 We're back with G with Community Matters. I'm Jay Fiedel. This is Think Tech. Today we're drilling down on Black Lives Matter and we're drilling also down more broadly on anti-Semitism in the United States. And so we have Mark Dahlinger. He's an historian in the West Coast and your professor at what school, Mark? I'm Professor of San Francisco State University. I teach in the Department of Jewish Studies. Wonderful. And our old friend Peter Hoffenberg, Professor of History here in Honolulu at UH Manoa. Welcome to you both. So let's talk about Black Lives Matter for a minute. You know, we didn't have a big Black Lives Matter march here in Honolulu. Neither Peter nor I really had the opportunity to attend. But Mark, you were involved at least in some degree. What did you find? Yeah, I got to tell you, both, you know, as a person living through this and as an historian who studies this, it's remarkable. The Black Lives Matter protests are popping up everywhere in the country in places you'd never imagine. It appears to be going without even sort of organized leadership. It's sort of everyone just jumping in for the cause. And when I'm looking at the TV screens, I'm noticing intergenerational, interracial, interfaith. It's a broad-based coalition of folks who are engaged in some really serious and hard-hitting issues around institutional racism. Here where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I went out for a rally. And they're basically sort of, you know, at the red light with the stop signs and the cars and passing out leaflets. And even in a white suburban neighborhood where I am, it was extraordinary, the number of people who showed up. But why? Why were they there? Why was this polyclot group there? It wasn't only because of George Floyd, was it? Yeah, so my sense is we had several factors sort of colliding together. Sadly, of course, George Floyd is not the first black man to be killed by police, nor even the first one to be filmed. I think COVID had a lot to do with this, with the fact that folks are at home. They're reflective. They're thinking about mortality. There's a lot of nerves. I think Trump's America has inspired a whole lot of people to get engaged in political activism. From the immigration protests almost four years ago, the idea that people would leave their house and sort of just go out to the airports and do that. And then the upcoming election, I think, was giving a sense of urgency. So when you put all those together, I think it was the right combination for a transformation in attitude and even thinking about what our attitudes are going to be around these issues. Well, then we had, you know, a kind of strange end to it. I'm not sure you can say it's over, but where, you know, for, she was must have been six weeks in Portland, where there was, you know, First Amendment protest and demonstration. All of a sudden, Trump brought in his brown shirts. And before you know it, there was violence. Now I think they negotiated a settlement between him and either the governor or the mayor of both in Portland. But that changes things, doesn't it? Can you talk about how that may change things for Black Lives Matter, for protests in, you know, in America and as those things may affect the election? Oh yeah, so thank you. It really ups the temperature and the stress and the stakes. Because what we have here to begin with are federal authorities at odds with state and local authorities. And traditionally, historically, when when I study civil rights movements, the only time federal authorities move in against state or local authorities is to preserve and protect equal rights because they perceive that the local authorities are violating them. Now we have a situation where it's inverted, where we have the local officials doing what they can to engage Black Lives Matter in what they think will be responsible and nonviolent. And now we have a federal authority, which is, which is on the opposite side politically, which is now being perceived as an instigator of the greater potential for harm. Because my understanding in Portland, as soon as these sort of unmarked federal agents came out, the number of protests increased and the intensity increased, almost as if that was a provocation. So now we're seeing not only the political, making it political, but we're also seeing a break between federal and local law enforcement. And this, this really makes me nervous. If federal could lead to de facto or the jury martial law, that's what it could lead to. And if it leads to that around the time before during or after the election, we really have a problem in our hands. So Peter, you've been listening, right? How are we doing so far? And what are your thoughts so far in this discussion? Well, my main thought is thanks, Mark, for joining us. And I'm glad. I'm glad we picked on you. Your expertise, not just in Jewish history, but, but civil rights. And the only things I would add, I think, Mark covered it beautifully, is not only is this provoking increased protest, but it's also provoking protest and participation from at least demographically some groups that President Trump would need. So for example, we've seen organized veterans. I think the feds breaking the arm of the Navy veteran will be a memorable moment. The guy who comes up, he's over 50. He's peaceful. He just asked them what they were doing. They pepper spray him. I'm not going to go into bill bars, semantics about what exactly was sprayed, but certainly something that probably is covered by the Geneva Convention. So I would add that you're absolutely right, not just that, in fact, protests have increased by some of the demographics. And I think that the images of mothers and fathers, at least from a European perspective, is very