Welcome emma green and writer and author of the forthcoming book how to fight antisemitism, bari weiss. This is my fight song take back my life song prove them all right song hi, everyone. Im happy to be sitting on the stage today with bari weiss, who is an opinion writer and editor for the New York Times. Since joining the times in 2017, bari has, shall we say, made some waves in the world of letters and the internet with her writing and speaking. Vanity fair recently called her the times star opinion writer and the provatuer. She would say she fits neither on the left or right. She began writing columns long ago as a student at Columbia University where she did activism around professors. She wrote and edited for the wall street journal and then joined the New York Times. Her work has focused on groups relevant to this group today. She calls out antisemitism in all of its forms. She has a book coming out in september to be published by crown called how to fight antisemiti antisemitism. I first met bari last october when we were both in pittsburgh covering and writing about the shooting at tree of life synagogue. For me personally as a reporter, it was a moving experience to see the way that youish Community Came together for funerals, solidarity events to support all of the people who were hurt in that shooting. It was also really moving to me to know that thats the yojyoui community. How did it feel to know your community had been attacked in this violent way . I want to say that i was i mean, any experience like that is shocking. And i think in a way im still in the shock of it but i cannot say i was entirely surprised. I think theres several websites that track gun violence in this country. I think theres been Something Like 40 Mass Shootings in the last month alone. So, you have to it has to be a failure of the imagination not to conceive of Something Like that happening in your community. Which, you know, to me is a really scary testament to the kind of moment that were in in this country and the violence that sort of become the now. Of course its shocking in the sense that these were my neighbors. I was bar mitzvahed at tree of life. My dad knew six or seven of the victims personally. If there were a positive thing, and i think there were several but one of the really beautiful things to come out of the tragedy of that experience is that the world got to see what i already knew about my community. It is a community that a leo leibovitz wrote in tablet and he wrote this beautiful piece called the pittsburgh principles. The pittsburgh platform and their reform movement. He talked about the sort of communal arithmetic we live by in pittsburgh. That is multiply instead of divide. That was the case in my family. We paid dues or half dues at three or four synagogues. It was very normal for me to go to my shule, then go have lunch at habad and play basketball at the jcc. This is a beautiful communal model and one i felt lucky to be a part of. The other thing i think that came out of the experience that was really moving is that if you looked at it on the surface, this was Just Another Program in the in the history of the antijewish pragram. They were either sanctioned by the authorities, the authorities joined in. The opposite happened in pittsburgh. In pittsburgh you had christian groups, muslim groups, the two of the Pittsburgh Steelers were pal bearers where i saw you, the penguins name your group, civic, political, religious, they stood up and understood intrinsically standing in solidarity they were surrounding their own values. Thats important to think about when we think about how to fight and combat antisemitism. Its not about beseeching other people to give us a handout or favor. Its about if you want to preserve america, if you want to preserve all of these things that has made this country so singular in history and so singular for the jewish people, then you need to fight this scourge because theres no greater sign of societal disintegration and antisemit m antisemitism. Youre writing about this resurgence and how to fight it. I know this is going to be a complex question, but briefly, how do you explain this surge were seeing in antisemitism in the United States and around the world . Okay, longer conversation, obviously, but ill give you the bullet points. Antisemitism is a conspiracy theory. Its often talked about as if its just another kind of hate or another kind of racism or just bigotry, but thats not what antisemitism is. Racism is youre black, youre lesser than me, im punching down. Antisemitism, the jew is not lesser. The jew is both the controlling hand of the government i mean, i can go on and on and on. Thats always sort of been the case. So, in antisemitism the jew is a kind of standin for everything. And often its a standin for the thing that the society despises the most, right . So, thats why right now on the far right you have the sort of blood and soil ethno nationalists that jews are the betrayers of the White Christian nation because many of the jews are white but they vote overwhelmingly for democrat, they support progressive causes and support antiimmigration and on the opposite you have the opposite claim. On the far left is the idea that the jews are too white. Theyre too privileged. Therefore, theyre the antisemitism against them can never really count. So, theyre getting were getting sort of squeezed on both on both sides. I would say one of the reasons antisemitism is spreading, when people are running to those