Chaos in the House and Combatting Antisemitism with Yair Rosenberg
TOPICS DISCUSSED
The House Speakership Race Drama
Yair Rosenberg on Antisemitism and Creating Modern Jewish Art
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EPISODE RESOURCES
UPCOMING EVENTS: RepublicEN Webinar: New Year’s Resolution: Making Progress Amidst Division January 12, 2023 at 8 pm ET
McCarthy-backed PAC agrees to not spend in safe GOP open-seat primaries in Speakership concession (The Hill)
Deep Shtetl by Yair Rosenberg - The Atlantic Subscriber Newsletters
TRANSCRIPT
Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics. Hello and welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. We are, of course, talking about the multiple failed attempts to elect a Speaker of the House of Representatives. Then we will share our conversation with Yair Rosenberg, staff writer at The Atlantic, about rising anti-Semitism in the U.S. and around the world. We also invited Yair to talk with us about what's on his mind Outside Politics, so that's how we'll wrap up the show.
Beth [00:00:47] Before we get started, we have a little announcement. As you may know, our show is listener- supported. And the way that Pantsuit Politics is sustainable is through people who support our premium channels where we make a lot of extra content to try to help keep you informed about what's going on all week long. We have decided to up the ante there at the suggestion of a wonderful supporter of the show and executive producer, Catherine Vollmer. She said, "I would really like a book club to go through the January six report because you all are the best people and the kind of people who want to go through every page of the January six report." And we said, "Yes, indeed, let's do that." So throughout the month of January, we are going to read that report together in community and on Wednesdays on our premium show, More to Say, Sarah and I will be together discussing this section that we read. So this is going to start next week. It will continue through Wednesday, February 1st. So we'll have four weeks to deep dive into a very historic document together, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Sarah [00:01:46] Next step, we're going to talk about Kevin McCarthy. We are recording on Thursday, January 5th at about 12:30 Eastern time. That seems important as this is, in some ways, constantly developing and in some ways just Groundhog Day with the same results over and over again. We are, of course, speaking about the election of the speaker of the House. Where we are today is Kevin McCarthy needs to receive 218 votes to become speaker of the House. The Republican Party controls only 222 seats. Kevin McCarthy has lost six consecutive votes for Speaker-- three on Tuesday, three on Wednesday. He's actually lost votes since he started. He started with two or three, now he's down tp two or one. He did successfully win a vote to adjourn on Wednesday night, but that's a pretty hollow victory. And the reporting this morning on Thursday is that they didn't have the votes to adjourn today. So as we're recording, they're still at it.
Beth [00:02:47] And it looks like he anticipates losing a seventh vote for Speaker and I'm not really sure what happens after that. There's a ton of reporting about the concessions that he's offered up to win back some of those votes, but it doesn't sound like he's getting anywhere close to the 16 votes that he needs to be able to secure that to 18.
Sarah [00:03:09] Well, let's talk about some of those concessions so that maybe we can start to piece apart what exactly does this faction of the Republican Party want. So he conceded even further. As you said, according to the reporting, they had started with requiring five votes to force a vote to oust the speaker of the House at any time. Now they've changed the demands. They want just a single member of the House of Representatives at any time to put us back in this doom loop where we're electing a speaker of the House. Now, you found some interesting reporting about the history of this rule, Beth.
Beth [00:03:43] It used to be that a motion to vacate the chair could be made by a single member at any time. But in 2019, newly installed Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, you know what, not anymore. We are going to require either a party leader or a majority vote by one party to force that motion to vacate the chair. And the last time an actual vote was used to vacate the chair, it was 1910. So she was worried about this in 2019, despite it not having happened since 1910. And I think it's pretty easy to trace that to the Tea Party, to everything that unfolded with John Boehner, to how things degraded during the first two years of the Trump administration. You could just see the ball starting to roll in the anti institutionalist direction. And this made sense as a procedural change. It was also reported in that same Washington Post piece that Paul Ryan was worried about this before Nancy Pelosi was worried about it. He said, "I cannot govern with this weapon pointed at me all the time." But the Freedom Caucus refused to budge on this issue with Paul Ryan, and that's why nothing was done during his speakership.
Sarah [00:04:52] So we have a long history of not a single defection from the majority party when voting for the speaker of the House. And we have a long history of having this rule where you could easily remove a speaker of the House. I don't think it's an accident that they went hand in hand for a long time. But you start to see that history shift, like you said, with John Boehner. In 2011, 18 votes went to a candidate other than John Boehner, 2013- 14. Two thousand and fifteen, 28 didn't vote with John Boehner. And then John Boehner was like, you know what, I don't want to deal with you people anymore. I'm out. Then 2017, you had five that went to candidates other than Paul Ryan, and you even saw this with Nancy Pelosi. So, Beth, one of the concerns seems to be the process. Are the rest of the demands by this faction of the Republican Party really driven by policy and legislative priorities?
Beth [00:05:38] I think it's difficult to even call this a faction of the Republican Party. It is a grab bag of people who mostly have petty personal grievances with Kevin McCarthy. It is hard for me to say that out loud because I have many grievances with Kevin McCarthy. And when you start to talk about these folks who are not voting with the majority, it sounds like a defense of Kevin McCarthy, who I do not think should be the speaker of the House and definitely should not be in the line of succession to the presidency. But this group cannot articulate one coherent set of policy objectives, philosophical differences with Kevin McCarthy. When you get down to it, there are a lot of different ideas floating around here about who should be the speaker and why. For the most part, it seems like this group thinks it should just not be Kevin McCarthy, and they are making that point by nominating different people against him on different ballots. So it's hard to call this a negotiation because there is not like one substantive or even a pile of substantive things that need to be negotiated to move folks.
