A wave of anti-Jewish hatred spearheaded by a world-famous rapper, an NBA star and other prominent figures is stoking fears that public figures are normalizing hate and increasing the risk of violence in a country already seeing a sharp rise in anti-Semitism .
US Jewish community leaders and extremism experts were alarmed to see celebrities with massive followings spewing anti-Semitic tropes in ways that had been taboo for decades. Some said it dates back to a darker time in America, when powerful people routinely spread conspiracy theories about Jews with impunity.
Former President Donald Trump hosted a Holocaust-denying white supremacist in Mar-a-Lago. Rapper Ye expressed his love for Adolf Hitler in an interview. Basketball star Kyrie Irving appeared to be promoting an anti-Semitic film on social media. Neo-Nazi trolls urge return to Twitter as new CEO Elon Musk grants ‘amnesty’ to suspended accounts
“These aren’t fringe freaks sending emails from their parents’ garage or jerks no one’s ever heard of. When influential mainstream cultural, political and even sporting icons normalize hate speech, everyone needs to be very concerned,” said Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber, a leader of South Florida’s Jewish community.
Northwestern University history professor Peter Hayes, who specializes in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, said the normalization of anti-Semitism is a “real possibility” if there is “public discussion about things that used to be held in contempt.”
“I’m very concerned about that,” Hayes said. “It’s one of the many ways America needs to get its act together and stop toying with concepts and ideas that are potentially homicidal.”
Trump hosted Ye – the rapper formerly known as Kanye West – and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes for dinner at his Florida home on November 22.
Fuentes was a student at Boston University when he attended a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that erupted in violence in 2017. He became an internet personality who used his platform to spread white racist and anti-Semitic views. Fuentes leads a far-right movement called America First, with supporters known as “Groypers.”
On Thursday, Fuentes appeared alongside Ye on the Infowars show hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Ye praised Hitler during the interview, ramping up the rhetoric that had already cost him a lucrative deal with Adidas.
Jonathan Greenblatt, national director and CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said it was amazing and alarming that two of the nation’s top purveyors of anti-Semitism “broke bread with the former GOP chairman.”
“I would call that the normalization of anti-Semitism. It’s now become part of the political process in a way we’ve never seen before,” Greenblatt said. “And that’s not just for Republicans. It’s not just a Republican issue. It’s a societal problem.”
Most Americans knew it was “beyond the pale” when torch-carrying white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia campus on the eve of the 2017 rally, said Amy Spitalnick, executive director of Integrity First for America, a group filing a lawsuit against supported organizers of the rally in Charlottesville.
“Even more dangerous than Nazis with torches chanting ‘Jews will not replace us,’ is when we have political leaders and others espousing the same conspiracy theories in an increasingly normalized way,” she said.
Spitalnick said the virulent hatred Ye spewed could, in contrast, make watered-down expressions of anti-Semitism appear more normal.
“It is critical that we hold Kanye and Irving and these other public figures accountable for their anti-Semitism. But it means nothing if we don’t also acknowledge and hold accountable the way this anti-Semitism and extremism has entered the mainstream of one of our major political parties and become commonplace in our political discourse,” she said.
Trump’s critics and even some of his allies denounced the former president for harboring Fuentes in Mar-a-Lago. Trump claimed he didn’t know anything about Fuentes before dinner and defended his decision to add Ye to his club.
Twitter suspended Yes’s account this week after he tweeted an image of a swastika merged with the Star of David. Musk tweeted that Ye broke a rule against incitement to violence.
Musk announced last week that his “amnesty” plan applies to accounts that have not “broke the law or engaged in egregious spam.” Online safety experts predict the move will lead to an increase in harassment and hate speech.
Groups that monitor Twitter for racist and anti-Semitic content say toxic language has already increased in the month since Musk took over the platform and laid off thousands of employees. Content moderators were among those who lost their jobs.
Watchdogs have also rebuked Musk for some of his own tweets, including posting a meme featuring Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character kidnapped by far-right extremists.
In April, the Anti-Defamation League announced that its annual number of anti-Semitic incidents reached a record high last year. The organization counted 2,717 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism in 2021, a 34% increase from the previous year and the highest number since the ADL began tracking the events in 1979.
Generations ago, famous Americans, including Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, expressed anti-Semitic sentiments in ways that would have shocked Americans in recent decades. Now the internet and social media are making it easy for world famous celebrities to normalize anti-Jewish hatred.
When someone with Yes status praises Nazis and Hitler, “it escalates from ugliness to sort of incitement,” Greenblatt said. He noted that Jewish institutions are already having to step up security to protect themselves from attacks like the one in which a gunman killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018.
“Our community still has to adjust to the consequences if these ideas go mainstream,” Greenblatt said.
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Associated Press writer Freida Frisaro of Fort Lauderdale, Florida contributed to this report.
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