Republicans' memory laws against "critical race theory" (their current favorite bogeyman concept and conspiracy theory)

I've been saying that the "critical race theory" (CRT) slogan the Republicans are using as their political battle cry right now, and which they are using to try to ban any mention of white racism from school curriculums, is a code phrase for, "Scary Jews! Scary black people!"

Because that's what it is. The thin conspiracy theory narrative on which it is based blames German Jewish Marxists of 90 years ago for making white people in America have to reconsider their racial attitudes in 2021.

Henry Abramson discusses the impact of the anti-CRT laws Republican legislatures are passing in Banning critical race theory will gut the teaching of Jewish history JTA 07/08/2021:

The bans on teaching with a critical race theory framework aren’t really against history per se, which is in the past and therefore stubbornly resists regulation. Rather, these decrees fall more precisely within the category of what are called “memory laws.” Historian Timothy Snyder described these laws as “government actions designed to guide public interpretation of the past… by asserting a mandatory view of historical events, by forbidding the discussion of historical facts or interpretations or by providing vague guidelines that lead to self-censorship.” [my emphasis]

Abramson argues that the anti-CRT laws are similar to laws currently being used to promote jingoistic, ehnonationalist history by rightwing authoritarian governments, including Vladimir Putin's in Russia:

Putin ... pioneered a new approach to memory laws: Rather than protecting the weak, they also can be weaponized to strengthen the powerful. In the context of Russian history, the counterpart to American slavery is the Holodomor, a terrible famine that killed millions of Ukrainians from 1932-1933. Beginning in 2008, Russia’s Duma assembly passed legislation that forbade the discussion of Russian government policies that contributed to the genocidal nature of the famine, and established entities like the “Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia’s Interests” (an ideological antecedent to the now-defunct 1776 Commission, then President Trump’s last-minute attempt to promote a “pro-American curriculum”).

This is the intellectual home of the CRT bans. They share educational space with Poland’s ridiculous, offensive and dangerous 2018 law that criminalizes the suggestion that Poland bears any responsibility for the crimes committed by the Germans during World War II. The object of Poland’s memory law is not to prevent the resurgence of extremist antisemitism; it is to prevent Poles from confronting the complex legacy of collaboration with the Nazi occupation. [my emphasis]

I posted about Poland's memory laws in The "historical policy" of the ruling Polish rightwing party PiS 07/31/2020, in which I also note Timothy Snyder's phrase for such narrow nationalist approaches to history, "the 'politics of eternity': a displacement of the real challenges of the actual world with a myth of a sacred past that must be protected."

Abramson explains how the Trumpista approach now becoming embedded in state laws by Republican legislatures would affect teaching about anti-Semitism:

Despite the 1776 Commissions promise to “unite, inspire, and ennoble all Americans,” these laws will chill honest engagement with hard truths, forcing teachers to lie to their students, even if only by omission.

Furthermore, anyone teaching Jewish history will be challenged to find a way to present the legacy of antisemitism without running afoul of these regulations. The historical linkage between Catholic theology and the persecution of Jews, for example, is rife with difficult topics. They range from the medieval charges of host desecration and the horrendous blood libel to the pope’s kidnapping of 6-year-old Edgardo Mortara in 1858 (we could, unfortunately, continue at length). Protestants would also be discomfited by Martin Luther’s anti-Jewish screed, “On the Jews and their Lies” (1543). The list of countries where Jews have lived in their diaspora is pretty much identical to the list of countries that have discriminated against Jews. [my emphasis]

Another JTA article (Eleanor Stern, When Holocaust education meets critical race theory: A partisan history debate unfolds in Louisiana 07/07/2021) describes how rightwing Republicans proposed a law that nominally advocated teaching about the Holocaust in Louisiana schools as a stalking-horse for a rather singular view of history:

The Holocaust education bill seemed potentially uncontroversial when Hodges introduced the measure in April. The original text simply called for “instruction regarding World War II and the Holocaust for middle and high school students and training for teachers relative to such instruction.”

Many Jewish groups have called for exactly that kind of requirement, arguing that education is the key to increasing tolerance and preventing genocides in the future. Currently, 17 states require some form of Holocaust education in schools. Louisiana, which one study pegged as having one of the lowest percentages of Holocaust-aware young people in the U.S., is seen as especially in need of similar mandates. The state also recently became the new home of the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, boosting the visibility of Jews in the region.

But as lawmakers held hearings on the bill, it became clear that many of its supporters had a different vision — starting with [Valerie] Hodges, an evangelical ex-missionary and prominent conservative who has served in the Louisiana State Legislature for a decade. Hodges initially accepted, then declined, an interview with JTA.