two extremes, its historically borne out, we see it in this moment a very, very bad situation for jews where were left homeless. Were left out of the traditional system of the far right and were certainly left out of the new system of the left. That is an important place to start. And then just to think about in general societies in which lives thrive, in which truth has become lost are societies in dh jews are not going to do well. Societies in which freedom is not prospering, jews Darrell Horne wrote this very important oped, i would recommend you look up after you poway shootings. That one i really love. She talks about how jews are the symbol of freedom in a society and we always have been. Were the symbol of difference. Were the symbol of worshipping differently, believing differently, bringing deeply radical iconoclastic ideas into the world. The idea of freedom, the idea slavery is evil. These are deeply iconoclastic ideas. The ability for us to believe in them over time to the extent we can is the extent to which a society is sort of tolerating of difference. Societies that dont tolerate difference, that dont tolerate the freedom are societies where jews are not going to do very well. Do you think President Donald Trump has enabled antisemitism in the United States . I do. Look, none of us know whats in Donald Trumps heart. I dont know whats in yours. I think really good things. But none of us know. But i do think what donald trump has done is he has hes a conspiracy thinker. Its almost like, you know, someone that is that indulges in conspiracyminded thinking. Im thinking of obvious ones like birtherism but smaller, more insidious ones like judge cure yell couldnt judge a case because he was a mexican, nonetheless he was born in indiana. We could go down the list of the lies this president has propagated. A society in which conspiracy thinking and lies are on the rise opens the door to the ultimate conspiracy theory, which is antisemitism. Donald trump you know, there are various things people pick up on. The dog whistles. The latest one that came out in the michael wolf book, take that with a grain of salt, there are all these dog whistles that people pick up on. Hes a defiler of societal norms. When that kind of defiling happens, when you have someone whos the commander in chief of the Strongest Army in the world, who doesnt tell the truth on a consistent basis, thats the thing to really be worried about. I dont think its a coincidence that people like david duke and Richard Spencer were drawn to trumps banter. Youve spent a lot of time calling out antisemitism on the left. This is everything from the leaders of the womens march to people like representative omar who has been called out a number of times this spring for making comments that overtly or indirectly referenced antisemitism or played on antisemitic tropes. Do you think the left is really as dangerous to jews as men in charlottesville with tiki torches shouting, jews will not replace us . I definitely think theyre threatening. The person thats going to come into your synagogue with a gun, god forbid that is going to happen, that person is very, very likely to be a white supremacist. We all know thats true. That kind of antisemitism is very easy to understand because its extremely blunt. The person comes in and says, kill all the jews as they have throughout history. I think one of the reasons that ive tried to write a lot about antisemitism on the left is because i believe that it is much, much hearter to see for a lot of people because it often comes cloaked in the language that is familiar to our own tongues. The language we want to identify with. The language of antiracism, of social justice, of all these things that sound really good. But when social justice comes in the form of believing that only one state in the world does not deserve a right to exist, then you have to sort of wonder what kind of justice that really is so i think antisemitism on the far right, at least right now, is much more physically violent. I dont think theres a question about that. But the antisemitism on the far left is very, very insidious. We only need to look across the pond to england to see what can happen and very, very quickly when its mainstreamed. Im really distressed by the way the Democratic Party has sort of not censured people lycra shed talib and omar for the things theyve said. I think its a really, really bad sign about where things could be headed. I also think, look, its very easy to call out someone like steve king. Its very, very hard to call out someone like omar. This is someone thats a woman of color, wears a hijab, has an inspiring story of being a refugee from somalia. A, who wouldnt want to support someone with that profile . B, shes subject because of that part of her identity to a lot of hate and vitriol. I think when we criticize someone like her, its very important to criticize her based on her ideas and not based on her identity. I think thats sort of a very important thing to follow in general when were talking about this. Yeah. You know, one of the complicated parts of criticizing someone like representative omar on her ideas and i hear this all the time in my reporting the sense that people who sit in these different seats hear differently comments coming from someone like representative omar, representative clab, they dont hear the dog whistles that some jews hear when they speak. They dont see them as trope. They see them as a way of policing their words or trying to