How to Argue in the Trump Era Without Losing Your Mind
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What sparked David Frum’s opening remarks about anti‑Semitic violence in Ontario?
Hello, and welcome to The David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. My guest this week will be Jessica Tarlow, co-host of the Fox News program, The Five, and author of the new book, I Disagree, Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends. She's also the co-host with Scott Galloway of the Raging Moderates podcast. The book for discussion this week will be a much acclaimed new novel, Yesteryear, by Carol Clare Burke, and I'll be discussing that at the bottom of the program. But before either my dialogue with Jessica Tarlow or the book discussion of yesteryear, I want to open with some thoughts about an outrage that happened in a place very close to me just these past days. On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the most holy day of the Jewish year, a gunman opened fire on the synagogue in this Canadian town, the Ontario town of Belleville.
Many of the details of this incident remain a little murky, but what we do have is the alleged gunman, the apparent gunman, is in hospital, and so is a police officer who gallantly came to the rescue of the synagogue. None of the worshipers in the synagogue were injured. The alleged gunman apparently used a shotgun, which discharged a lot of pellets, did a lot of physical damage, but it was not the kind of high-powered rifle that would have shot up this building, and so the people inside were safe. This story has become a big story in Ontario, in Canada, and around the world. It is one of a long series of incidents of intensifying violence against Jewish worshipers all around the world since October 7th of 2023.
To read about it in Belleville is very striking, however, and not just because it's so close to me. I have worshipped at the synagogue, Sons of Jacob Synagogue, where the crime took place. I've spent a lot of time there. It's near where I live in Ontario. I see this street in my mind, and it's such a powerful symbol of how life has changed for North American Jews. The Sons of Jacob Synagogue is a congregation that dates back to the early 20th century, but the building was built in the middle 1950s. It's a piece of modernist architecture, quite small, and it faces directly on a road in a residential neighborhood. There are no security precautions other than a locked door because it was built at a time when it never occurred to the Jews of North America that they could face violence from their neighbors.
That kind of threat was something they remembered from across the ocean and from a different time, not here and not now. But of course, it is here and it is now and striking all over the continent, all over the world. When these kinds of incidents happen, a certain kind of speaker, a certain kind of politician, a certain kind of online influencer, a certain kind of journalist will say, it is very important not to conflate the Jews of here, wherever here is, Ontario, Canada, the United States, New York, wherever it is, with the Jews over there. We should not be blaming the Jews of Belleville for the crimes of the state of Israel. Now, this kind of remark is intended to be a defense of the Jewish community that is under attack, but it is in its own way a form of incitement.
Because when you say we must not conflate the Jews here with the Jews there, we must not blame our Jews for those Jews, What you're doing is suggesting that there are some Jews who deserve the kind of violence just that happened. And what you're also doing is offering safety to certain Jews on condition that they disavow others. We see a lot of this in remarks by some people who are disaffiliated Jews who will say, we can be safer if only we separate ourselves from the Jews in Israel who are under attack. We can buy some safety for ourselves. I hear that. And I think that that is the counsel of cowardice. To buy safety for yourself by abandoning others, by separating yourself from others who equally deserve safety, that seems to me a reprehensible thing.
But as a strictly factual matter, it's just wrong that the no conflation argument, don't attack the Jews here for what the Jews over there did, begins with the foundation upon a lie.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What sparked David Frum’s opening remarks about anti‑Semitic violence in Ontario?
0:00–13:56
2
How does the history of anti‑Jewish myths shape today’s condemnations of violence?
13:56–31:14
3
Why does Jessica Tarlov argue that personal upbringing matters for civil disagreement?
31:14–57:35
4
When should you debate someone versus give them a platform in the Trump era?
57:35–1:08:37