Friday, August 06, 2004
I was wondering about this
The new ADL campaign makes no sense. How is anti-Semitism anti-black? What about a black anti-Semite? Does he hate himself?
We were back to that. Back to the same hollow rhetoric that reduced the lessons of the Holocaust to some watered-down notion of the importance of tolerance for all people. We were back to the flawed assumption that hatred is a package deal. Yet if that were true, the campaign would be useless from go — because if you're a hater, you do hate everyone. Obviously, there is something that separates hatred of Jews from hatred of other minorities, and its effects need to be addressed more directly rather than universalized.
A George Will quote comes to mind: "Celebration of tolerance is the first refuge of the intolerant."
We were back to that. Back to the same hollow rhetoric that reduced the lessons of the Holocaust to some watered-down notion of the importance of tolerance for all people. We were back to the flawed assumption that hatred is a package deal. Yet if that were true, the campaign would be useless from go — because if you're a hater, you do hate everyone. Obviously, there is something that separates hatred of Jews from hatred of other minorities, and its effects need to be addressed more directly rather than universalized.
A George Will quote comes to mind: "Celebration of tolerance is the first refuge of the intolerant."
