultimately, despite all the evidence, despite all the history, despite all the hatred, Jonathan Greenblatt fundamentally trusts Donald Trump to be a friend of the Jews. So long as he cleaves to that nightmarish delusion, he will never oppose Trump's bigotry with the moral clarity and decisiveness the Jewish people need.

That the ADL has joined this campaign is, at this point, probably overdetermined, given the confluence of:

1. The ADL's general rightward turn on matters relating to Israel and Zionism over the past year;
2. The genuine decay in the campus environment for young American Jews, for which SJP bears more than a share of the responsibility; and
3. The long-standing intense (mutual) loathing between the ADL and SJP, where either one would sell out the constitutional rights of the other for a quarter and give back two dimes in change.

Nonetheless, this call is an obvious flouting of the First Amendment (for public universities) and academic freedom (for privates). As Howard Wasserman puts it, I resent being "[forced] to side with people who want to see me and my family dead," but thanks to DeSantis and the ADL, I'm now in that position.

To be clear: the "material support for terrorism" claim is -- with respect to the evidence presented -- absolutely spurious (FIRE's letter to Florida universities explains why). While the ADL claims to "recognize and support students’ First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, even odious speech," it flags nothing in its letter that goes beyond "odious speech" in support of Hamas. The sole example of alleged "material support" provided by SJP is rhetoric in its toolkit stating:

“We must act as part of this movement. All of our efforts continue the work and resistance of the Palestinians on the ground.” The toolkit refers to the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel as “the resistance.” 

This in no way supports an inference of "material support" under the statute. "Material support" has to include more than just advocacy in support of the terrorist organization or rhetorical claims of alignment -- it must entail things like transfer of funds or the provision of a tangible, material benefit. As the Supreme Court made clear in Humanitarian Law Project v. Holder, as expansive as the "material support" statute may be, the prohibition on providing material support to terrorism nonetheless cannot encompass "a regulation of independent speech ... even if the Government were to show that such speech benefits foreign terrorist organizations." "Material" requires actual materials, not just speech.

Just a few weeks ago, there was a virtual consensus that campus SJP actors were a disreputable fringe that nobody should take seriously (this was how the left justified their complaints that we were paying too much attention to "letters sent from Harvard" -- they conceded the letters were gross, but argued that they represented a piddling and insignificant political faction toiling in deserved marginality. Intentional or not, I appreciated the concession!). Now, thanks to DeSantis and his buddies, the SJP can adopt the far more comfortable mantle of First Amendment martyrs. Of course, if there is evidence of actual "material support" -- SJP funneling funds to Hamas, for example, the ADL should provide it (and I'd add, the proper investigators of such claims are law enforcement officials, not university bureaucrats). But as it is presented here, the effort to ban SJP is nothing more than an effort to ban a noxious organization on the basis of its noxious viewpoint, and one cannot support that and claim to be comporting with either the First Amendment (for public universities) or academic freedom.

The big news flying about the Jewish blogosphere this week was the announcement by the ADL that they were going to resume buying ads on the-website-formerly-known-as-Twitter. This came in the wake of a cavalcade of antisemitic attacks and conspiracy theories, egged on by Elon Musk, that had the ADL as its target.

A lot of people are calling this a "betrayal", which I get, though it's hard for me to associate that word with such a limp and pathetic decision. It'd be like if Liz Cheney announced tomorrow that she was joining the DeSantis campaign -- sure, it'd repudiate what she had staked her reputation on for the past few years, but ultimately she'd be attaching herself to an abject failure for no discernible gain, so it'd be hard to get into too much of a lather about it.

But don't let my glibness detract from the obvious point that the ADL's decision is both stupid and terrible, and yet another instance of Jonathan Greenblatt's infirm leadership scoring completely unforced own-goals at the expense of the ADL's reputation. The, shall we say, inconsistent principles whereby the ADL refuses to take money from an antisemite like Kyrie Irving, but goes out of its way to give money to an antisemite like Elon Musk, is evidence of a ship gone rudderless. And that at this point my reactions are less that of "anger" and more of the "eyeroll" sort is not a sterling argument in favor of the ADL's current direction.

The constant missteps do raise the question of "why"? What is causing the ADL to blunder so regularly? One prospect, raised by Marisa Kabas in MSNBC, is that Greenblatt is trying to appease its "fervently Zionist donors who support Benjamin Netanyahu’s government" at the expense of the broader Jewish community it is tasked with defending. And that explanation got me to thinking -- in all earnestness -- "who are the ADL's donors"?