On her professional Facebook page during the bill’s debate period, Hodges shared an image of Hitler with a caption calling him “everything today’s liberal craves.” Another post compared Nazi Germany to critical race theory and the New York Times’ 1619 Project, writing, “World War II was about RACE, yet liberals objected to it being included in my bill … Hitler had been laying the groundwork for at least 15 years before the Holocaust. It began with the organization of college students who would be the ones to help him implement his reign of horror.”

During hearings, Hodges made her arguments while seated beside David Barton, founder of the Texas-based advocacy group Wallbuilders, which aims to promote the idea that the U.S. is an inherently Christian nation founded on biblical principles. The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies Barton as an “extremist” who is “a key bridge between the mainstream political right and radical-right religious ideology.” [my emphasis]

If you design things around crackpot notions, it shouldn't surprise anyone that results wind up being cracked pottery.

Trump, Henry Ford, and anti-Semitism

Henry Ford was a Nazi sympathizer who wrote a publication called “The International Jew, the World’s Foremost Problem.”

He directly inspired Hitler Youth & said Jews provoke mass violence.

Unsurprising that a man who calls Jews disloyal invokes him. You're both antisemites. https://t.co/U68od9w43c

— Bend the Arc: Jewish Action (@jewishaction) August 21, 2019

Since Trump rarely seems to know much about whatever he's talking about, it's possible that he didn't know about the mutual affinity of Henry Ford and Hitler.

But I'm glad to see this aspect of Ford's story get new attention. Especially since left-leaning commentary sometimes holds Ford up as some kind of a model of good management-labor relations.

Sanjana Karanth discusses it in Trump Invokes Anti-Semite Henry Ford After Accusing Jewish Democrats Of Disloyalty HuffPost 08/21/2019.

Hitler was indeed an admirer of Ford. In his Mein Kampf, he wrote this, quoted here from Hitler, Mein Kampf Eine kritische Edition Bd. 2 (2016), p. 1619:

Er ["Der Jude"] sieht die heutigen europäischen Staaten bereits als willenlose Werkzeuge in seiner Faust, sei es über dem Umweg einer sogenannten westlichen Demokratie oder in der Form der direkten Beherrschung durch russischen Bolschewismus. Aber nicht nur die alte Welt halt er so umgarnt, sondern auch der neuen droht das gleiche Schicksal. Juden sind die Regenten der Börsenkräfte der amerikanischen Union. Jedes Jahr lagt sie mehr zum Kontrollherrn der Arbeitskraft eines Einhundertzwanzig-Millionen-Volkes aufsteigen; ein einziger Großer, Ford, steht auch heute noch, zu ihrem Zorne, unabhängig da.

[He ["The Jew"] already sees today's European states as unwilling tools in his fist, whether through the detour of a so-called Western democracy or in the form of direct domination by Russian Bolshevism. But not only does he keep the Old World so encircled, but also the New one is threatened by the same fate. Jews are the regents of the stock-exchange forces of the American Union. Each year it has become more of a master of the labor power of a 120 million strong people; a single great man, Ford, still stands independent, infuriating them {Jews}.] {my emphasis}

(The translations from German in this post are mine.)

The editors include this commentary in a footnote (paragraph breaks added; German original not shown here):

Hitler's admiration for the American industrialist Henry Ford went back to the series of anti-Semitic articles that Ford published in his weekly Dearborn Independent in 1920 and subsequently published a selection of them as a book titled The International Jew. The pamphlet appeared in German in 1921 under the Titel Der internationale Jude and was warmly received by the völkisch rightwing; it was no coincidence that it was also to be found on a list of reading recommendations for new members of the NSDAP [Nazi Party]. However, the book was not above doubt in the party.

Thus Joseph Goebbels drew a very ambivalent conclusion in his diary on 04/08/1924. Although he regarded Ford's work as "exceptionally interesting and salutary" and illuminating on to the "development of the Jewish question in non-German countries." But he cautioned that one should not get "too caught up in the author's tangled reasoning.” He also thought that Ford “really writes a little too pro domo [for himself]. … Peculiar: Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, takes aim at Jewish capitalism. The world really is a big theater.”

For reasons that cannot be clearly ascertained, the mention of Ford was deleted from the text of Mein Kampf from 1931 on and replaced by the vague formulation that a "very few" are standing "independent even still today ". However, that did not entail a definitive aversion against Ford, who on 07/08/1927 had distanced itself from his hate piece in a statement distributed worldwide: On 07/30/1938, Ford was awarded the Eagle Shield of the German Reich for his 75th birthday.