much like the successful campaign against nuclear weapons. That proved to be, at least in Britain, a very successful campaign. And one of the attributes of public protest there was, of course, for moms to get out. And one of the few times, you know, Jewish tradition, if you refer to Hitler, you lose the argument. So let's consider us a conversation, not an argument. One of the few successful expressions of public protest in Germany was, in fact, where the Christian women who had married Jewish men, and they staged a very famous march and forced the authorities for at least that moment to step down. The only other thing I think I would add is that not only are the federal troops attacking protesters, it's quite clear they're also not protecting protesters. Most of the protesters, you and I went to Berkeley. So we know that 98 out of every 100 protesters is just taking a break from studying and it's going to go to top dog. And there are five or six Trotskyites or Leninists, right? We're going to throw a bottle. And that's just the nature of protests. And I was very disappointed to see that, for example, cars are speeding into protesters without any protection for the protesters, that certain, and I guess we should be careful with our terms, but at least say on the right armed protesters are threatening to go. So I see, regardless of your partisanship, I see another argument that there are simply too many guns in America. There are armed Black lives groups. One can't blame them, right? And one of the reasons, as you well know that African Americans supported the Second Amendment during reconstruction was they didn't want the guns only to be in white hands. But the side of African Americans with guns, the side with camouflage white veterans with guns, a guy who shows up with this disabled girlfriend with guns, they're really, it's another example that just too many weapons that are accessible in our society. And that's the kind of militarization I don't think he's been talked about. But society is militarized, not just the government. But thank you, Mark. I mean, I really, we have five or six hours. We're not going to let you go. Yeah, you're definitely, Mark's the guy. Miles to go before we sleep. So he talked about the polyglot nature mark of Black Lives Matter. And, you know, that means, at least theoretically, everybody is under the same tent and all believing in civil rights movement and violence at all. But, but query, is it truly polyglot? Is it truly everybody under the tent? Well, there are contentions there and, you know, groups within that group that are arguing with each other about things. Yeah, thank you. I'd say actually both are true, right, because it is by definition polyglot because Black Lives Matter as a slogan and a larger movement is bringing in lots of different civil rights groups, social justice groups from lots of places, plus a whole lot of individuals who are just getting out to protest on their own. And as is the nature of things, anytime we're going to get a whole lot of people under the same umbrella for any single cause, in this case, racial justice, we are going to see differences of opinion amongst them and between them and lots of conflict going on. Even right now, the Republicans can't figure out their own version of what the next relief bill is going to be. And that's a much smaller group with a much closer ideology. So I am unsurprised that we're going to have dissent. Dissent is, it's healthy, it's democratic. It's also, in my years of studying the left also quite common to have within the left. Well, you know, we had Martin Luther King and others, but especially Martin Luther King who surfaced as the leader of the Black movement at that time and effective while he was living. And I guess the question is, for Black Lives Matter, wouldn't it be better if there was a distinguishable leadership? Because right now, there really isn't. Even the guy who had some participation in creating the movement, he sort of denies that he's the leader. So who's the leader and would it be better if there were a leader? That's a great leadership question. And I actually think movements are more powerful in a strange way if they lack leadership because Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., due to the forcefulness of his personality and leadership was able to galvanize and bring in folks. And while that's great for him, it's a challenge, of course, for the movement after it's a tragic assassination. When you have a movement that's embodying an ideal that so many people from so many places all want and are willing to rally and whether they're moving through the legal process or in the streets protesting is a kind of energy, which is not limited or rooted to a single particular leader as well. Of course, we are going to, and I think this is also generational, I think the generation coming of age now is much more into a leaderless kind of thing. And as I've been watching some of the social protest movements happening among sort of the millennial generation, they're now struggling with the idea that at a certain point you need a leader, you need a focus, you need an actual platform that everybody agrees on, and they're wrestling through the tensions. But as an historian, the idea that we can have a leaderless movement is in and of itself a significant development. And I think in terms of bringing change far more effective in terms of convincing even politicians that this is something they have to pay attention to, because it's not like you can bring someone into the office and try to make a deal with them, to have them tell everybody to pipe down. This is something that is far bigger. But let me throw this at you. This leaderless movement, query whether it's sustainable in