Sarah [00:06:44] Yeah, I'm really struggling with this, not only because there, of course, is no legislative or policy priority on the table. It is all about power sharing and power playing. I mean, they have this demand that only one member can call a vote to vacate the chair, a.k.a. the Speaker of the House. They are very concerned with the Rules Committee. The newest concession is that the Republican leadership would allow this faction to handpick a third of the party's members on the Rules Committee, which is they call it the Speaker's committee. Basically, it sets the agenda for whatever legislation can come before the House of Representatives. And they also want open rules for all major bills, which means they can bring an amendment about whatever they want for as many times as they want and gum up the process. And to me, that's what's so concerning. I think it's easy to tell reporters that this is petty and you just don't like him as a person. I think the reality is that they want to stick a giant tree limb in the gears of the government, and that's why you see a trend. I think it's really difficult. I think that trend also aligns with media changes and both national media and particularly right wing media. But I think this empowerment of the far right wing of the Republican Party is really fueled by this anti-government fervor where people are, like, "we can't govern" because they don't want to govern, they want to shut the federal government down. They do not want to raise the debt ceiling. If there is a policy uniting this faction, I think that's it. I think every single one of this 20 does not want to vote to raise the debt ceiling at all, ever. They don't care about the consequences. And Kevin McCarthy, who I do not like and who I think is lacking in personal integrity, is establishment enough, just enough, that I don't think he'll agree to that. I think maybe that's what's happening all the way in the backrooms that's not getting reported to the reporters, even among all the leaking in the caucus meetings. And I mean, it's so disturbing to me that this faction of the Republican Party continues to be in power. And this is where it gets you, right? What if the House of Representatives just can't come to session? I don't even think they'd be sad about that.
Beth [00:08:55] I think you see more coherence here than I do. I think it is true that many of the 20 would like to see us default on the debt. I don't understand that. And I'm not sure they totally understand the difference between looking at a balanced budget approach versus no new spending versus not lifting the debt ceiling. But those are distinctions that matter significantly that are all kind of being lumped together in some of this conversation. I don't think Matt Gaetz cares about any of that. He has said at some point some reporter that if this all leads to Hakeem Jeffries being the speaker of the House, that's fine with him. And maybe what it is is that he doesn't want to personally vote in favor of lifting the debt ceiling, but he doesn't care if it's lifted. I think there are a group of people somewhere in this 20 for whom this is really about it being entertaining and putting a spotlight on them. And I think those folks have been and will continue to be tools of the people who have real anti-government sentiment that they want to push forward.
Sarah [00:10:04] I think there's another component of this that's worth teasing out a little bit. A lot of the demands are in regards to the power of the leadership. And, look, I don't have a lot of disagreement with the fact that party leadership is incredibly powerful within the House of Representatives. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a very similar critique. And so there's a lot of these demands that speak to that very specific critique that want to weaken leadership. And then you have a lot of reporting on a deal struck between Kevin McCarthy's PAC Congressional Leadership Fund and the Club for Growth. Now, the Club for Growth is an incredibly conservative organization. Their articulated policy goals are cutting income tax rates, repealing the estate tax, supporting limited government, a balanced budget amendment and entitlement reform. Okay. Now, the Club for Growth had been opposed to Kevin McCarthy's election as Speaker of the House, so they struck a deal with his PAC. Now his PAC spent $259 million during the 2022 election cycle. And I think the fundraising prowess of the speaker of the House is not to be sort of neglected in this conversation. I read that Nancy Pelosi raised over $1 billion since entering leadership. So this fundraising is a huge part of this job with enormous power that they can't get to with talking about the Rules Committee. So they got to it through this deal with Club for Growth. And so the deal is that Kevin McCarthy's PAC would not spend any money in an open seat primary in a safe GOP district. And that really struck me. When I first saw this reporting, I assumed that it was a similar debate that happened inside the Democratic Party, where at one point Cheri Bustos was like if you're a consultant and you work against an incumbent in a primary, the fundraising arm of the Democratic House leadership will never pay you again. And there was this debate with AOC and the likes who took out incumbents who were, like, "That's not fair. You shouldn't put your hand on the scale." That's not even this. This is not campaigning against an incumbent. This is we don't want you involved in open primaries at all. And they were talking specifically in the 22 cycle about representative like Morgan Luttrell, who's a representative from Texas. He was backed by McCarthy. He beat several other candidates in the primary for the nomination of Texas eighth Congressional District outside Houston. And I thought, man, you don't even want Kevin McCarthy's power hand on the scale, whatever, in open primaries. To me, that is so dangerous to just further empower these candidates that we have said for years, why doesn't the Republican Party just do something about these candidates, to watch the outcome of the 22 Senate campaign and be like, you know what I think we need, we need less establishment spending in primaries, just boggles the mind.
Beth [00:12:54] Well, as we are sitting here recording, I am watching Olivia Beavers tweet what's happening on the floor. She's a Politico reporter who we've had on the show before and have a lot of respect for. And already Kevin McCarthy has lost so many votes that he will lose on the seventh ballot. But this time, a difference is that Matt Gaetz has nominated Trump for Speaker of the House.
Sarah [00:13:13] Beautiful. Love it.
Beth [00:13:14] That, to me, furthers the point that a lot of this is about the show that's entertaining, that's new news, that makes it not just another seventh vote, right? It's something new to report on, it's something new to talk to media outlets about. And I do think that that is where a lot of this motivation comes from.
Sarah [00:13:32] I don't know. I don't know if they're clowns playing with fire, not understanding that they could get burned or if they're ideologues playing with fire because they want to burn it all down. I'm just not sure.
Beth [00:13:42] I think it's both. I just don't think they're in tension with each other. I think the problem is that they work cooperatively together. Here is a thing that I think is interesting about all of this. You have Republicans who are voting with McCarthy very frustrated. It's kind of hilarious to watch Dan Crenshaw talk about this. He is so mad.
Sarah [00:13:59] Oh, he's so mad.
Beth [00:14:01] And they're very frustrated by the fact that they have more votes than the 20 people opposing McCarthy and they're being held up by this small number.
Sarah [00:14:11] The irony.