Ford also had the very dubious distinction of published the czarist anti-Semitic "class", The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in the US for the first time.

Ford's Anti-Semitism PBS American Experience (n/d; accesssed 08/22/2019):

In 1938, Ford received an award from the Nazi regime called the "Grand Cross of the German Eagle." How do we make sense of this award? What does it mean?

The Germans honor[ed] Ford, we could say, for a couple reasons. For one thing, they're very taken with the whole assembly line technological modernization. The Model T and Volkswagen are sort of similar cars. The idea of the Volkswagen, the people's car, was to be affordable to the average German. It's kind of like the Model T of its day; that the automobile shouldn't just be something for the elite, but it should be a car that the ordinary German could afford. So the Ford Model T and Volkswagen, we might think of as sort of in a similar category.

From the point of view of anti-Semitism, Hitler could look at Ford as somebody who was -- let's call him an age-mate. They were both in the 1920s beginning to write and disseminate information about what they both considered to be this great powerful threat, "the Jew."

And Hitler was very much inspired by Ford's writing. And the idea that this could happen in the United States, I think, was very important to Hitler as well, because as people in the United States were speaking out against Nazism and were using a kind of rhetoric, "Well, it could never happen here," and "We are the bastions of democracy," I think Hitler would have derived a degree of satisfaction to be able to point to Ford as, in a way, just as good an anti-Semite as he was. [my emphasis]

Translation comment: The quote above from the editors of Mein Kampf Eine kritische Edition; names the award "Adlerschild des Deutschen Reiches", which does not translate directly as "Grand Cross". The English-language Wikipedia article on it also translates it as "Eagle Shield of the German Reich".

Pelosi the Super-Speaker and the stumble over Ilhan Omar

Rachael Bade and Mike DeBonis reported on this moment during the Democratic establishment's attempt to discredit Congresswoman Ilhan Omar over her criticism of the Israel lobby. It's a data point that informs the discussion about whether Pelosi is a "master legislator" (a favorite media talking point) or sympathetic to Democratic progressives (‘Like herding cats’: Pelosi struggles to unify Democrats after painful fight over anti-Semitism) Washington Post 03/11/2019:

To me, this is the most telling portion:

During a leadership meeting on Tuesday night, Pelosi grew angry and raised her voice to Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) when Dingell pulled out her phone and read a tweet by Ocasio-Cortez, according to two people who were there and requested anonymity to disclose details of a private meeting.

In the tweet, Ocasio-Cortez defended Omar, her close friend, as Pelosi and her leadership team were readying an initial version of the resolution responding to Omar’s foreign allegiance remark.

In the meeting, Dingell agreed with Ocasio-Cortez’s assessment that House Democrats shouldn’t be focused on rebuking one of their own but should also be calling out homophobia, racism and xenophobia in general. According to the people in the room, Pelosi was offended at the suggestion that Democrats didn’t already stand up against all forms of hate and grew visibly angry.

As it turned out, Dingell wasn’t the only lawmaker who wanted to broaden the scope of the resolution.

The Congressional Black Caucus - furious that their colleagues hadn’t done more to call out racist comments in the past - agreed, as did some of Omar’s liberal colleagues and several Democrats running for president, who took to Twitter and pushed back against Pelosi’s original plan focusing on anti-Semitism alone. A Pelosi spokesman said the speaker supported broadening the language all along.

The Democrats in the House and the Senate have been far too mild in general about calling out racism, Islamophobia, and, yes, anti-Semitism. So far as I can see, Christian fundamentalist groups like John Hagee's Christians United For Israel are the biggest ideological group promoting anti-Semitic attitudes today with their End Times ideology/theology that looks forward to a supposedly divinely ordained mass slaughter of Jews. They are the direct breeding ground for anti-Semitic terrorist violence, although the Chritian Identity ideology is very important on the far right. But Hagee-style fundi Christian Zionists are important and very influential in the Republican Party. The Democrats should be actively challenging ideologies like this. But they are reluctant to take on the Christian Right on anything that might sound vaguely like a "religious" matter.

Pelosi's use of the Ilhan Omar controversy in that matter was an important illustration of how cynical she is willing to be in fighting Democratic progressives. And how willing she is to use very belabored interpretations of their comments to bash them.

"Allegiance" as a club against Democratic progressives, especially Ilhan Omar

Susan Davis reports on the Democratic establishment's effort to brand at least one of its Muslim Members of Congress as anti-Semitic based on their criticism of the Democrats' often extremely one-sided and conservative Israel policies in Democrats Planning Another Public Rebuke Of Rep. Ilhan Omar NPR 3/04/2019.

