 Think, Tech, away. Civil engagement lives here. Bigotry in America. I'm Jay Feidell. It's the one o'clock block on a given Monday, a week after the shooting, the massacre in the temple in Pittsburgh. And we're still reeling from that, and there's so much written about it. And I have Peter Hoffenberg, who is a professor of history at UH Minoa, and a member of the Jewish community who does a lot of thinking about this sort of thing, who is here with us. Thank you so much for coming down, Peter. I would say my pleasure, but I would prefer to talk about Jewish humor, but I'm here. Of course. You call and I come running. Thank you for that. So the first thing we should look at is the Pittsburgh Gazette. I think it is. Yes. And it's a few days after Pittsburgh post-Gazette, and it's got a Hebrew headline, which is interesting, because as in most places, the Jews are a minority in Pittsburgh and somebody put a Hebrew headline there. Right. This was the editor's decision. Yeah. That was a good decision. That's appropriate. I think he's been applauded throughout for doing this. No guns. And not only is it the Kaddish prayer for the dead, and we say it in mourning, but it's actually, when it's translated, it's the celebration of life. So it's actually a very profound front page. More in the dead, but the best thing you can do for them is to engage in life, not retreat. So two things have happened, three things since then. One is a lot has been written about anti-Semitism, about Pittsburgh, about this isolated fellow who got on the gab, the gab site, and so drew his sustenance from it. By the way, it's back on the air, you know. Gab is back. Right. My daddy threw him off, threw the domain off, but they came back on the air, I think, this morning or yesterday. Well, we could also talk about free speech issues. They said that's a win for First Amendment, they said. That's what they said. I like to talk about that. That's one thing. A lot of it had been written. Another is the Jewish people have had a lot of soul searching, if you will, and candlelight, vigils, and you've been to a couple, I'm sure. I didn't make any, but I heard and I got invited to many of them. And I saw the news about many of them. And I guess the third thing is that we have all learned that there's more to this than we thought. Our eyes have been opened to an underlying anti-Semitism in the country and maybe in the world that is very troubling. That's my three things that happened this week. That's a lot. Should we take them one by one? Yeah. So the first one was a lot has been written. Yeah. And a lot has been written from different perspectives. I should say, as I do every time, I'm not an official representative of the Jewish community, as you know, two Jews, three opinions. I can't hold more than three or four at one time. And even though it is my great pleasure and honor to teach my students and work with my colleagues, I don't represent the university. So I'm here as a friend of yours and as a person who's very concerned about these issues, but only representing myself and more than happy to talk to people on email, et cetera. So your first point is really well taken that suddenly for a whole bunch of people, there is anti-Semitism suddenly. Now the Anti-Defamation League has been monitoring anti-Semitic acts for years. They showed an uptick of about 55 to 60 percent. That includes actions not only against humans, but of course against property. And among the most common anti-Semitic acts is to desecrate not only synagogues, but of course in the Jewish tradition, the cemetery. I mean, you move someplace, the first thing you build is a cemetery. So a fair amount. And the literature has been, if we want to talk a little bit about the literature, I would say one, of course, is to try to figure out what motivated this individual and if this individual is representative of himself, a minority, a wider group. And that's of some significance in part because the legal definition of terrorism in this country and the legal definition of terrorism in this country and therefore the resources gone towards acts conceivably identified as terror are external threats, even though disproportionately the number of terrorist attacks have been by white Christian generally males in this country. So there's been a very important debate about how to define terror. Is this legally? Nobody doubts it's a massacre, right? Secondly, I think there's considerable debate about is this an attack on all religions? Is it an attack on a sacred space? Is it the same as other hate crimes? Or as many have argued very coherently and I think very powerfully that it's all of those, but the target targets were Jews and a Jewish institution with somebody who clearly hated Jews and we'll talk a little bit about hatred of Jews and hatred of Judaism because they do overlap. And I think that's been an important discussion. So how to define the acts and how it's connected to other or potentially and that's of significance in that if we just think of this as another hate act, we're essentially erasing Jews from the story and Judaism from the story. It would be as if you lectured about the slave trade and simply said, well, you know, African Americans were slaves as