Beth [00:14:12] Well, that's the thing, right? So we have this conversation, this big picture conversation going on in the country about the Electoral College. And should the person who has the most votes get to be the president? And we've got this big conversation going on in the Senate about whether 51 ought to be good enough or if it has to be 60.
Sarah [00:14:32] Not to mention the Supreme Court. Don't forget that on your list.
Beth [00:14:35] And then here in the House, the Democratic leader has gotten the most votes in every single ballot and is not even in the conversation of who will actually become the speaker because of the number of seats controlled by Republicans. And yet the best argument anybody has for Kevin McCarthy is, well, he has the most votes of the conference. Even the people nominating him really don't have anything to say other than he's got the most support and we're really getting frustrated by this. I mean, that's the pitch. And so what you need to win in America, I think, is becoming a really fascinating conversation.
Sarah [00:15:13] Well, and I just don't know how even his allies are not furious with him. You're trying to elect him to be leader and this is lesson number one in political leadership; you don't have votes, you can't win. And he's having one after the other after the other. It's humiliating. And the longer it goes on, the longer it gets the attention of Americans who don't pay close attention to the Rules Committee of the House of Representatives, because there's not going to be a House of Representatives. Like, how long can this stretch? I don't know. What I do know is whether they're clowns or whether they're terrorist, the people holding this up do not care. They don't care.
Beth [00:15:56] And that's why, in my heart of hearts, what I want is for Democrats to help fix this. I want them to find five Republicans and make some kind of deal. I really do. And I know that the incentives are not there for that to happen, but I worry that this is a security risk, that we have people who need to be briefed on important matters who aren't getting those briefings because they don't have security clearance because they haven't been sworn into this Congress yet. I worry about actors who are hostile to the United States taking advantage of this situation. I have a lot of concern. The most mature statement I've seen anybody in Congress make about this situation came, not surprisingly, from Haley Stevens of Michigan; Democratic representative who we've had on the podcast several times and thinks so highly of. And she said, "I don't know when we get to start working, but we know when this Congress ends and every minute that we aren't able to legislate and serve our constituents is a minute that we were hired to do a job and we're not doing it." And they can't. There were screenshots on Twitter this morning of representatives who tried to reach out to the IRS to just do constituent service. One of my constituents has a problem, can you help me? And the IRS was like sorry I cannot, because until they are sworn in they cannot do this business.
Sarah [00:17:11] Wow. Well, we do want to say that there is one person out there doing the business of the house, which is Cheryl Johnson, clerk of the House. Bless this woman and her team. Bless her. She's out there. She's showing up to work. She run this clown rodeo. And I doubt she'll even keep her job should they ever actually convene this Congress, but mad kudos to her.
Beth [00:17:35] And she's having to do it without any rules in place. I think this is a hard thing to understand, that the House really has to reconstitute itself. And it hasn't done that because step one is the speakership. And so she's trying truly to run the wild West right now. I also so appreciate Olivia Beavers and many other congressional reporters who are working absurd hours and following people through hallways and waiting out endless meetings and trying to give us some information about what's going on here. Just so much good work is being done. C-SPAN is doing excellent work. They get to put their cameras wherever they want to because no speaker is in control telling them not to. And that's been just insightful and helpful.
Sarah [00:18:22] That was definitely the saddest most pathetic thing I heard, is that George Santos was tired of being shown in the House floor with no one talking to him. So he started hiding in the cloakroom. I mean. Well let's not end on a sad, pathetic note, though. We also want to point out that Hakeem Jeffries is now the first black party leader in our country's history. And the Senate elected Patty Murray as the first president protem. She's now third in line because there's no Speaker of House. So of our three lines of succession, two are women. I like that. I like that vibe. So some people are out there trying to do the work and the job of government.
Beth [00:18:59] It might be helpful to just say what President pro tem means because it's a position that you don't hear a whole lot about. It has, for a long time now, been the top ranking member of the majority party who is there to sub in when the vice president can't preside over the Senate, which happens a lot. So the difference is when the president pro tem presides over the Senate, unlike the vice president, that person cannot break a tie vote. But otherwise that person can conduct the business of the Senate as the vice president would were she there.
Sarah [00:19:28] Okay. Well, next up, we're going to be sharing our conversation with Yair Rosenberg. Yair is a writer at The Atlantic where he writes the Deep Shtetl newsletter, which you can subscribe to using the link in our shownotes. He also covers the intersection of politics and culture and religion. We are both big fans of his writing and that is why we invited him here on our show and are excited to share our conversation with him.
Beth [00:19:58] Yair, thank you so much for spending time with us. We were really interested in a take that you had after our recent media cycle focused on anti-Semitism. You talked about the importance of distinguishing between what's newsworthy and what is new. And I wanted to share this line from the piece. "If anti-Semitism is characterized as a one off aberration, whenever it occurs, then society is effectively offloading the problem onto scapegoats." So how can we better put newsworthy events involving anti-Semitism in context?
Yair Rosenberg [00:20:30] It's a great question, and I'm always impressed when people read that kind of piece and take something valuable from it, because it's easy to understand when something happens in the headlines and then maybe a celebrity or a politician attached why this is anti-Semitic and why it's important. But the argument that I make in that piece is that these incidents, although they draw our attention, they're not actually representing something new. They're just representing us noticing something going on because there's someone famous attached to it. And if we spend all our time denouncing righteously whoever the famous person is who did this bad thing-- there's a place for that, but if that is basically the sum total of what we do and then we move on, we'll keep wondering why it keeps happening again. And so I think what people should do when they experience this moment and they're saying, how can I be a better actor in this conversation is to think, what are the ways that I can dignify Jewish people or the ways that I can learn more about Jewish people? What are the ways that I can help my community to better understand Jewish people? And you can substitute for Jewish a whole lot of other families who deal with these sorts of things. And if you start to learn more about who Jewish really are in their complexity, diversity, and their arguments with each other, then the next time an anti-Semite shows up to your community and says, "Here's my crazy theory about how the Jews control the economy," people won't fall for it because they have a much better, more grounded understanding of Jews. It's just like, you know, Bob can't control the economy. I know him and he's really bad at math. So these sorts of things become more and more ridiculous the more you actually know who Jews are. And that can involve meeting real Jewish people, that can involve reading Jewish history, that can involve consuming culture, that involves Jews in which Jews tell their stories. And something I read about elsewhere, it goes far beyond, say, watching Holocaust movies. I think it's the one way our culture does engage with the Jewish past, which is a valuable thing to do. But if all we ever do is read about dead Jews but not how Jews live today, we are missing a big part of the story.