I'm asking genuinely, because I'm not sure. Certainly, the "rich donors are perverting our leaders' mission to suit their particular interests" is a popular sort of explanation that could explain why the ADL under Greenblatt's watch keeps on doing boneheaded things. But the explanation depends on the actual identity of the ADL's donors (are they "fervent Zionists who support Netanyahu's government"), and that made me realize that I don't have a strong sense about who the ADL's donor base is. Different possibilities render Kabas' explanation more or less plausible. So let's run through some candidates:

(1) No base. It's possible the ADL doesn't have a donor base. Now, to be clear, obviously the ADL gets a lot of money from donors. But it could be that the money is sufficiently distributed across a wide enough range of (relatively) small dollar contributors that there is no single cluster that looms large enough to constitute a "base". Alternatively, even if there are a relatively small number of mega-givers, if that group is itself ideologically diverse enough, then they would seemingly not form a sufficiently cohesive faction to induce the ADL to make political moves in one direction or another. Either way, such a financial set up would make it unlikely that the ADL's policies are largely being driven by the desire to appease a particular donor contingent.

(2) "Fervently right-wing Zionists". Perhaps the ADL's big donors come from the aggressive Zionist right. Obviously, that's a popular explanation for those who've long thought that the ADL is in the tank for right-wing Israeli policies. And certainly, the right-wing Zionist cadre are very much comprised of folks that tend to adore Elon Musk and are indifferent to if not elated by his attacks on the (wrong sort of) Jews. But the problem is that these sorts of donors tend to hate the ADL; they're the sorts who think the ADL has gone off the rails into the realm of "woke" leftism. Even if we imagine the sort of donor who only cares about bolstering support for right-wing Israel policy uber alles, there are other organizations (like ZOA) that are more natural fits.

(3) The corporate world. It's possible that most of the ADL's funding these days comes from various corporate actors -- some perhaps atoning for this or that discrimination disaster, others who see the ADL as a safe place to make a charitable gesture towards justice. Certainly, it seems that the ADL is a sizeable fish in that ecosystem. But if corporate donors are the driving force behind ADL decisionmaking, I don't see the throughline that gets us to "Greenblatt sticks his neck out to help Elon Musk." Corporate America is currently running away from Musk, not towards him, and I'm not seeing much evidence that they have any especial interest in forestalling Twitter withering on the vine.

(4) Middle America. As the quintessential "mainstream" civil rights organization, perhaps the ADL's donor base sits roughly at the midpoint of American political opinion. Two problems here: (1) given ideological polarization (which leads to a bimodal distribution of ideological views), it's not clear there is a large donor base of politically engaged actors sitting right in the middle of American political opinion; and (2) even if there is, it's again far from clear to me that "bailing out Elon Musk" is high on their priority list.

(5) The median Jew. Maybe the bulk of the ADL's donors sit, not at the center of American political opinion, but at the center of Jewish political opinion (a "center" which, of course, rests well to the left of American political opinion writ large, albeit falling more in the territory of "mainstream Democrat" than "raging socialist"). It certainly seems as if some of the anti-ADL antipathy reflects the fact that the ADL adopts views that are broadly popular with the median American Jew as opposed to, say, Mondoweiss. But I also don't see much in the way of evidence that the ADL is responsive to middle-ground American Jewish opinion. And this explanation, even more than "middle America", seems to point away from intervening to save Elon Musk.

(6) PEPpy sorts. "PEP" stands for "progressive except on Palestine", and while I'm not the biggest fan of the term, I'm thinking of groups like DMFI that are generally favorable towards the sort of mainline liberalism the ADL espouses on the domestic front while also being disposed towards defending hawkish Israeli policies towards Palestinians (or at least, ensuring that Israel faces no tangible blowback for implementing them). This seems like the strongest candidate for roughly tracking Kabas' explanation, since unlike the actual "fervent right-wing Zionists" this group is probably positively disposed towards the ADL. That said, leaving aside the evidentiary question of whether this group actually does comprise the ADL's donor base, I'm not convinced that this cadre (particularly right now, in the midst of the democracy protests) actually is all that enamored with the Netanyahu government specifically; nor am I convinced that they harbor any especial love for Elon Musk. So once again, it seems like they make for a poor explainer for why the ADL is behaving as it is.