there were slaves in Rome, as there are slaves in Arabia and nobody would really think of that. And here we have to remember the victims were marked as Jews. And then thirdly, I think it's significant as to I'm not going to say moving forward because moving you can't move forward, but what do we do? And I would like to discuss more what we do as a Jewish community. I know people are voting today and I don't really want to get into, you know, I don't I don't either and I don't think people watching care about the concern is personal, but I don't think. But what I've read over the past week is it exists. It's going to continue to exist. There's not a whole lot, you know, that the Jewish people can do to stop this. It's been going on for thousands of years, actually. Well, Robert Wister, who's probably second and third, foremost scholar of anti-Semitism, calls it the longest hatred. Yeah. It's the longest continuous hatred. And the irony of anti-Semitism is you can find it in places where there aren't even Jews, you don't you don't have to have a Jewish. Well, it's old story about the NASA spacecraft that goes up and after six, seven months, they land on a planet which is inhabited and they meet. They meet the extraterrestrial beings and the extraterrestrial beings ask, you know, where are you from and are there any Jews? Yeah. Are you Jewish? So it's extraterrestrial as well as terra firma. Yeah. So I'm happy to talk about any of those things you'd like to. Well, I made a list of the of the of the comes to mind about what Jews, how Jews react to this. OK, one is fear. I'm sure that most, most people, most Jewish people in the country and beyond the country feel fear as they do after events like this in Europe. And I guess that means you know, you're more careful. You don't send your kid out alone. Maybe you don't go to the temple if there's going to be a lot of people there. Maybe you're just more careful and more reserved and fear can be in many ways. I mean, you can you can you can express fear by simply de identifying as they did in the Inquisition, Spain and Portugal. You know, I'm not Jewish or for that matter in Germany, I'm not Jewish. Of course, the more you would de identify, the more the the more the bigot wants to search you out and find, you know, that you had great grandparents who might have been Jewish and come after you for that. But I see as one thing as fear. And I mean, I know you want to tell me, Jay, it's going to be all right. This too shall pass. Why should I not be afraid, Peter? Why should you not be afraid? Well, I think in part because whereas there is anti-Semitism clearly and clearly there are conspiracy theories and there have been attacks. As a couple of scholars have pointed out and I know people may disagree with this, but actually the instruments of the state, the government, the true powers that be are not fundamentally anti-Semitic. It makes a tremendous difference. If you if you look at regimes that have really prospered because their oxygen has been hatred, whether it's racism or anti-Semitism, it is the regime. It's not just society and a majority of Americans do not abide by these principles. We live in an era where just as it is completely inappropriate and unacceptable to use the N word in public, it's just not acceptable anymore. We also live in an era very different than our parents and grandparents, where among most people, explicit anti-Semitic comments are no longer acceptable. We have to reinforce that. Right. I mean, you go back to the famous film like Gentleman's Agreement, for example. Now, I know that there are people watching and listening who will make references about certain political figures. And I'm not excusing certain political figures. You're meaning Trump. Well, I don't really want. I mean, I'm sure today, you know, right. But I'm sure that the audience doesn't want to hear another. And I think that we have an excessive emphasis on him, excessive. But I would say that the powers that be are not fundamentally anti-Semitic. Now, I would say that the powers that be at certain times have made devils packs with certain groups, not to necessarily explicitly support them, but to perhaps turn their eye from certain attacks. That's probably true. But I think if you were to compare communities that are under attack, there are reasons that African-American parents worry about their children getting in a car and driving down the road or Latino parents in L.A. worry about their children getting on their freeway. We haven't reached that point for white Jews. Now, if you were a Latino Jew and you were a black Jew, then then you get more complicated and you are potentially. But I think that the point where Jews need to hide, Jews need to make decisions about not going to synagogue, Jews need to make decisions about wearing a amaka or not in public. Those those are not really in. But that happened in Europe, right? And it was not a Jew who was wearing the amaka. He was testing and he got beat up for wearing a amaka. And then the German community, though, all wore the amaka afterwards. And there are various reasons that people like the French Republic, you know, religion is not a public expression in France. It's supposed to be a secular