OPINION:
What Mark Twain said about learning German could now be applied to decoding “woke” messaging: “Such words should be held before mirrors so as to reverse their meanings.”
Inclusion means exclusion. Tolerance is an escape hatch for vigorous intolerance. Seeking truth is deemed propagating misinformation. Anti-racism is the new veil for racists to hide behind. Gender-affirming surgery means gender transformation. Science represents a unanimous and definitive conclusion: It is not something that should not be questioned.
Sometimes, propaganda is even more mendacious. This is true when it is used as a smoke screen to conceal the commission of the condemned act. For example, some Democrats claim that former President Donald Trump, the current Republican presidential front-runner, must be removed from ballots to preserve democracy, and that’s exactly what they recently did in Colorado.
Left’s delve into the self-evident lie that Israel is committing genocide against civilians in Gaza instead. What is the “woke” battle cry now heard on campuses and protests the world over? “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
The message is clear: It is a call for the genocide of the Jewish people and for Israel to be rendered Judenrein — that is, free of Jews. What’s shocking to me is that when the protesters are asked which river or which sea, many have no idea how to answer the question.
One would normally think that genocide is an undeniable and unmitigated evil that should be unequivocally condemned. Not so among the academic elite and progressive groups. In congressional testimony, we were told by the leaders of three of the nation’s finest universities that calling for genocide is “context-dependent.” So, not all calls for genocide are bad.
Inadvertent utterances that could be interpreted as a microaggression — and what can’t — can be grounds for reeducation or suspension. Addressing someone with the wrong pronoun (despite the fluidity of preferred pronouns among some groups) can result in significant fines. But calling for the genocide of Jews? That kind of hate is tolerated.
Racism is in vogue among progressives. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu defended her decision to exclude White people from her holiday party. Companies take pride in ignoring candidates of the wrong gender or race when making decisions about hiring and promotion. White children are forced to apologize to their Black classmates for being oppressors.
As injurious as these inequities certainly are, those on the receiving end of them typically do not fear for their safety. Not so among Jewish students. They live on campus or at least spend much of their time on campus. They can’t avoid going to classes where their co-religionists are demonized by tenured professors. Even at a distance, they hear calls for their murder. As we witnessed in recent congressional testimony, they cannot rely on support from their college administrators.
Too many of America’s universities have ceased being institutions of higher learning and instead have become indoctrination centers for the left.
They are now factories churning out evidence-dismissing, research-resisting social justice warriors who disdain critical thinking. Today’s antisemitism isn’t the good old genteel kind of antisemitism of yesteryear. That kind of antisemitism was based on excluding Jews to preserve the status and bloodlines of other religious and ethnic groups.
Today’s antisemitism has a frightening genocidal wave running through it. Hamas is a corollary to ISIS, but the “woke” crowd generally condemned ISIS. So why do they support Hamas instead of condemning it? Maybe because, unlike ISIS, Hamas kills Jews.
Video clips abound on social media where protesters openly call for the murder of Jews. According to a mid-December Harvard-Harris poll, 51% of young Americans believe the Israeli state should be “ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.”
Mind you, this poll was taken long after the atrocities of Oct. 7 were made available to anyone who wishes to see them.
Never underestimate the wickedness of the “woke.” In the 1940s, parents’ worst nightmare was that their children would fall into the hands of Josef Mengele.
Today, “woke” teachers routinely target children for experimental hormone treatments and sex reassignment surgeries. Many parents resist, often at the risk of losing custody. Some parents go along with it.
However you look at it, the “woke” have mainstreamed the Mengalization of our children. Jews should not expect better treatment from those who call for their elimination.
Fortunately, due to the recent arrival of several new Jewish and pro-Israel groups, such as the newly founded Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, the Jewish community no longer has to rely on the now-misnamed Anti-Defamation League.
The ADL could have used the hundreds of millions of dollars that it was entrusted with over recent years to combat antisemitism emanating from the throngs of “woke” warriors that we see populating protests all over the country.
Since Jonathan Greenblatt became CEO of the ADL, however, that organization ignored or downplayed the threat to the Jewish community that has been boiling up from bastions of the left, such as college campuses.
Instead of defending Jewish life, liberty and legacy, the ADL engaged in a senseless competition with the Southern Poverty Law Center to defame as many people as possible who don’t cling to its hard-left agenda as racists and extremists.
• David Wanetick is CEO of Davos in the Desert, an anti-globalist movement dedicated to providing forums whereby business leaders, thought leaders and government servants share their ideas for safeguarding freedom and liberty.
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