Ultimately, I don't know who the ADL's main donor base is. But my confusion, and the fact that none of the above possibilities really seems to fit the ADL's recent behavior and place in the political ecosystem, actually makes me feel more confident that the entire premise we're discussing is wrong. The ADL's repeated, colossal errors of judgment -- most recently in crawling back into Elon Musk's bank account -- are not, I think, primarily donor-driven. I don't think these are externally-imposed failures. I think they represent an internal failure of leadership, and one that falls squarely on Jonathan Greenblatt's head. I can't speak to the precise internal dynamics or culture practices that might have gotten the ADL to this point, or whether a change in leadership will suffice to resolve them. But it seems clear right now that the ADL will not right ship unless Jonathan Greenblatt steps down from the helm.

[Image above from Deadline]

The ADL is America's preeminent Jewish civil rights organization.

That position comes with an inevitable share of gripes. Jews who think the ADL is misusing its position. Non-Jews who don't like the idea of a "preeminent Jewish" (or "civil rights") anything. The day where somebody isn't complaining about something the ADL is doing is a day that doesn't end in "y".

That said, the inevitability and ubiquity of complaints faced by the ADL doesn't mean none of them have merit. Moreover, said inevitability and ubiquity doesn't mean there aren't things to be gleaned from patterns -- who is complaining, how they're complaining, and what they're complaining about.

The latest ADL related flare-up came when chieftain Jonathan Greenblatt seemed to laud Elon Musk's potential takeover of Twitter and compared Musk (positively!) to Henry Ford in the process. Using Henry Ford -- one of America's most notorious antisemites -- as a compliment was bad enough. But Musk's prime motivator for buying Twitter, by his own admission, is that he thinks Twitter has been too heavy-handed in "censoring" or tamping down on hate speech on the platform. This flies in the face of the ADL's social media policy, which has been to this point aggressive in demanding that social media platforms do more to combat hateful speech and conspiracies proliferating on their sites. So why on earth would Greenblatt think Musk's purchase of Twitter is a cause for optimism? The impression many got was that, in an effort to curry favor with the right's new fair-haired plutocrat, Greenblatt was selling out his organization's stated committed to fight extremism and hate online. The right-wing loves Musk, so Greenblatt felt obliged to love him too.

Greenblatt has since apologized for the Henry Ford comparison. He also suggested that what he was really doing was "laying down a gauntlet about what we expect Elon Musk to do," which -- talk about don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. Greenblatt was not "laying down a gauntlet," he was very clearly trying to butter up Musk now that Musk has become a right-wing hero. I'd be delighted if he changed course on that. But don't patronize me by pretending you weren't doing what was obvious to all of our eyes.

Again, it must be stressed that Musk has become a right-wing hero because he's sworn to make it easier for the far-right to spread extremism and hate on a major social media platform. The reason this is such a scandal isn't solely or even primarily because of an ill-advised comparison; it is because it seemed as if Greenblatt either no longer had the stomach or no longer had the desire to stand against a truly dangerous development for the safety of Jews online if it meant standing up to a powerful and popular figure on the American right. That failure -- whether of nerve, of will, or of interest -- represents a serious problem for the ADL's credibility.

• In July, Greenblatt retweeted a truly unhinged rant by fringe congressional candidate Brian Robinson accusing several liberal Jewish groups (generally those affiliated with JFREJ) being "LARPers" and otherwise masquerading as Jews. The retweet was eventually removed; and the ADL backtracked by saying that "the RT was not meant to imply agreement with all aspects of the thread" and that "we reject any attacks on the Jewish identity of people we have disagreements with."
• In August, Greenblatt said a cartoon which called out AIPAC for backing Republican insurrectionists was "stoking the flames of antisemitism" (the cartoon in question, which was a mashup of a meme featuring Steve Buscemi and a 1/6 insurrectionist, was certainly a very sharp elbow, but it was not antisemitic -- it hit hard because AIPAC made a morally bankrupt decision which they can be hit hard over).
• Last month, Greenblatt sided with groups attacking the New York Times coverage of educational failures in Orthodox private schools, including suggesting without any evidence that the article might contribute to antisemitic violence against Orthodox Jews.
• Also in September, the ADL agreed to "launch a thorough review" of its educational materials in response to complaints by Fox News -- an organization the ADL has often expressly called out for being prime purveyors of hate and bigotry -- that the organization was "far-left" (other organizations which the ADL deems to be vectors of antisemitic extremism tend not to receive such accommodating responses!).