society. So Jews who determine, say, reform or conservative, determine that they're not going to wear amaka. It's a longstanding Republican tradition. It's not just under threat. So if you ask me, should we not go out? Absolutely not. Should we not go to school? Absolutely not. I personally don't think we should start arming the synagogues. We have we have had policemen or security guards around synagogues for 20 or 25 years. Some synagogues, some synagogues, right? I see no reason to go into hysteria. You know, you mentioned that government is not, you know, anti-Semitic, right? Decisory sinews of government, right? But, you know, there are lots of people out there in varying degrees who are anti-Semitic and sort of like what happened in Yugoslavia, you know, take you take the membrane off and, you know, the historic end that he just pops up at you. And it has to do with people who are disaffected in their lives. So two points I'd like to throw at you. You know, one is this gab, right, dot com site that's now up again. It has 800,000 viewers. It's not a small thing. It's not a bunch of, you know, a bunch of crazies in a small group. It's it's an example of social media getting out there and and cutting a swath in our population. And the other the other thing, you know, I want to mention is that is that this guy, I'm blocking on his name, Richard Bowers, as well as the fellow with the bombs, as well as this fellow, Mike Enoch, who is the subject of one of those articles in the New Yorker a few days ago. They're they're disaffected. They're isolated. They don't have any friends. They're a little off, OK? And they get their what do you want to call it? Social sustenance from social media. And it's hard to count them. I say 800,000 because it was in the paper and surprised me. But it could be that we have a lot more than that and they can be unleashed. What do you call it? Activated, OK, by way of social media and we don't know who they are. They may not know who they are. They may just find themselves drawn to this kind of hate. And it's all by themselves. They don't have any friends who they talk to. They just go to social media. We don't know the intensity of that strata because it's dynamic. Don't you think? Well, did you have a second question? Do you want to do that one first? OK, so that goes back to our conversation about the book Antisemitism, we talked about before with the three open parentheses, the journalists who had discovered this vast, not so underground anymore, social media connection. So let me make a few comments, none of which are very profound, but maybe can lead to more conversation. I would be very hesitant to have any restrictions on free speech by any means at all. I know that there are costs, there have always costs to free speech, but historically, historically, one see the government or a company. And I'm not sure we want the company exercising restriction either. That's usually a slippery slope. And as Europeans say, the sensor always strikes twice. So we may want a sensor and it becomes a very bad precedent to sensor. All right, this is not so dissimilar than crises that have always erupted when some kind of textual or representational technology has taken off the middle of the 19th century. You had to worry about newspapers, right? Should you censor newspapers? Because there were graphic engravings, there was expression in editorials, which could have led to an action, right? OK, so my response to you is that they probably should be monitored. Certainly, folks should know of them, but I am a strong, strong believer and certainly really in an era where the Supreme Court has determined that a corporation has free speech, then certainly individuals have free speech. So that's my immediate response. My concern about identifying them basically as alienated potential mental health issues goes back to my previous discussion about what is a terror attack. So do we understand that a white kid going and sitting with AME parishioners and then murdering them is somehow alienated and disaffected and didn't like his parents, but the Muslim who shoots somebody is motivated by an ideology, right? And we have this and it's built into law. I think they all feel they have an ideology. Right. But usually the white, the white, the response very often to the white is a mental health question, an alienation question. The response usually to a person of color who commits an act, the hideous, horrific act is a terrorist or some kind of ideological background. Now, I'm not trying to make a political point. That's for other people to make. But I'm just trying to see if we're trying to make connections. We might look at the ideological components of all of them and as well. ISIS uses multimedia, right? ISIS uses the web to recruit. ISIS uses the web. So there are a lot more parallels, I think, in overlappings. I'll give you a not very good parallel. But for example, by law, the United States cannot act against what is considered a genocide until it is legally considered a genocide. Who decides that? That's federal law. The government decides who decides what is a state department. The president and Congress decide. And again, no, no cheap point. I'm just saying how important these