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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   28348 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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Biden-⁠Harris Administration Releases First-Ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism

Last week the Biden administration published the anticipated national strategy to counter antisemitism.

This national strategy sets forth a whole-of-society plan that both meets this moment of escalating hatred and lays the foundation for reducing antisemitism over time. Informed by input from over 1,000 stakeholders from every sector of American society, it outlines over 100 new actions that Executive Branch agencies have committed to take in order to counter antisemitism—all of which will be completed within a year. The strategy also calls on Congress to enact legislation that would help counter antisemitism and urges every sector of society to mobilize against this age-old hatred, including state and local governments, civil society, schools and academic institutions, the tech sector, businesses, and diverse religious communities.

To support the whole-of-society call to action, today the Biden-Harris Administration also announced commitments to counter antisemitism and build cross-community solidarity by organizations across the private sector, civil society, religious and multi-faith communities, and higher education.

The Full Report starts with a legal disclaimer that it does not supersede any existing regulation or law- it should be viewed as a blueprint and aspirational. However, the 100+ "calls to action" touch every corner of government, even the USDA and and Department of Forest Services. One of the main architects of the initiative is Kamala Harris's Jewish husband, Dough Emhoff.

The first question you may have is "what's antisemitism?" I have discussed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in the past, and it is acknowledged in the report as the most prominent definition which has been adopted by the US:

There are several definitions of antisemitism, which serve as valuable tools to raise awareness and increase understanding of antisemitism. The most prominent is the non-legally binding “working definition” of antisemitism adopted in 2016 by the 31-member states of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which the United States has embraced.

The IHRA working definition of antisemitism includes:

  • Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
  • Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
  • Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust
  • Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
  • Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
  • Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
  • Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
  • Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
  • Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
  • Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

The Biden administration's strategy to counter antisemitism includes censoring criticism of "the power of Jews as a collective", even while there exists a whole-of-society effort to engage in mendacious criticism of the power of white men as a collective.

There are indeed well over 100 calls to action, which includes things like:

  • AmeriCorps will distribute resources on antisemitism and countering antisemitism through its national service programs. (By September 2023)
  • Federal agencies will organize or participate in communications or events marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27) and Jewish American History Month. (By May 2023)
  • The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) will launch a campaign featuring artists who engage, unite, and heal communities through the arts, and who incorporate themes of countering antisemitism and other forms of hate in their artistic practice. (By September 2023)
  • IMLS will increase learning opportunities in rural libraries and museums on both Jewish American history, such as Jewish contributions to agriculture, and histories of antisemitism, including the Holocaust. (By March 2024)

The most tangible impacts of this strategy in the short term are the mandated propaganda initiatives described here and in many more "calls to action" in the document. By my view, the most alarming dimension of the strategy is in combatting online antisemitism (emphasis in original):

The Biden-Harris Administration also encourages all online platforms to independently commit to taking several actions that will counter antisemitism, including: ensuring terms of service and community standards explicitly cover antisemitism; adopting zero-tolerance for hate speech terms of service and community standards and permanently banning repeat offenders of these policies; investing in the human and technical resources necessary to enable vigorous and timely enforcement of their terms of service and community standards; improving their capabilities to stop recommending and de-rank antisemitic and other hateful content; increasing the transparency of their algorithmic recommendation systems and data; treating antisemitism as a distinct category in transparency reports; and more.

In today's day in age, where something like Twitter is unambiguously the public square, this call to action is clearly intended to abridge the freedom of speech even though it wouldn't run afoul of constitutional checks in the court system. In particular, the call for permanent bans from the public square in the face of a "zero-tolerance" policy is chilling. If you rob a Walmart, or assault someone, even if you are a repeat offender, you will go to jail but then eventually be released. A permanent ban from the public square is tantamount to a worse punishment than faced by many criminal offenders.

The Call to Congress is even more alarming:

We call on Congress to hold social media platforms accountable for spreading hatefueled violence, including antisemitism. The President has long called for fundamental reforms to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and Congress should remove special immunity for online platforms. This should include removing immunity if an online platform utilizes an algorithm or other computational process to amplify or recommend content to a user that promotes violence, or is directly relevant to a claim involving interference with civil rights or neglect to prevent interference with civil rights.

...

We call on Congress to pass legislation requiring platforms to enable timely and robust public interest research, including on the spread of antisemitism and other forms of hate, using platforms’ data and analyzing their algorithmic recommendation systems, while maintaining users’ privacy.

The Right Wing has naively supported changes to Section 230 that would prohibit politically-motivated content censorship, on the logic that if they aren't publishers they shouldn't be censoring political speech. The more likely changes to Section 230 would be that social media companies will be required to have strict content policies and moderation against antisemitism and other forms of hate speech in order for social media companies to have legal protection.

This call to action doesn't seem unrealistic, I noted last month that Ron DeSantis travelled to Jerusalem to sign a hate-speech law which was described as "the strongest antisemitism bill in the United States". Likewise, this all-encompassing initiative by the Biden Administration has sparked absolutely no opposition of any note, indicating it's one of the rare areas of bipartisan consensus among "our" representatives.