crack down on them because of who they are. How do you as a writer, as someone whos a member of different communities, try to navigate that, this idea that when you hear antisemitism, other people hear nothing at all . Thats a really good question. I have to say so, i wrote one of the first i think the first column about omar in had the times. She responded to it publicly. I invited her to come into the New York Times and talk about her ideas on twitter. Shes still very much welcome. I would love to host her. But i think i a little bit made a mistake in that column where i framed what she had said i dont think it was wrong but i think it was limited in terms of the trope she had used. And its sort of become a meme. Tropes are bad. If you believe in bds, if you believe in theres a lot of misreporting about what bds is really about, right . People including in many newspapers try and frame bds as being about fighting for palestinian rights. That is not true. You can support palestinian rights, and that is excellent, and i do. But bds is about the elimination of the jewish state. Bds is about fighting for reality in which, to put it in just the most generous terms, theres a binational state. Anyone who knows anything about the politics and the history of minorities in the middle east can imagine what that binational state might look like. It would be unbelievable amounts of blood shed and maybe genocide of the jewish people. Thats just what that would look like. I think i made a mistake a little bit in framing it in terms of the language she used. The language was bad. All about the benjamins is bad. It suggests dual loyalty. It suggests theres a secret jewish hand behind you all know in this room. The deeper problem, right, is we have representatives in government who are unapologetically supporting a movement that believes in eliminating one state of all of the states in the world. Thats the thing that i think we need to be focusing on, even more than the specific language thats used maybe. [ applause ] else i know youve been grappling with in recent months is problems at home. In the New York Times accusations around ive got news. Sorry. Okay. Everythings great in the. We iss household, dont worry. At the New York Times we had the revelations of this cartoon published in the International Edition of the New York Times. What cartoon . What cartoon. Youve really been working on that book. Im impressed. Youve probably seen this, this image of President Trump led around by benjamin net y netany. And there were a lot of people who saw this and thought, this isnt just dog whistle little antisemitism. This is out and out antisemiti antisemitism. Whats it been like with you at the New York Times to be wrestling with this moment . Whats the conversation like . I was on book leave when the cartoon was published, but i recommend you reading Brett Stevens had an excellent column that summed up my views of the thing. The takeaway, right, is if antizionism becomes a normative political view, this is what follows. So its one thing to believe in a College Seminar where youre talking about an arcism or abolishing the nation state. Okay. There you can have a conversation about should nation states exist. Was this a good idea . Should there have been partition in pakistan . Its an intellectual discussion. But in the International World and what were seeing on the progressive left, and i think thats very much reflected in all liberal institutions, including the New York Times, is the antizionism as a normative political he belief. When that happens, things like that cartoon follow very, very naturally, which is why i think its very important to expose antizionism for what it is. Whats it like being a jew at the New York Times . This is like the number one question i always get. Its given me an unbelievable platform. You know, i was at the wall street journal for many years. It was great in many ways. I, you know, left along with many people from the editorial page or where the paper was going on trump, where the editorial page was going. So i basically went from being the most leftwing person at the wall street journals conservative editorial page to, like, a fashicist at the new yk times. So, thats my life. Send my therapist bills to so, its uncomfortable. But in a lot of ways i, a, i see it as my experience as being sort of typifying the jewish experience of the moment. And i think its very, very important, as uncomfortable as it is to be politically homeless, to maintain our liberalism in this moment. And when i say liberalism, i mean that broadly defined. I dont mean republican democrat. I mean holding onto the ideals that have made this country so, so special. And, frankly, like its not a coincidence that this country has been so good to the jews. Lincoln called america, i think this is so beautiful, he called america the almost chosen nation. Why is it the almost chosen nation . Because he, like so many of our other founders, believed that the jews were the chosen nation. They didnt see the state as al. They didnt see the state and there was a whole debate about what should go on the seal of the country. Various people suggested it should be moses leading the israeliites out of egypt to the red sea. Going back to the first principles, what out of all the flaws this country is based on, how do they connect with jewish ideas and how do they connect with those . Thats a good place to be. If we follow that as our north star, we wont be misled. Thats where we have to stop