titles are. A massacre is a horrible thing. It's not a genocide. But does it need to be a genocide for people to help? I don't think so. OK, going into a pizza place, a cafe, a synagogue, a mosque, a 7-Eleven. Look, we had one here. Remember, Xerox, right? The Xerox killings. He was angry at his boss. Right. He may be angry as boss. Who knows what else was going on? Well, mental health as well. OK, yeah, and access to weapons, right. So in other words, I would keep social media up and running, but I would try to monitor what motivates these people. Alienation can also lead you to go to a poetry retreat and into 40 years of silence. So I think alienation does not have to lead to murder, right? I mean, alienation leads to murder when you have the technology to murder people. Very interesting. This raises in my mind a movie that I recently saw about that young fellow in Norway, who he was also disaffected and isolated. And he didn't know what he was doing. Well, but he had some connections to the far right, clearly. Oh, yes, far right. Yeah. And he was trying to save Norway and democracy as he saw it. Right. We're going to take a short break, Peter, but when we come back, I'd like to pursue one thing you mentioned about monitoring, monitoring social media, monitoring the web and whether this is something that maybe the Anti-Defamation League or other Jewish organizations or other individual Jews should be involved in just to be aware and to find out, you know, where the possible violence might come from. We'll be right back after this break and Peter Huffenberg. Aloha, my name is Mark Schlauve. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaii Anna all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Hi, I'm Bill Sharp, host of Asian Review here on Think Tech Hawaii. Join me every Monday afternoon from 5 to 5.30 Hawaii Standard Time for an insightful discussion of Contemporary Asian Affairs. There's so much to discuss and the guests that we have are very, very well informed. Just think we have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. The possibility of Xi Jinping, the leader of China, remaining in power forever. We'll see you then. OK, we're back. We're live with Peter Huffenberg. We're talking about bigotry in America post the Pittsburgh attack, the status of anti-Semitism in America. And the question left hanging before the break is so what exactly can we do to monitor? Because because if I tell you that GAB or any of these other hate organizations, call it free speech, you know, but it's hate, you know, is a gathering place for people like Mike Enoch or Richard Bowers. Then I need to go there. I need to I need to be in that room, too. I need to look and see who's playing, who's who's making outrageous statements. And maybe maybe I should talk to the FBI because they may not be following it. They may not realize it. Can I help them? Should I help them? What do I do to monitor? All right, well, let me give you a slightly different answer. Then I'll get then I'll get right to yours. The best response to bad magic is good magic. And I think that while people complain a lot about social media, they fall very quickly into the trap of coveching and targeting, even if well intended. I think the social media is a tool that well intentioned people need to seize back and to help drown out in social media with more responsible, endearing, well intended. OK, so that's one response, which is I think a very important response because one of the things you asked me to think about is how we should as a Jewish community respond to this. And one of the reasons I thought the cottage was so helpful is it is a celebration of life. You also go to shul, be Jewish, be active on social media, using it for the benefits. I mean, in a way, social media is like one of those medicines which all right, if it's not taken properly, it probably will hurt you, but it's also medicine that could save you. So should I go on? Yeah, should I go on and participate now? Secondly, I give you a there's sort of a legal and a personal response. My personal response is I don't want anything to do with it. I don't want them to have my information. I don't really want to know what they're thinking about. And I don't really want to swim in those piranha waters. Now, he said that personally, I think I would be very surprised if the Anti-Defamation League does not monitor that. I think the government now is a little bit more aware of non-foreign domestic terror acts. And perhaps a lot of these things surprised the FBI and other legal and policing agencies. Not for any nefarious reason, but the focus, the money, etc. has been addressing allegedly foreign, right? And so there's only 24 hours in a day. So I would certainly hope that Congress would increase the funding for not censorship or not time at censorship. And you need if you do need some kind of warrant, if you want to do anything. But at least that people listen. I think that's always a good idea to know what's what's out there. But I vehemently oppose shutting them down vehemently. Remember that fellow in Europe? I'm blocking his name, too. Who was the Nazi hunter? He's his company, his organization. Will Simon Wiesenthal, perhaps? Yeah, Wiesenthal. Right, who