The fact that there is an Israel lobby is not news. John Mearsheimer's and Stephen Walt's landmark political science study on it, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy was published in 2007, though the reality was well known long before 2007. The most prominent group among that lobby is AIPAC, which tends to support hardline rightwing Israeli government positions. There are more liberal and critical elements of the lobby, like the liberal group J Street, which criticizes some of Israel's democratic deficits and foreign policy positions. And an important part of the lobby also consists for far-right fundamentalists Christians, who support hardline rightwing Israeli governments for their own bizarre mixture of political, theological and even racial motives, i.e., white nationalist fundamentalists often see Israel as a bastion of white supremacy.

See also online: Mearshimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby London Review of Books 28:6 03/23/2006 The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (60-page article) Middle East Policy 13:3 Fall 2006. Former President Jimmy Carter published a critical analysis of problematic Israeli policies in 2006, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. (See Jimmy Carter Defends 'Peace Not Apartheid' NPR 01/25/2007.) The irreversibility of the settlement process has greatly advanced since then. The two-state solution seems now completely impossible for all practical purposes, and Israel does confront the real choice of being a Jewish-majority state or a democracy.

I won't bother here hashing through the truisms that clutter around discussions of the Israel lobby: it's perfectly legitimate for American citizens and politicians to advocate for support for Israel; the US and Israel are countries with some national interests that coincide and others that conflict; anti-Semites criticize Israel, seeking to equate Jews in general with bad poilicies of Israel; some anti-Semites support Israel, notably many of the Christian fundamentalists who do so based on a sick theological construct of apocalyptic Scriptures that looks forward to the day that most Jews of the world will be killed in a massive war; a majority of American Jews (the US is the country in the world with the largest Jewish population numerically) are critical toward many Israeli policies, far more so than conservative Jews or Christian fundamentalists.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is currently a metaphorical punching-bag for Democrats who generally support hardline Israeli policies and who want to pander to Islamophia; Omar is Muslim and wears a hijab headscarf in Congress.

The current Democratic establishment's hostility to Omar is part of their larger freakout over the new strength and Congressional presence of Democratic progressives. I know corporate Dems take any kind of observation that Democratic hostility toward progressives who support programs a majority of not just Democratic voters but the public generally could wind up provoking a full-blown party split. But it could.

As Davis reports:

The latest controversy follows comments Omar made at an event last Wednesday at Busboys and Poets, a politically minded coffee shop and restaurant chain in Washington, D.C., that held a "progressive town hall" with Omar and fellow freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. The duo are the first Muslim women to serve in Congress. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., also attended the town hall.

"I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK to push for allegiance to a foreign country," Omar said at the event. The statement has sparked a furious response from senior Democrats and Jewish groups.

Josh Marshall makes what I take to be a good-faith commentary on why Democrats should be especially careful about public references that could be taken to invoke the infamous "dual loyalty" trope. (The Problem with Ilhan Omar TPM 03/03/2019) I wouldn't join his particular criticism of Congresswoman Omar in this situation. Because, as he himself point out in the piece, Americans who are pushing for allegiance to Israel are primarily rightwing Christian fundamentalists, not Jews:

American citizens are entitled to espouse foreign policy views of whatever sort they want. The American Jewish community’s support for Israel has had a decisive impact on US foreign policy toward Israel going back decades. Anyone with the vaguest acquaintance with recent American history knows this. But it is equally true that the anchor of unequivocal US policy support for Israel today and specifically the Israeli right is far more anchored among conservative white evangelical Christians than it is among Jews. As anyone who follows these issues knows, the American Jewish community is increasingly divided over the policies of the rightwing governments which have dominated Israel for the last generation. [my emphasis]

Juan Cole expresses straightforward support for Omar's controversial comments in this case (Israel Lobbies slam Ilhan Omar even as they Try to Bankrupt small Leftist Arkansas Paper over Israel Boycott Informed Comment 03/04/2019):

The Israel lobbies that direct campaign money to representatives and senators insist that Israeli policy of imposing Jim Crow discrimination on Palestinians in the Occupied Territories never be criticized on the floor of Congress. They also insist that the US give Israel, a relatively wealthy country, $3 billion in aid every year on top of other extensive grants and perquisites, despite what the UN says are war crimes committed on a daily or weekly basis. ...

The hypocrisy of her critics on this issue is breathtaking. For nearly a year, Israeli snipers have shot down unarmed, unthreatening peaceful protesters on the Gaza side of the border, which is just murder. Israeli soldiers have killed hundreds this way, including small children, women, medics and journalists, and wounded thousands more with live ammo or military grade tear gas.

