Last week, Ben Shapiro spoke at Stanford University. His speech was a powerful rebuke of the alt-right. But for some on the campus Left, Shapiro, as well as his speech, were worthy of condemnation, and so they reacted with a vile, anti-Semitic propaganda campaign.
In the run-up to the event, a leftist student group plastered anti-Semitic posters depicting Shapiro as an insect all around campus. After being roundly condemned, the group that made the posters decided it was necessary to release a statement, first apologizing for the anti-Semitic posters but then bizarrely labeling Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, the real anti-Semite.
Shapiro is no radical. He is a mainline conservative who believes in lowering taxes and deregulating the economy. He is no racist, and the speech he was giving on Thursday night was actually a specific denunciation of the alt-right and its vile, racist ideology.
But to the campus Left, any strong conservative voice is seen as a threat that must be silenced.
Shapiro wears a kippah in public, observes the Sabbath by going off-the-grid from Friday night to Saturday night, and just spent a month in the Jewish homeland, Israel. But according to this Stanford student group, which depicted him as an insect due for extermination, Shapiro is the real anti-Semite, and they are merely standing up for the disadvantaged.
Sounds legit.
How could the most “woke” among us get away with promoting such blatant anti-Semitism? Well, Jews appear to be white and many of them are successful. You can imagine the reaction of those — Right and Left — whose false ideologies hold that success as the result of victimizing others. This is why, in 2017, 58% of religious hate crimes in the United States were committed against Jews, who comprise less than 3% of the national population.
To put that number in context, that is also more than twice the number of hate crimes committed against Muslims. Jews face a double whammy in that they are routinely attacked by members of the far Left for their support of Israel and the alt-right just for being Jewish.
After putting out its anti-Semitic propaganda, this student group only sharpened its accusation of others, maintaining that bigotry has a home only on the political Right. There are none so blind as those who don’t want to see their own image in the mirror. This is how they can denounce Shapiro’s ideas as “hateful” and “dehumanizing” while posting literally hateful and dehumanizing propaganda about him all over campus.
Those genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism are willing to fight it out wherever and whenever they see it, not only when it is ideologically convenient. It is easy for those on the Left to call out the Right and vice-versa, but it is much harder and more important to call it out when you see it on your own side. Whether it be college students depicting an orthodox Jew as an insect that should be exterminated or the president of the United States, while talking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “your” prime minister, it is important to point out and stigmatize anti-Semitic words and attitudes.
Mere projection, such as that of this group at Stanford, is not helpful to anyone. If we can all come to the basic truth that anti-Semitism is worthy of being taken seriously and fearlessly confronted wherever it may be, then our country will have taken a giant step forward.
Jack Elbaum is a high school student living in Highland Park, Illinois.