passed away several years ago. And he still has. Rabbi Hyer is basically in LA, his successor. Yeah, right. So I think it's interesting to go after Nazis all these years later. But I think it's also interesting, maybe more interesting to go after people who are virulent anti-Semites and maybe organizations like ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center should devote a little time and energy to looking at the web, looking at the dark part of the web and trying to identify who's who. Well, they do. And so does the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Southern Poverty Law Center is involved in anti-Semitic statements. Yes, Morris D's, who founded in the mid 60s. I would not say that anti-Semitism is at the top of their list. They are the one that has consistently monitored hate groups. And among those hate groups, as we know, are those that target Jews. But they target Catholics. Should we leave it to them? Yes, my view is to leave it to people who know what they're doing. Yes. And to remember that as long as we have the Constitution, the way we have the Constitution, people may disagree with it. This society is not geared for preventative measures. So, for example, we know a Nazi committed an act and now we go after. How do you know that Mr. and there are Ms. as well, like the couple that shot the police in Nevada? How do we know that they're going to do anything? We just don't. And our society is geared for response non-prevention, right? I mean, for example, and again, this is just a policy statement, not a moral statement. You know, if you're really worried, for example, about unwed mothers or children, et cetera, then have prophylactic devices available to people, right? But this country would prefer to worry about things afterwards, which is we're not a society and that may be baked into our DNA. You know, that this is a society where freedom seems so important in so many different ways to so many people that they're less inclined. And that's one of the difficulties. I mean, you can't around gun control, certainly gun control. But I think a lot of a lot of issues. I mean, a lot of things that lead to well, slavery was most obvious, right? Not resolving that until 700,000 people were killed. Is it resolved now? No, no. Well, racism is not right. Absolutely not. But I mean, that's a good case of, you know, let's let's see how it plays out rather than let's stop it. And I'm Jewish. I'm at a party here in the Christmas season. I'm going to use the word Christmas to define the season. And I'm sitting at the dinner table and somebody makes a comment about, you know, you know, even even neo-Nazis, you know, there's there's some good neo-Nazis. They're OK. I know some myself, you know, they're all right. Now, what do I do? Do I just do I just cringe inside? Do I lose my dinner? What do I say something? And if I say something, what do I say, Peter? Is the host or not? OK, so check if it's a host or not. All right. And I would prefer to respond to that after drinks, after I had the full meal. But no, I mean, that's that's an absurdity. I mean, there's there are certain absurdities. If you if you march with a tiki torch and deliberately target African Americans in the state of Virginia and say Jews will not replace us. No, there's no good there. There's no good. OK. And that's a position I think is what you do. Get up, leave. Well, my being, you know, myself, I would say something. What would you say? I would say that's that's not true. If you if you embrace neo-Nazism, meaning racism, fascism, terror, I mean, the point is terror. It's a nighttime march. The point was to terrorize people. No, there's nothing good. You know, that's that's the old say that's what George Wallace is saying, right? You know, some of my friends are African Americans, so I'm really a good guy. Would you have an argument? I think it depends upon your relationship. I mean, which is not much of an answer to you, but, you know, you don't want to go home regretting that you had the argument. Well, you know, the thought occurs to me. If somebody said that with me, right, I mean, I'm emotionally involved. Sorry to say I am. Yeah, that's you price. And I would unfriend that person. I would say we're done. I can't tolerate this. I can't tolerate you. I'm sorry. Goodbye. Right. Well, it certainly are some limits. And I think maybe the difference over the last two years has been, as I said at the beginning with gentlemen's agreement and the N word, that we're limits, that we're generally accepted limits. That's what's happened in the past two years or so. There are no limits. It's like the IID, the IID is just all over the place and the ego, the ability to control that. Because look, I mean, nobody, you know, five, six years ago would have had that march in Charlottesville. Now, they have been there have been confrontations. There's certainly been confrontations like that, but not like that. So would I unfriend them? I'm not sure I'd be a dinner with them to begin with. I'd go to a Hanukkah party. But no, I think you're right to say, look, there are certain things that really are beyond. They're just not acceptable. They really are beyond the pale because we're talking about. We're not