Sarah [00:22:19] Well, let's do speak about those celebrities because that is definitely a part of this news cycle. In your recent pieces on both Dave Chappelle and Kanye West, you articulated this little intellectual trap and so much anti-Semitic rhetoric, these tropes (exactly what you just articulated) especially surrounding media, the entertainment industry involve Jews exercising disproportionate power to silence critics. And I love this line you wrote. "It's a self affirming conspiracy theory. The anti-Semite claims that Jews control everything. Then if they're penalized for their bigotry, they point to that as proof. Heads they win, tails Jews lose." Will you talk about that connection between conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism and why it's so important to understand?
Yair Rosenberg [00:23:01] Sure. I think when people think about prejudice, they usually think of it as a social prejudice, which means there are people that are different from me and I don't like them. Maybe they're Jewish, maybe they're black, maybe they're muslim-- a lot of groups. And anti-Semitism certainly has that component, but it also has this other weird one that is less common, which is it's a conspiracy theory about how the world works. This is the other part of anti-Semitism that isn't well understood but is actually really consequential. And what I mean by conspiracy theory about the world is that it suggests that there are these sinister string pulling Jews behind the scenes who are behind all of the world's problems and controlling economic problems, social problems, political problems, all traced back to some sort of Jewish cabal. And what's really compelling about this conspiracy theory is a couple of things. One, is that it's a simple solution to a lot of difficult things in the world. There's a lot of stuff going wrong in the world today, whether it's wars, whether it's pandemics, whether it's the fact that the causes that a lot of people say they support don't succeed or their politicians don't get elected. People are always looking for an explanation or reason, and anti-Semitism offers them a very simple answer, a very simple scapegoat. And even if the person didn't start by thinking the Jews are behind these problems that I see in the world, they're just like one or two Google searches away from finding out that it's the Jews. Because once you believe that there's an invisible hand, well, there's centuries of material telling you that it belongs to an invisible Jew. So anti-Semitism has a really big head start on your type of conspiracy theorist. So it's very attractive as an explanatory mechanism, and it's attractive to people no matter their politics or their background or their religion. Because we all know people in our lives [Inaudible] to these sorts of solutions maybe we have in different points in our lives. It's a conspiratorial mindset. It's much deeper than whichever political party we subscribe to whichever religion, which is why anti-Jewish prejudice and bigotry predatescapitalists and communists, Republicans and Democrats, Muslims and Christians. You can go back and back and back and you still have this stuff because it's written in something a lot deeper and because anti-Semitism conspiracy theory. It's very hard to fight. It affirms itself, like in the quote that you gave. So you say a bunch of Jews control the media industry and then a bunch of people in the media industry say, no, that's not true. That's anti-Semitic. And then you say, well, look, I just got beaten down by the media industry. That proves that I'm right. And so if anyone criticizes the anti-Semite, they just take it as proof of their worldview. And if nobody criticizes the anti-Semite, then they just get to be anti-Semitic and spread their ideas to more and more people without any challenge. So it's like a lose-lose scenario.
Beth [00:25:29] Will you talk about the impact of those anti-Semitic ideas being circulated and in some cases introduced to young people for the first time through celebrities. I'm thinking about some of your writing where you talk about the frequency and intensity of violence against Jewish people, about how the population of Jewish people still hasn't reached levels pre holocaust, like just how serious this is and what it looks like when it rolls out casually from a celebrity in the middle of an identity crisis.
Yair Rosenberg [00:25:59] Yeah, so it's good to think about why does this conspiracy theory idea matter and why it matters when it's spread in such a public manner and endorsed in such a public manner. It's not just somebody said something about on Twitter and now people are upset about it. It's that if you look at the most high profile instances of violence against Jewish people in the last few years and over time, almost always they traced back to the conspiratorial version of anti-Semitism. It's less than, oh, I just don't like Jews and a lot more about I think Jews are behind some really big problems in the world and therefore I'm going to go after them or try to force them to do things that I want them to do because I think they have power that they don't have. So people may remember a few years back this massacre at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue, the largest mass murder of Jews on American soil. That was a white supremacist who was convinced that Jews were behind the influx of brown immigrants into America. And as a white supremacist [Inaudible]. And so he went and killed some Jews himself. And again this is bizarre because [Inaudible] America's immigration policy and the Jews have nothing to do with the feverish fantasies of a racist who thinks that this is a problem in the world. This is him taking it out on Jews. But then you a few years later the synagogue in Texas taken hostage for like a day on the Sabbath by an Islamic extremist. And he was upset because a particular person was in jail in federal prison in Texas. And he thought that if I take this synagogue hostage and I get the rabbi of the synagogue to call the rabbi of another synagogue in New York, they can get this person out of jail. Now, my dad's a rabbi, and I hope I'm not breaking any secrets here, but the rabbis don't control the US prison system. But if you blame Jews for your policy, you think Jews have this outsized power that they don't have, you will often then try to attack Jews or get Jews to do what you want in violent ways. And so that's why this sort of stuff is not just impolite, right or wrong. It's also quite dangerous. And we can see it. And what's really interesting is that you had this white supremacist who's really upset about brown people and then you have a brown islamic extremist. These people probably hated each other, but they agreed that they hated Jews because conspiracy theories are deeper than our other identities. It's a mindset that anybody can sort of fall prey to. And so that's one of the dangers that unites a lot of disparate ideologies, all in one through this broken way of thinking about the world.
