{"id":4035,"date":"2007-12-27T11:03:30","date_gmt":"2007-12-27T18:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/12\/27\/the-jdls-desparate-drive-to-find-anti-semitism-where-it-aint-continues\/"},"modified":"2007-12-27T11:03:30","modified_gmt":"2007-12-27T18:23:18","slug":"the-jdls-desparate-drive-to-find-anti-semitism-where-it-aint-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4035","title":{"rendered":"The JDL's Desparate Drive To Find Anti-Semitism Where It Ain't Continues"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Jewish Defense League (JDL) called for a boycott of Will Smith’s new movie<\/a>, and for movie studies to blacklist Smith, because Smith said:<\/p>\n

Even Hitler didn\u2019t wake up going, “let me do the most evil thing I can do today.” I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was “good.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The JDL’s webpage (and, I suspect, press release) carries the ridiculous headline “Will Smith Thinks Hitler Was Basically Good.”<\/p>\n

After Smith released a statement clarifying that he thinks Hitler is evil, the JDL retracted their call for a boycott and Smith’s blacklisting, but maintained that “we stand by our original assessment that his original comments were offensive.” They haven’t revised their headline as of this moment.<\/p>\n

Of course, Smith’s argument isn’t novel; it’s the sort of philosophy that gets chatted about among friends and family, and in Sunday school, frequently. (This was true even of my childhood Sunday school — which was Jewish). Contrary to the JDL’s reading, by using “Hitler” as his example Smith implicitly acknowledged Hitler’s ultimate evilness (the philosophical conundrum Smith discussed only makes sense when the example is a figure everyone recognizes as vile).<\/p>\n

As Marc Lamont Hill writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In his quote, Smith accurately pointed out that people rarely view themselves as the living embodiment of evil. Instead, all of us are shaped by ideologies, traditions, and regimes of knowledge that shape who we are and how we view the world. As such, Hitler likely didn\u2019t<\/em> see himself as evil, but as an agent of what he viewed as positive social change. This doesn\u2019t justify the massacre of Jews, it merely explains how individual identities and practices are constituted by coherent (though often deeply problematic) worldviews.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m sensitive to Antisemitism \u2014 I supported the JDL\u2019s boycott of Mel Gibson\u2013 this is going too far. Every time someone does more than call Hitler the devil incarnate, they aren\u2019t supporting the Holocaust. Every time someone challenges the Zionist occupation of Palestine, they aren\u2019t antisemitic. This type of thin skinned and reactionary media grandstanding on the part of the JDL does a radical disservice to the legitimate work against antisemitism that is being done around the globe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two quick thoughts:<\/p>\n

1) Smith has publicly supported Barak Obama’s candidacy (and the JDL called for Obama to repudiate Smith); I doubt that a right-wing celebrity who had said the same thing would have gotten an angry response by the JDL. But a chance to combine liberal-bashing with publicity-grubbing isn’t something the JDL is likely to pass up.<\/p>\n

2) The JDL’s inane attacks on innocent statements trivialize actual antisemitism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Jewish Defense League (JDL) called for a boycott of Will Smith’s new movie, and for movie studies to blacklist Smith, because Smith said: Even Hitler didn\u2019t wake up going, “let me do the most evil thing I can do … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-semitism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}