talking about politics here. In that case, really talking about society. Can you live together? Can your kids go to school together? Can you be on the bus together? You know, and it's probably one of the reasons that people get along in New York because you're in the subway, you know, you got to get along everywhere else. We're in a car and you can be swearing and everything. And there's not that connection. And we had that false connection with social media. Yeah. Last question. Of course, almost out of time. And that is one of the articles that I've seen this week had to do with, you know, the relationship people who feel that who do not understand the Holocaust, they do not understand it, they may know it happened. They may admit it happened. Sometimes they don't even do that. But they don't know the detail. They don't know the enormity of it with people who are more tolerant of neo-Naziism, neo-fascism, how are you? So that calls for education. It calls for education. And is it is it something that a Jewish person should do? Is it something the Jewish community should do to actually educate the public who has, sadly enough, not had a proper education on that subject? The short answer is, of course, yes. The long answer and that we can come back and talk about is whether that really makes a difference or not, right? But certainly having a high school equivalency degree or a college degree and not having a basic two paragraphs about American slavery and a basic two paragraphs about the Holocaust and a basic two paragraphs about Native Americans, yeah, then you're not getting the proper education, but there's not necessarily unqualified evidence that that will then lead to people being more tolerant. Especially it usually doesn't do the reverse though. Education usually doesn't make people less tolerant. It may not change the difficulty, as those three communities know, though, that sometimes education leads to resentment. And you've seen a lot of resentment the last two years. We have nothing to apologize for, but we need to think through how it's presented and the Holocaust is a very difficult proposition because when you teach it, particularly people have no particular connection to it, it's often universalized, so it's like every other genocide. And it's quite often given a Christian narrative. So disproportionate number of students and teachers who went to and visited the U.S. Holocaust Museum on a tour, so presumably they didn't go to every single room, but they went through the official tour. When they had a survey afterwards, a disproportionate number of them thought the best analogy for the European Jews was Jesus, that European Jews had died for a greater reason on a cross, essentially. So to complicate it, you have a classroom curriculum. It probably doesn't lead to less tolerance, but it may lead to universalizing. And by universalizing, you're really not doing anybody a favor. We saw this past week where you could read a lot of well-intentioned pieces and not know that those 11 people were killed because this guy hated Jews. Right? He hated in general. He had guns in general. He was a bigot in general. But you can't erase, you should not erase the fact that this was Jew hatred and because they were in a synagogue, it was probably also hatred of Judaism, not just of Jews. One last thing, I really have to ask you this before we close, and that is make look at camera one over there, camera one right in the middle, right in the middle. That's public, such as it is, that's the public. And I'm just sure there's some Jews out there in the public might be watching this discussion. I mean, if I were a member of that audience, I would I would want to hear what you have to say. But what about the non-Jews, the non-Jews who are watching our discussion? What would you like them to carry away today from this discussion, Peter? Like them to carry away the long history of anti-Semitism. And that has been against both Jews as an ethnic group or a political group and the religion itself, which has always been characterized by a couple of crucial issues, and then we'll call it a day because this is getting late. Everybody who hates Jews has always talked about a conspiracy. So these folks at the Shul were in a conspiracy with the Hebrew Immigration Association to bring in refugees. It's a conspiracy, right? A disproportionate amount of power among a very small group of people. It is extrapolated overseas to be Israel, a small country, regardless of whether you agree with the policies or not, a small country, which is critics are always saying has a disproportionate amount of power in America. So I'd like them to think about the long history. I'd like them to think about the conspiracy aspects, whether it's secular or religious and also that probably in the long history of Judaism and Jews, America is and still continues to be the best place, the easiest, the safest place to be Jewish. And among those reasons are some very important marriages between Jewish values and enduring American values. OK, thank you, Peter. Thank you. Great to have this discussion. Great to have you down here. Any time. My pleasure. There's more. There's more to talk about. We will. Thank you. OK, thank you. Love you.