In this week’s episode of WITHPod, historian Deborah Lipstadt talks to chrislhayes about recent anti-Semitic violence and its centuries-old roots. Listen and full transcript:
And so I thought now it'd be a great time to talk to someone who has literally devoted the entirety of her adult life and her career to studying anti-Semitism and its history. Her name is Deborah Lipstadt. She's a professor of modern Jewish history at Emory University. Her most recent book is called"Anti-Semitism: Here and Now," but she's also written about the Holocaust and Holocaust denial.
CHRIS HAYES: I want to start, if at all possible, at the beginning. And I know that with the Jewish people, that's a while ago.
DEBORAH LIPSTADT: Well, it takes on that tenor and there you have the template. It takes on the tenor of one, the blindness of the Jew. You know, one of the sculptures outside of Notre Dame is the synagogue blinded, that the Jews were blind to the teaching of Jesus, they were blind to what he had to offer the world.
CHRIS HAYES: Is there a sociocultural or historical context for the Middle Ages and this story kind of coming together? What's going on there? DEBORAH LIPSTADT: I think it's absolutely a given that maybe not every minority, but most minorities want to be accepted, want to fit in, even as they maintain their individual practices, their individual beliefs. And I think that's what happened with the Jews. If you go back to the Book of Jeremiah, he says during the first exile after the destruction of the first temple, during the destruction of the first,"Pray for the welfare of the country in which you're going to live.
There was a joke that was supposedly told by German Jews during the 1930s of a Nazi ideologue, a Nazi official who comes to a meeting and he's going on about how"the Jews are our misfortune," and"the Jews did this and the Jews did that." And someone yells out from the side of the room:"And the bicycle riders.
DEBORAH LIPSTADT: Yes, it's there. It's there in the fact that Rome was the power in the universe. Go think back to your high school history when they had the maps and they showed Rome was red or blue.
If you go back to Charlottesville, I guess now a little less than two years ago, and those demonstrators, those not-fine people were marching across the campus of the University of Virginia. What were they chanting? They were chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Well, that chant has a double meaning.
DEBORAH LIPSTADT: I think the answer to both questions is yes. It is very similar to other prejudices. I have a colleague who likes to say you meet the stereotype right in front of you when the person themselves is two blocks away. So if it's an African American, you say to me"oh, there's an African American." You see them on your college campus, you assume"oh, they couldn't be here by right.
Then if you look at this idea that essentially there's a kind of essential hatred and violence towards the Jew that will always be present, will always be there and that it is the duty in the wake of the Holocaust to essentially never, ever, ever let your guard down, never be caught unawares, to arm and defend yourself because there's an implacable specific-ness that is distinct from all of their hatreds and bigotries directed towards the Jew always and forever.
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