Sarah [00:28:15] Well, and I want to scratch at something that you sort of touched on there, which I think is really difficult, which is that there's not just anti-Semitism among extremist white supremacist, right? It is an ideology. And it's not even among just conspiracy theorists. I feel like I see in progressive circles a lot of "Well, it's not really the same as racism." It's not as bad as "real racism". And it's sort of like white adjacent critique that comes from progressive circles that I think can be really damaging when you are trying to bring attention to anti-Semitism and to the sort of sneaky-- I don't know in other ways. It's this undercurrent that's hard to pull out and hard to bring attention to. It's not closely aligned with white supremacy, but it's this other type of ideology you find as an undercurrent in progressive circles that can be really damaging.
Yair Rosenberg [00:29:06] And the thing to understand is that in America, for sure, most Jews vote for Democrats overwhelmingly. Most Jews identify in some way as progressive, which means when they encounter dissent, which is very often they encountered in progressive spaces, because that's just where they are. And it is definitely a real phenomenon. And, yeah, sometimes that's because the people on the left are not immune to conspiratorial thinking. So I see plenty of examples where people are like, well, the capitalism, the bankers, they're the ones who cause all the problems and you're a hop, skip and a jump away from the Rothschilds of the Jews. This is Jews are the money people. So that's one example. But there's other ways where progressive thought, often well-intentioned progressive thought, can lead people in the wrong direction when they're not thinking as critically about as they should. One of the insights of progressive thinking about racism is that it's not just discrimination, it's usually prejudice, discrimination plus power. Which is to say that when the white majority discriminates against, say, the black minority it's different than if a member of the black community says something prejudicial about the white majority because they don't have the power to enact that kind of prejudice in the same way as the white majority does. And that is absolutely a valuable insight for making distinctions between types of prejudice and what constitutes racism in particular situations. But anti-Semitism sort of evades this formula because if racism is prejudice coupled to power, anti-Semitism says it takes the Jews and says they're super powerful, right? Unlike a lot of other kinds of prejudice which says the people we hate they're subhuman. Anti-Semitism often says they're superhuman. So then if the Jews are powerful, it's impossible to be racist against them. It's impossible to be truly prejudiced against them because they have all this power, so it doesn't really matter. Is it really is as bad? But it's making this up. Of course, there are poor Jews and there are wealthy Jews and there are powerful Jews and there are Jews with no power at all. And Jews are just like everybody else. But what you see this well-intentioned way of thinking about prejudice, which is a tool in the toolbox gets turned into this mechanism for sort of letting anti-Semitism through the back door. So that's another example. And that if we wanted to get really, really into the weeds we'll take 2 hours to even unpack fairly like discussions of Israel.
Sarah [00:31:11] Oh, that's my next question. You beat me to it.
Yair Rosenberg [00:31:13] So you're not evading the hard questions. So the question then becomes there's very legitimate criticism of Israel on the left. Israel is a state. It has an army. It exercises power. And when you're a state actor, (whether you're Israel, the United States or anyone else) you merit in and want criticism. And as someone who is reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for some time can tell you that Israel does things that deserve criticism. People can consult my writings. I've written stuff like that myself. But this sort of well-intentioned impulse can be taken to an extreme or be used by bad actors to disguise something else. And so you often see-- and Kanye did this. Kanye in some of the interviews just started substituting the word Zionist for Jew. And this was sort of a way to give himself this sort of veneer of plausible deniability about what he was saying. So he said there were like I think 300 Zionists control the entire United States. It's just the typical conspiracy theory we've been discussing. Three hundred Jews, but he just substituted the word Zionist. And once you're aware of this sort of move, you start seeing it in a lot of places. These are people who couldn't tell you what Zionist was if you asked. Another journalist put it,"They don't know what Zionist is. They just know it's a word you use when you're in trouble and you replace the word Jew with it." And so that's not the same as criticizing the Israeli policy or criticizing the Israeli state. That's really just about attacking Jews wherever they are (in this case in the United States) and trying to use Israel as cover for that. And so I think being aware of that sort of switcheroo, that people can do that-- which doesn't mean that it's always the case. It just means we should have that question in our heads. And then we see someone say like Kanye that a certain number of Zionists control the entire country, you should say, "This really just a warmed over conspiracy theory." And this is comes from a more general insight about bigotry and prejudice, which is bigotry and prejudice survive by presenting themselves as more respectable than they are. If they were seen as a low class or uncouth or something that no serious person could engage in, they would die pretty quickly.
[00:33:07] So they dressed themselves up in whatever is respectable, whatever community they're talking it. And so that's how you get Anti-Semitism sounding one way in a left wing space and one wing in a right wing space. It inflects itself based on the things that are respected in those spaces. So, of course, in left wing spaces it takes advantage of certain perfectly reasonable political positions and ideological positions to try to smuggle its way in and say, "Oh, I'm just criticism of Israel. Oh, I don't fit the definition of racism, so I don't matter as much." These are ways that it sort of paverts perfectly reasonable things in the left wing side of the space. And then on the right wing side of the space, you'll see things like, oh, we're for the patriotic national homeland and the Jews they're outsiders, they're interlopers. The word anti-Semitism comes from this attempt to dress anti-Jewish prejudice up in a more respectable fashion. It's a relatively recent word. It comes from this German nationalist named Guilha Maa[Sp], who was living in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and wanted to find a way to dress up anti-Semitism as something more respectable, because at the time it was seen as something that people who were very religious and therefore they were very Christian thought the Jews killed Jesus and various other things. And this was sort of considered by intellectuals to be low class. So we need to justify their anti-Semitism on more secular and scientific grounds. And so he said, okay, I'm going to make this about race science, and I'm going to start calling them Semites because they come from allegedly this part of the world. And so we'll call it anti-Semitism. And now it's scientific instead of sort of religious superstition. And so he dressed it up in the respectable terms of the time. So you should always expect whatever community you find yourself in. If you're left wing, you feel right wing, if you're Muslim, if you're a Christian,you should expect anti-Jewish bigotry to dress itself up in terms that you recognize and that you otherwise respect in other situations. And the truth is, of course, this happens with anti-black racism and many other kinds of prejudice. That's how they work, but we should be aware of that.