Cole includes video of Omar's comments that are at issue, Rep Ilhan Omar Speech about Standing Up for Palestinian lives (video dated 02/27/2019):

It's worth recalling one of the more diplomatically questionable occasions in American history, the time in 2015 Israeli Prime Minister addressed a Joint Session of Congress at the invitation of the then-Republican majority in both Houses, asking them to oppose President Obama's policy on Iran, i.e., the official policy of the US Government, and instead support his own government's position, The Netanyahu speech controversy, explained by Zack Beauchamp Vox 03/03/2015.

While the Democratic establishment panders to Islamophobia to bash Democratic progressives, the dominant narrative of corporate Democrats since the 2016 election is that Donald Trump is in some way working for the interest of the Russian government. They may be correct. But it's pretty severe cognitive dissonance for Democrats to criticize Congresswoman Omar while making a major theme of Trump's compromising links to a foreign government. Here's Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 calling Trump a Putin "puppet," which sounded less persuasive to the average viewer then than it would today. But she is nevertheless accusing him of allegiance to a foreign power. i.e., a much more specific claim than Ilhan Omar's comment for which she's most recently drawing such criticism, Trump to Clinton: 'No, You're the Puppet' Bloomberg Politics 10/19/2016:

American Jewish reaction to Isreali officials supporting Trump against criticism for his promoting anti-Semitism

Allison Kaplan Sommer writes about the significance of the response to Israeli officials to the Pittsburgh massacre last week and how it may shape American Jewish attitudes about the Likud-led government of Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (American Jews May Never Forgive Israel for Its Reaction to the Pittsburgh Massacre Haaretz 11/04/2018):

Over the past week, when American Jews expected comfort and support, Israeli government officials instead offered carefully honed political talking points: It is “unfair” to assign responsibility to the president, they lectured. Trump is the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House, he has Jewish family members therefore, any implication he is either anti-Semitic himself or encourages anti-Semitism with his populist “America First” rhetoric is outrageous. These arguments were inevitabley followed up by the “both sides” defense - that Farrakhan-style leftist anti-Semitism is equally as bad and dangerous as white supremacist Soros-bashing xenophobia.

What Sommer describes is a good example of how narrow or short-term calculations of national interest can potentially compromise broader and more long-term ones:

Not only did Israel’s leaders choose Trump over American Jews, but they did so easily, naturally, without hesitation, leaping to the defense of a political leader who is actively and openly fanning the flames of hatred that now has an unprecedented death toll. That they did this, and did so before the bodies of eleven American Jews: brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, were even buried, was experienced as a stab in the back, which, even if it does heal one day, will leave a scar.

Are Christian Zionists starting to think of Jews as actual human beings now?

I just came across a 2017 article in the very respectable Brown Journal of International Affairs by Tristan Sturm, who makes the argument that over the last 20 years or so, the fundis no longer look at Jews as just bit players in their apocalyptic horror show. ("Christian Zionism as Religious Nationalism Par Excellence," 24:1 2017)

"Christian Zionist eschatology has revised its theology from a functional role for Jews to a discursive set of relations with Jews," Sturm writes.

The general Christian Zionist End Times view includes the variation that before the Jews go to Hail, all the Jews of the world will be slaughtered except for a handful who will convert to Christianity, i.e., stop being Jews. Then Jesus will make his Second Coming.

One thing we can assume with complete assurance is that this worldview is not in any way ”pro-Jewish.“

The Christian Zionist view looks forward to the End Times as a thing to be greatly desired. When you enthusiastically look forward to the world being rid of Jews as the culmination of history, my advice to would be: put down your AR-15, stop daydreaming about doing a rerun of the Pittsburgh massacre last Saturday, lay off the Alex Jones YouTube videos, and for God sakes get some competent psychological counseling! Really, counseling and the right kind of psychotherapy can help with this sort of thing.

I don't buy Sturms's argument yet, although I do recognize that how fundamentalist Christian Zionists read the timeless and "inerrant" prophecies in the Christian Bible does change over time. I think he may be overgeneralizing from the rhetoric of "Jews for Jesus" types and Christian Zionists living in Israel.

He also thinks this shift in their view of Jews relates to the increased popularity of "post-Tribulation Rapture" thinking compared to "pre-Tribulation Rapture." (If you have no idea what that means, count your blessings!)

I like his tag line used in the title that "Christian Zionists practice a form of religious nationalism par excellence." But I don't think he really understands the toxic soup of white racism, Christian nationalism, paranoid thinking, and just plain meanness of so much of the Christian Right.