the face of resistance, if you will, or attempts to break it up by Trump and his friends and his police. Is it as sustainable as a movement with a leader? Maybe, maybe not. And the other double-edged sword I would bring into the conversation is social media. These days you can't have a social movement without social media. And right now, this moment, Mark Zuckerberg is testifying in Congress today on, or is it tomorrow? Well, it's soon on exactly what his social media does and what their, you know, political direction or their free speech direction is and what their influence is from Trump. These are big questions. And they have two to three billion followers and many of them are in the United States. That's one of the reasons the comment about being leaderless is really less relevant today, because certainly there are leaders on social media. We know that. People who tweet out, regardless of the partisanship or the position, and they are the de facto leaders. So I agree entirely, Mark, that Trump can't call in MLK juniors as Johnson did, okay? But that works both ways. That also works because MLK junior can then go back and say, I didn't get what I wanted and I'm going to, I'm going to march. So I think there are, there are leaders, but our model of leadership is different now. Now, part of the frightening part of that is, as we know from the two extremes, the leaders are invisible to a great degree on the dark web. Many of the people providing information are not recognizable, not public figures per se. So I think there is, there's a certain amount of leadership. As far as the historical comparison and Mark can correct me, but I think one of the major differences between Black Lives Matter as an African American movement and the John Lewis MLK junior generation is the lack of role of the black churches. The black churches played a critical role in civil rights movement. And I think that the leaders were there for now. You can see in the language, the language continues to be the language essentially of African American interpretations of the Bible. The language is there, but the key religious figures. And finally, there were lots of major issues. I think when we talk about competition for leadership, I think if you went back and looked at the comments MLK junior made about Malcolm X and Malcolm X made about MLK junior. You would recognize, as Mark said, don't worry so much about the people marching towards you, look to the left and the right, those are the people you need to to worry about. So the idea that somehow there is an absolute black unity. First of all, that's in a sense a kind of racist comment as if Africans should have more unity than anybody else, which is not true, right. But it's also true that there was no single leader who could speak for the entire movement. And I remember John, John Lewis broke from his allies to become part of MLK juniors movement. So the idea I mean Mark's right and the idea of dissent and disagreement. The left is notorious for it. But the right remember had the tea party tea party draw Boehner from power. So the right has its own, you know, kind of extremist extremist groups. And I think social media though is essential in organizing in warning for both sides right it's like the printing press in the 16th century. Sure you can use a printing press to attack the crown, but the crown could also use the printing press. One of the major differences is the government has censorship power, not legally, but you see that's really what's going on on the hill right is that Congress is passing the buck. And Adam Smith would tell you, you know, don't ask business men to censor themselves. Businessmen have their own, their own interests. And to ask Mark Zuckerberg to censor his social media is really the senators and the Congress saying essentially, we don't really like free speech, but we don't have the colonists to do something about it. So you do something about it. It's another example of failed oversight in a society like asking coal miner, should the coal mine owner determine the health and benefits of the coal mine? No, the government should determine the health and benefits of the coal mine. So I was we have an undereducated, you know, community out there, who is affected by hate speech, and nobody calls it on social media, maybe Twitter to some extent. It doesn't do that. It affects people. It affects people who are undereducated. So what you have, what you have is yes, it's a free for all. And just look at that historically, may I use that term over the past few years. Not with me. Social media has been social media has been a real problem in turning what might be a rational response into an irrational one, because there's so much, you know, I see some of it in my role as a moderator on YouTube. But there's an awful lot of really explicit hate speech out there. And it's anonymous. Now, if we had anonymous kind of, you know, you know, who you're dealing with, that might be better, because that person would know that you know. What defines hate speech? How would you define hate speech? How much time you have. No, I mean, seriously, this is, and this is connected to our issue. Mark and I talked about, you know, Farrakhan and whether or not an African-American athlete can say something on Twitter. You know, Europeans, I was saying, censor strike twice. People are anxious to censor right now. And by censoring right now, you're setting up really bad precedent. Censorship may not be what we're really talking. You I mean, okay, just commenting on it. If Twitter can comment, then so can Mark. That's my view. But let's, let's, let's go to Mark. One thing that Peter said, which was very, very interesting is to point out the distinction between civil rights before black civil