Beth [00:34:59] We recently had a conversation about the difference between nations and states on the podcast, and I wonder sometimes if American partizan political actors play with nation and state when they're talking about Israel to manipulate their audiences. And I wonder what you think about that. And if you were doing like Netanyahu 101 for Americans, what should we understand about his return to power?
Yair Rosenberg [00:35:26] Yes, I think a lot of us intuitively understand when it comes to ourselves the difference between, say, a country's government and the people. Because there are a tremendous number of people who really didn't elect Donald Trump, but he was still running their country. And that would mean that they're not responsible for everything that he does. In fact, they tried very hard to change it. And so one should never really say that a country's people is equivalent to the country's government in which you make those sorts of distinctions. When it comes to Israel, sometimes the line can get blurred. I think that's true in many countries. Also, we just don't know other countries as well as we know our own country. So we sometimes boil those things together. But in the most recent election that just happened at the beginning of November, they basically split 50-50 down the middle between people who voted against Netanyahu parties and people who voted for. But because of the way their electoral system is designed-- and it's complicated and I'm not going to go into it, but think of it sort of as an Electoral College situation. Netanyahu won with a pretty significant majority despite getting basically half the votes because his coalition was better distributed in their parliamentary system. And so that's the example which people don't even realize. They're like, oh, they elected this person, but is it really the whole country that thinks this way? Netanyahu's own party within the coalition that he's forming is basically half of the coalition, and the other half is other parties entirely. So you have like a quarter of Israelis voted for Netanyahu. And others voted for other parties that will be in his coalition, but they didn't vote for him.
[00:36:48] So countries are complicated. Parliamentary democracy is incredibly complicated. People vote for a particular party that represents their interests. And then afterwards coalitions get formed. and then somebody becomes prime minister. But that person, like Netanyahu, could be a very capable speaker and politician that they constantly do interviews and they give speeches and people come to associate that with the entire country. But I think if you are an American and you're like I don't think Donald Trump represents me, you'd understand that these are not the same. Right? And there are plenty of people who also felt like, oh, Barack Obama doesn't represent me and that's why I'm voting for Donald Trump. The president isn't the country. The prime minister isn't the country. And one of the things I try to do when I go and report on Israel, is I try to actually talk to the people and listen to them and reinforce their complexity and all the different things that they're weighing and trying to figure out. When we sort of reduce people to very simple political slogans and boxes, we lose that. And I don't think we ever want that done to us. We'd probably find that very dehumanizing if anyone ever did it to us and our politics and ideologies and the things we struggle with. Because even people who vote for Democrats or Republicans, they have things they don't necessarily always like about Democrats or don't like about Republicans. But then we turn around and look at foreign countries and we very simplify them or we reduce them to their position, this issue or that issue or this thing we might know something about. We should grant other people the same complexity that we wish granted to ourselves.
Sarah [00:38:12] I'm very concerned about Netanyahu, and I'm just more concerned about why are they having so many elections. I'm worried for their mental health. That's too many elections.
Yair Rosenberg [00:38:20] Yeah, it reflects instability in the political system because it's not healthy for a policy democracy to go to election that many times. Sweeney said something similar going on and it's not good for the country. It's pretty volatile. I was talking to some people who are very upset about this new Netanyahu government that's being formed. But they said on the plus side, it's not going to be there for any longer than two years. They all just assumed that all these things that max you're supposed to get at least four years plus in government, but they assumed in Israeli politics that things are so unstable that the coalition will collapse under its own weight at some point very soon. And so that's an example of something that we've experienced in United States in different ways. But this political instability in a highly polarized country where the country is pretty evenly split down the middle over some pretty core things, and so what you end up happening is these very close elections where nobody feels like they really won and they're all itching to get back and rerun the election and think this time we'll get it. And it's not a healthy dynamic. And I'm not a politician, this is the job for politicians to do, but to find ways to win over larger numbers of people through consensus building and compromise and communication, because that's how where you can have a stable country. Because I think even when people remember they were like 51, 49 and they just barely sweep by, I don't think anyone feels great about that outcome because the people will feel like, oh, we were just this close to the worst people ever winning. And the people who lost are like the worst people ever won, but it was so close we could have done it. Let's just push it a little harder. Let's get a little more extreme and more radical.
[00:39:50] But that is really tough because people have very strong reasons for why they're split. It's not like this is why can't we all get along situation. So Israel's just dealing with that. A bunch of European countries are dealing with those things. Then you have the United States where we have these sorts of things. But we had our American politics and we just had our 2022 midterms where you saw people make sort of distinctions and say there's a certain kind of radicalism I don't like. You saw a bunch of people in the church who voted for Republican candidates in their states but then rejected certain Senate candidates or the House candidates who said that Trump actually won the 2020 election or that had other disqualifying characteristics and were seen as too extreme and [Inaudible]. I think that there is an underrated desire for normal politicians by the public. They don't want weird candidates. They don't want people with really extreme views. And when Trump sort of intervened in his party's primary to put those people forward and center, that ended up hurting his party and they lost a bunch of winnable races. I think it's telling that in Georgia, for example, the Republicans won every single statewide race except the Senate race where Herschel Walker lost. Donald Trump's handpicked candidate is a very weak candidate with a lot of really big problems. And voters saw that. They're not mindless partisan automatons. They said, I'm able to vote for Brian Kemp for Governor because I think he's already been governor and done a fine job. But this person for Senate, they don't deserve to have a job. And we saw that again and again, which is why Democrats just almost actually kept the House and the they kept the Senate, which was not necessarily what people expected. It's interesting to see how things go in a place like Israel where you're about to have a government that's going to be pretty extreme, but then those people get to enact their policies and then the electorate gets to decide whether or not it likes what it saw.
