Adam Johnson

There were 394 headlines in total in mainstream media.

during the first six months, focusing exclusively on antisemitism.

That's 394 versus only 34 for Islamophobia.

So it's about 10x more coverage.

And if you go to mentions, it blooms up to about 50x.

And so the question is, if the evidence shows they're comparably urgent and comparably serious, why is there this disproportionate focus on antisemitism?

And the reason is because the way the ADL indexes its antisemitic incidences,

again, in addition to actual incidences of anti-Semitism, which is obviously always bad, is they take criticism of Israel or Zionism as such as a form of racial hatred and racial prejudice.

So rather banal, I mean, again, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, has referred to the Palestinian scarf, the keffiyeh, as comparable to a Nazi symbol.

So they index these rather benign expressions of solidarity with Palestine as a form of racism, as a form of hatred.

So obviously, that's going to chill dissent.

Nobody wants to go to a protest that's viewed as like a pilgrim or being presented as such by New York Times or NBC.

And that was largely effective, especially in 2024, when they weaponized this idea of anti-Semitism to chill opposition to what most people perceived

Because again, we were seeing death counts of 300 a day, 400 a day.

There was one day in late October of 2023 that was 1,000 in one day were being killed, obviously 30% of whom were children.

And if you oppose this, the only way that in their, I think, deluded worldview, and some genuinely believe it, is that it has to be born from some kind of racial hatred.

And there's not...

there's not really a way you can counter that in a systemic way when that's constantly being beaten over people's heads.

And so one thing the book focuses on is it focuses on the exploitation of anti-Semitism discourse and people's, you know, I think otherwise natural and good liberal instinct to oppose anti-Semitism as a way of shutting down and chilling criticism of

the state of Israel, which is an actual state that actually exists.