rights, which involved the churches. They were a very important part of Martin. He was a minister himself. And now, which they're the kind of accent. What does this mean? How did this happen? Why are they not involved? Oh, first of all, I would, I think that the black church is involved. I think what we're seeing though are two different kinds of movements, one that was much more centered around the black church with clergy and leadership positions like Dr. King, Jesse Jackson and others, even Farrakhan, if you go and Malcolm X, if you go to the nation of Islam. And what we have now is a much more broad based movement, which is expanding beyond the church to include, you know, multi-generational as it's going. I think the fundamental difference between the movement prior to the mid 60s and the movement now, at least for white liberals, has been the shift from legal racism to systemic or extra legal racism. And that is, it's really in a certain as tough as it was in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. years to achieve the goals they did and those who suffered and died for it. All they were trying to do was change a law on the books through the Jim Crow system and they did this in 64 with the Civil Rights Act and in 65 with the Voting Rights Act. And when this happened, we could almost retire the classic interracial interfaith King Heschel marching arm and arm idea. And at this point with the rise of black nationalism, black power movement, and a sense that the much bigger job is ahead, which is how do we deal with the racism interwoven into society. And we'll start with affirmative action, which most of the Jewish organizations in the country supported, but then it got to quote us and busing and this is where white Jewish liberals split and backed off. And then at that point. So we're saying this is a dynamic you mentioned 1964. That was the Mississippi Freedom Rive in which two Jewish young men were killed Goodman and Schwerner gave their gave their lives for the cause. And I would imagine that what you're really saying is at that time, it was a pure support, both ways, you know, black to Jewish and Jewish to black. And after that, well things got more complicated. Can you talk about where it's gone where it is today. Well first I have to go back and say it was still complicated back even in the 1950s and it wasn't actually everybody right. So those Jews that went south for in Freedom Summer and and to register voters are my definition of historical heroes which for me is a person who risks their own power privilege, or even health or life for the benefit of another. There's an irony, which is not an irony if you look at it historically. There's an inverse relationship between level of ritual observance for the Jews who went down and the intensity of their work, which means the Orthodox whom you would imagine would be in the Jewish thing to do were all but absent conservative movement, not much other than Rabbi Heschel and a few others certainly the reform movement of the denominations did best but honestly, and since I have tenure I can and I'm a professor I'll say this, there were Jewish Socialists and Communists out there, and they were radically disproportioned and many of them were anti religion. So we had a situation develop where we had some young activists engaged in righteous work, and a whole lot of northern liberals living in segregated neighborhoods, and homes in school districts without official Jim Crow, who waited until let's say the early 70s before the Christians came home to them. And when they did they discovered they were a lots more lots more similar to the white Southern Jews, who had a similar disposition in the 50s, at least not supporting a public civil rights movement. Very, very interesting. Okay, so let me just add one thing. Go ahead. Two things. Okay. From my perspective right now, and Mark, I'm not disagreeing with you but I think the legal question is a little more complicated, because actually what we've seen over the last 30 or 40 years is a much different strategy. And that strategy is the book the rules and the laws are on the books. Now the tough work is in enforcing and protecting them. And that is still a fundamental issue. So for example, the voting rights bill has not changed, but over 40 years the court has decided to interpret it differently. So one of the continuities I look at would be the work done by African American lawyers, and the work done by the ACLU, which hasn't really changed very much in the sense that we get a law passed, and we need to ensure and if you look at a lot of what is going on. It is an attempt to bypass, dilute, redefine the laws that do exist. So I think actually the problems remain very similar. But to some degree whether or not people have given up because of the attitude that when the law was passed. And that's a very, there's a nice little analogy. Sure, England outlawed the slave trade and the Royal Navy spent the next 40 years rescuing almost half a million people on slave boats. You know the problem is you pass the right laws, you need to ensure they're enforced. And I think that's a great difficulty. And that is where the legacy of Mitch McConnell and the legacy most importantly of Richard Nixon lie in the federal judiciary. And I think that's an important, so I agree with you that some of the issues have changed. But really the fundamental issues. Now, the other fundamental issue is to remove laws that are unfair. And my final point I think would be about the leadership, etc. And I agree you're right that churches as churches, you know, participate. What interests me is the sense of self identification, like in your reference to the Orthodox or the conservatives or reform. Once we ask the question, should