Sarah [00:41:30] It is interesting that you point out that so many places in the world are having this sort of parity play out where it's just getting closer and closer and closer to this 51/ 49, 50/50. Britain, you even see it in Brazil, you see it in Sweden, you see it in Israel where we're having this this parity play out. And I wonder-- leads me to our next question about social media and the role. I wonder if that's a piece of this puzzle. I know that you were named at one point by the Anti-Defamation League Task Force on Journalism and Harassment as the second most targeted Jewish journalist. I'm assuming most of that harassment is coming online. I'm sure some people go to the trouble to send you a letter. But what do you think is the role social media is playing in this sort of radicalization, not just when it comes to anti-Semitism, but I think that you're touching on there's a lot of this in politics in general.
Yair Rosenberg [00:42:19] Yeah. So my default position on social media (where I spend far too much time) is that it doesn't create problems, but it does exacerbate existing ones. It can supercharge them. So were people polarized before or moving in polarized reactions? Yes. Would they have gone as polarized as fast if Twitter and Facebook didn't exist in the sort of bubbles of politics where I'm only with people who agree with me and there's sort of a race of the most extreme rhetoric and opinion? I don't think so. I think we were still going in that direction. Maybe we could have turned around, maybe we couldn't, but it moved it much, much faster. And I think you see that again and again with social media where it didn't invent some trend, but it accelerates it. And I don't think that's particularly healthy. I think we're not meant to live that fast. I think things are not meant to move that quickly and sometimes we move so quickly we don't consider was that correct? But social media often coalesces around consensuses that turn out to be wrong, and they quickly coalesce around a new consensus. We saw this with COVID. Right at the very beginning of COVID they said don't wear masks or don't buy masks. And there were a lot of experts saying this. And it came out later that people were afraid that if people bought masks, it wasn't that mask didn't work, but if we bought masks then there might not be enough for the doctors and essential workers. But people didn't see that. And then it became this sort of consensus that masks just sort of had a problem with them. So then when they came out and said absolutely everyone should wear a mask, there were people saying, wait a second, said the opposite to me. And then some people were able to say, well, maybe the mask don't work. That's the real answer. And then suddenly there is unease and there's conspiracy theories, all this stuff. And it all comes from this rapidly shifting consensuses that we're not made to handle that way.
[00:43:50] But it's a really hard problem because if you're in a leadership position, you can't ignore social media because if you don't say anything right, and you don't try to direct the public, then somebody else will. They probably are less qualified. But it makes it really, really hard to sort of have principled leadership. If I had to give one piece of advice to people, which I try to follow, is just be willing to say you don't know yet when you don't know and be as honest as you can. You could say masks do work and that's why your doctors wear them when you ever went to the office and certain other situations and surgeons-- obviously masks do something. But we weren't prepared for this kind of pandemic and so we don't have as many produced yet. So please don't buy masks, let the most essential people who use them the most. And entrust people to mostly make the right decision. Some people won't. But if you don't trust people, they'll stop trusting you. Or if you just tell them don't buy the masks and you don't tell them the reason why, then when you do finally tell them they should or the reasons why, then they're like, oh, you lied to me once. You could be lying to me again. So be willing to say you don't know and be honest about your reasoning and trust the public to be able to figure it out. I am a journalist who writes for a very wide audience of people of many different backgrounds and politics, and I find that you rarely lose by just being sort of honest about your opinions and how you get to them and things like that, because people appreciate that kind of transparency. It shows that you are holding yourself accountable and that you also respect them enough to let them into your process. And so I think we could all do with more of that. And it doesn't solve how fast social media works, but at least what we put into this conversation would be, I think, a little bit slower and a little bit more reserved and a little bit more careful.
Beth [00:45:27] You've also written on an individual level about how social media can be very calcifying for individuals. And I wondered if you would share the story of your favorite anti-Semite. I love this story about someone who was able to change their mind and how social media makes it hard for us.
Yair Rosenberg [00:45:45] So something that I noticed as someone who reports on anti-Semitism is that there's a really tempting thing to do, which is you find someone tweeted something anti-Semitic or they once said something in a video clip and then you write a piece about it and then that becomes their number one Google search result, and that basically reduces them to this moment forever. And I have seen that happen with not just anti-Semitism, with many forms of bigotry where people legitimately say or do something bad, but then that becomes an inescapable front page for them on the Internet and for their life forever. And so I wanted to write a story and tell the story of somebody who illustrated that this often robs us of who those people could become. Because, of course, we all make mistakes. And the question is what you do about them and whether you go from them. But the Internet sometimes freezes you in place eternally in that tweet from 10 years ago or whatever it was. So I wrote about this imam named Abdullah and [Inaudible] who is a friend of mine, and he's at Duke University, and he was the second University Muslim chaplain in America-- if I remember correctly. Many other impressive accolades. He speaks a whole bunch of languages. He's banned in a bunch of authoritarian countries because of his political advocacy against extremism. Really remarkable individual. But if you talk to him, he says when he was a teenager, when he grew up in Turkey, he was just very virulently anti-Semitic person. He was very angry. He bought into a lot of these conspiracy theories we've been discussing. He went to rallies where he held up anti-Semitic signs. And I always thought about that when he told me that story because I said imagine we did have, you know, Instagram or Facebook or YouTube or Twitter back then, and someone had taken a picture of one of these rallies where he tweeted about why he was there and the things that he'd been saying.
[00:47:23] So then people would sort of find that and then every time he came to do interfaith dialog or to do political advocacy or any of the other wonderful things that he does, someone would pull this out and they would hold it over and they would say can we really trust this person? And he has now [Inaudible] a Jewish journalist and people from many different communities, but they would have understandably been much more reticent to involve themselves with him. And he would never be able to do the amazing work that he has done. And so we're very lucky that social media didn't exist when he was a kid, but it does for the next generation and the next generation after that. And the question is, how do we relate to that? And I think like what you said when people do something wrong, they should be held accountable. And that's absolutely true. But accountability means giving people a process to show that they've grown. It can't just mean that we keep hitting you over the head again and again and again with the thing you did wrong because that's just vengeful and doesn't make anybody better. And in a way, it's making us worse. We have to also think of not just the punishing past evil, but also incentivizing future good. Not letting social media and the Internet freeze us in the worst versions of ourselves. And so I think everyone would want to be treated that way. This is an example of one person, one story. But I think we can all think back to moments in our lives that if they had been captured at the wrong moment in the wrong time, we would not want that to be the one thing that defines us. And if that's true, we shouldn't do that to others.
