How Should We Deal With High-Profile Anti-Semites?
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
What is the best response to anti-Semitism in America?
Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.com or simply reply to this email.
Conversations of Note
Although I believe we’re living through a period of overzealous speech policing, there are still a few questions I regard as settled, a few associated speech taboos I value, and occasional instances when I believe that a public figure has gone beyond the pale––Roseanne Barr, Ralph Northam, Rush Limbaugh––and that some sort of counterspeech is necessary and desirable.
“For most of my adult life, antisemites—with exceptions like Pat Buchanan and Mel Gibson—have lacked status in America,” Michelle Goldberg writes in her most recent column for The New York Times. “The most virulent antisemites tended to hate Jews from below, blaming them for their own failures and disappointments.” But now, she laments, “anti-Jewish bigotry, or at least tacit approval of anti-Jewish bigotry, is coming from people with serious power,” arguably including a former president.
As Goldberg put it:
There is no excuse for being shocked by anything that Donald Trump does, yet I confess to being astonished that the former president dined last week with one of the country’s most influential white supremacists, a named Nick Fuentes. There’s nothing new about antisemites in Trump’s circle, but they usually try