I do this because I am Jewish? We're already biasing the answer. And if the question is, should I do this because I am Jewish? You cannot fault the Orthodox. The Orthodox live in their own world. They live separate from the Goyam. It is live. It is separate but equal. It's plus CB Ferguson. The difficulty right is for the reform American Jew. And he or she has to side. Where is Jewishness in that identity. And where's Jewishness in the motivation. So with all due respect, Jay, I would say, you know, I don't put good women and children up necessarily as Jewish heroes. I agree with Mark. They're historical heroes as members of humanity and young members of a generation, regardless of whether. So if we start asking, are you going to do this because you're Jewish? Then we're playing the identity game. Well, I want to go. I want to go to what experience I had this morning. Okay. I went on Google, not to say that Google is to be all and all. And I typed in black lives matter and antisemitism. That those words, that's all. And what I got was with dozens and dozens of pages and millions of hits on that. This is a conversation that is ubiquitous now. And it started, you know, in this great ubiquitousness only a few years ago. And I just like to ask you guys, what's going on? Why is there, why are there claims by the Jewish community that black lives matter is antisemitic? And why is there proof that black lives matter and some of its constituents have made really the most horrendous antisemitic statements, like Jews kill babies. How about that on signs that these protests. Maybe we have one minute, one minute left. Can we schedule this and we do it again. You can't. Well, let me get on with it. So, Mark, what's going on? So I was honored to be on a panel with Eric Ward, the famous civil rights leader just two days ago. And he, and by the way, this is the number one question I get all the time and I loved his answer, the cause of antisemitism is antisemitism. Anywhere it happens, anywhere it happens, the cause of antisemitism is antisemitism. There will be antisemitism in black lives matter, there'll be antisemitism outside of black lives matter. And to have sort of a group libel statement on a slogan, because there are some cases of antisemitism, while accurate on those some cases actually is missing the point of both antisemitism and the anti-racism work. And that apropos of your comment before Jay, some of the attacks on black lives matter are exactly bots and hate speech and unfounded. Oh, that's totally, totally true. Yeah, and it's an. Sorry to see the contentious and I'm very sorry. As historians, I mean, I think I don't want to speak for Mark, but I'm happy to wrestle with it. But the fact that it's out there should suggest to you some kind of political background as well. What do you mean by that? What do you mean by that is it focusing on antisemitism in the black lives matter can be a rational reasonable discussion, just like Mark says, antisemitism in the Democratic Party antisemitism. So those are reasonable, but we have to ask why the focus who's presenting it, what the examples are and it seems to me that it's gone into the rumor and conspiracy mill to undermine a movement and to try to distract from the movement. I mean, it's not there and I'd love to talk to Mark about, you know, where it's there, why it's there. I think Farrakhan plays a significant role historically in the nation of Islam, but not every African American is affiliated with the nation of Islam. Farrakhan doesn't speak for every African. Nobody speaks to every African American. So you could eat just as easily, you know, say antisemitism in X movement, and you have to ask why that's focused. Right. This is such a rich topic, Mark, you want to come back. It is a rich topic and I want to mark it. And the deep part is that the deep part of this is that conversation we're just having right now is actually emblematic of another other conversations around race in America, which is actually what we're talking about, even though we don't think we're talking about it. Yeah, let's let's do this again. Mark, you're willing to come back and we'll do, oh gee, with a half an hour just on this specific topic and I know we won't finish then either. I know that. Well, we could do, you know, we could do race and antisemitism. I mean, I don't think it's important to necessarily target the African American community. I know white whites are allegedly erased and there's plenty of white antisemitism, right. Mark, I want to I want to just offer you the last minute here to sort of summarize your thoughts about what we've been discussing and you know how far we got here. Yeah, so I'm an historian and I'm normally thinking 50 year horizons because I study mostly the 60s with the pandemic we're on a 100 year horizon around racial reckoning we're going back to reconstruction the end of reconstruction in 1877. Maybe the gift as an academic historian in this moment is knowing that we're living history every second we're living it and not understanding what our successors are going to say about us, and what this ultimately means so I'm really curious to see how this all plays out. Yeah, it will play out a little change between the time now and when we meet again things will change. So we'll have plenty of material right Peter. Absolutely I'm going to send Marcus shirt. All right, Mark. What's your favorite color. You're looking good anything like. Well, this is the only J and I recognize each other. Otherwise, you know, would not recognize each other. But Mark, thank you very much. I know it's late in the day there and you're a very busy man so I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much Peter Haufenberg. Thank you, Mark. I really appreciate it.