Sarah [00:48:51] You are a singer and composer of Jewish music. We really believe here at Pantsuit Politics that conversation surrounding identity can't be all about the harder aspects of those identities. So can you share with us a little bit about the role music plays in your life and in your Jewish identity?
Yair Rosenberg [00:49:07] For sure. I'm really glad you asked about it because when someone like me is called upon all the time to write about prejudice, bigotry, and ethnocentrism, I cover a lot more stuff than that. But that is, of course, the thing that grabs headlines. You want people to know what it is that you're actually fighting for. Why is it that you think the prejudice is bad? Iit's not the negative things that anti-Semites say that are really important, it's the positive things that constitute Jewish living, Jewish life, Jewish experience that I really want to share. That's why I'm writing about the translation of Harry Potter [Inaudible] Jew in baseball, or doing the Jewish music myself. I compose and I see.
Sarah [00:49:42] I also look forward to your take on Hanukkah, on Rye, the new Hallmark Christmas movie. Thank you very much.
Yair Rosenberg [00:49:47] I was just on a plane coming back from my reporting trip in Israel, and they had the previous one of these, which is like Eight Nights of Hanukkah, but I couldn't I couldn't bring myself. You peek over at somebody else's seat and they have it on, but I can't do it.
Beth [00:50:01] And that would be a widely read series.
Sarah [00:50:05] It would take off. It would go viral, I'm just telling you.
Yair Rosenberg [00:50:06] I can't do it. I can't do it. It doesn't mean it's bad. I just couldn't bring myself. I will say that my sister- in-law is a huge fan of Hallmark movies, so the advent of Jewish Hallmark movies has been wonderful for her. And frankly I think there's a tremendous number of people who are very excited about this.
Sarah [00:50:24] They are. I'm in a text thread with several of them.
Yair Rosenberg [00:50:26] There you go. Exactly. So, yeah, I think all these things are actually really valuable. I think that what people should be filling their time with is less reading about anti-Semitism and more reading about Jewish culture and Jewish ideas and Jewish texts. And so my little small contribution to that is that I on the site compose and sing original Jewish music. And the Jewish has many songs and poems and hymns, just like many other faith traditions. And they often get put to many different kinds of tunes. And so this is your sort of way to write your own chapter where you make your own tune into a very classic song. And so I did an album that came out a few months ago, which is just taking very classic songs that you sing on Shabbat on Saturdays and Friday nights. And I did my own melodies and I give them a more modern arrangement musically. So it sounds like you'll listen to music and say this sounds like folklore or country and this sounds like [Inaudible] music, but the lyrics are 1000 years old. And it's really kind of cool to put those two things together and to sort of bring new life to something very old. And so I did that, and I did it with a couple of friends who were vastly more musically talented than me, who did all of the harmonies. I work with a producer.
[00:51:29] We've been doing this in the industry for 20 years, and it took me seven years to do because when I started I was pretty bad at it. And so the versions that I did in 2015 is really, really, really much worse than the version that came out in 2022. So if you Google me, you'll find my writings. And then the other thing you'll find is that I'm on Spotify and Apple Music and all this stuff and you can listen to the album. And I have found that people I write for The Atlantic and obviously most of my readers aren't Jewish, a lot of them like the music. And one of the things that I think is really cool about music is that it can reach people despite language and background barriers in a way that even my writing can't. There are people who can appreciate my music or listen to my music who would not feel the same way about my writing, or I just couldn't quite connect with them or didn't quite make sense to them. But when they listen to the music, that's something that speaks to them. And so, for me, it's all about finding different ways to-- I like meeting people where they are, and sometimes that means writing a very long essay write. But not everyone is there for the long essay and that's okay. I think it's important for people to remember that not everyone is a word person, some people are music people. And so I try to do that, too.
Beth [00:52:30] Well, thank you so much for spending time with us here and for all of your writing. And we hope that you'll come back some time and help us continue to think about these ideas.
Yair Rosenberg [00:52:39] I'd love to. And I really appreciate you spending the time to think about this particular topic and asked all these questions, because when you're someone like me and you write about these things, you always hope people are reading it, they're getting it, but you don't always know. And when people ask good questions, then you know it's done some good.
Sarah [00:52:54] Thank you two Yair for joining us. And before we end the show, we wanted to send out a little blessing. It's my word for 2023. I got the year right. Yay!.
Beth [00:53:05] You did it. Hashtag blessed.
Sarah [00:53:06] Hashtag Blessed. We have gotten so many messages from listeners who live or grew up in Buffalo and we just want to send so much love and light to that city. Between the shooting last spring, the extreme weather that killed 50 people and now the intensity of seeing their team, the Buffalo Bills and their player, DeMar Hamlin, experience such incredible trauma, they're just hurting. And we wanted you know that we see you and are sending you a blessing today Buffalo. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Pantsuit Politics. We will be back in your ears on Tuesday. Until then, keep it nuanced y'all. And we got permission from Yair to use some of his music to play us outotoday.
Beth [00:54:15] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.
Sarah [00:54:20] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante LIma is the composer and performer of our theme music.
Beth [00:54:26] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.
Executive Producers (Readntheir own names) [00:54:30] Martha Bronitsky. Allie Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holliday. Katie Johnson. Katina Zugenalis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emmaline Neesley. Tawni Peterson. Tracy Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karen True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Vilelli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olsen. Lee Chaix McDonough.
Beth [00:55:08] Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Morgan McCue. Nicole Berklas. Paula Bremmer and Tim Miller.