Generative AI is only mentioned in one part of the fact sheet:

The ADL will partner with the Interparliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism to convene a meeting in the fall to examine the impact of artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence on online antisemitism.

No doubt AI will be more prominent in the Second-Ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.

One of the most tired memes is "replace 'Jew' with 'white' in this article and look how 1488 it looks loool", but I have to say if this document were a whole-of-society effort to combat anti-white hatred online, among our society, and institutions, it would be unambiguously identified as fascist, white supremacy.

Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

Obligatory reminder that one of the first actions Biden took upon taking office was rescinding Trump's executive order banning executive-branch training that makes these sorts of claims about white people.

Edit: It wasn't limited to white people, but it was widely understood that nobody with any real power in the executive branch wanted to run trainings that made similar claims about people of any other race.

Do you have further information for that?

My first thought is that it was performative deTrumpification—he did something, so it’s got to go. If it was clearing the path for anti-white training, I haven’t really seen the follow through.

It was this executive order, repealed on Biden's first day in office.

Here's Biden's 2023 follow-on 'whole of government' "Equity" EO: https://www.whitehouse.gov/equity/

It's chock-a-block with the government's plans to:

  • stuff every agency full of DEI commissars ("requir[ing] agencies to designate senior leaders accountable for implementing the equity mandate")

  • giving those commissars increased control and oversight over the agency's policymaking and enforcement decisions ("instruct[ing] agencies to consider bolstering the capacity of their civil rights offices");

  • directing the agencies to slant everything they do through DEI analysis ("direct[ing] agencies to produce Equity Action Plans annually and report to the public on their progress");

  • ensuring that resources will be allocated to the DEI commissars to carry out this new institutionalized and systemic racism/sexism/heterophobia ("direct[ing] the White House Office of Management and Budget to support agencies’ Equity Action Plans");

  • increasing the amount of racial, sexual, and gendered discrimination and graft in federal contracting ("formaliz[ing] the President’s goal of increasing the share of federal contracting dollars awarded to small disadvantaged business by 50 percent by 2025"); and

  • carefully pruning the collection and dissemination of federally-collected data and statistics so that these progressive DEI shibboleths can't be challenged ("focusing [agency OCR] efforts on emerging threats like algorithmic discrimination in automated technology" and "further promot[ing] data equity and transparency").

What do you mean? There's been reports of CRT training in the military since then.

I don’t honestly have a great handle on what constitutes CRT. I guess I’d believe that the military has picked it up; if they did, it was probably down to the executive.

In the defense industry, diversity training has remained fairly anodyne. The closest we got to Internet-activist talking points was “race-blind isn’t good enough.” I wanted to see Trump’s EO so I could tell whether that would have made it past.

In the defense industry, diversity training has remained fairly anodyne.

You keep saying this as if you don't want to admit what's happening. https://reason.com/2020/08/13/sandia-laboratory-nuclear-white-male-privilege-training/

And then when you're given evidence you forget all about it by next week. Is this deliberate?

My reply is simply, "which do you expect me to trust? Some guy on the internet, or my lying eyes?"

ETA: it is amusingly on brand to though see LockMart chase [latest thing] off a fucking cliff but I also suppose that I am in no position to cast stones.

By "off a fucking cliff" do you mean "they will continue receiving lucrative government contracts until the collapse of the American Empire"?

Wait, why did I get notified here? Was there a ping?

I keep saying this because it matches my experience. No one was giving me this evidence last time I raised the subject. Or the other time which got a little sidetracked by some guy ranting about socialism. So no, it's not deliberate. I'm just clueless.

arjin's example was better, anyway. Coincidentally, it's the same workshop, same year, and the same smug journalist blowing the whistle.

I don’t honestly have a great handle on what constitutes CRT.

It never ceases to amaze me how precise people's confusion on critical theory is. But if anyone's curious, a one sentence summary would be: dividing society into oppressor races and oppressed races, and analyzing social problems through that lens.

Or if you want something more in-depth and from the horses mouth, you can read something like Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement.

In the defense industry, diversity training has remained fairly anodyne

Is this going to be like that time you asked someone for an example of segregation, I gave you a link to segregated housing, you went "holy shit, how is this legal", and promptly refused to change your mind about anything? I wouldn't call this anodyne but YMMV.

You've convinced me. I won't try to pretend that's anodyne. So yeah, I'm seriously unsettled, and I'm reevaluating whether I've been misreading the messaging at my company.

I really didn't believe we were getting stuff like that. Given the level of cross-pollination in defense, it's unlikely that we are much less woke than LockMart. I could believe that the messaging is very stratified, and that expensive, controversial workshops are only spent on the upper management. Or it's possible that I've just had my head in the sand.

For what it's worth, you convinced me that people are successfully bringing back segregated housing, too. I stood by my belief that Pynewacket was being hyperbolic, but I was naïve to assume that sort of project would be banned.

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