NJ Should Pass on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Definition of Anti-Semitism

 New Jersey Spotlight News reports that there is Strong support in Assembly for adopting IHRA definition of antisemitism, but adds that “Aspects of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition are controversial.” Indeed. NJSN reports:

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition underlines widely accepted aspects of antisemitism, including statements that the Holocaust was a lie or exaggerated, or claiming that Jewish people control the media. What has proved controversial is the part of the definition that specifies certain criticisms of Israel — that Israel is a racist state, and that Israelis should be held to a different standard than other democracies — as antisemitic.

“This has nothing to do with Jews. This is about protecting Israel,” said Raz Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University. “It silences Palestinians who, for example, will say that Israel is a racist state, which is a very legitimate critique against any other state in the world, including the United States.”

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition includes this example:

"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."

Of course, identifying "the Jewish People" as a collective is racist, by definition. A group of Jews has no right to a state that legally prioritizes Jews over non-Jews. A legitimate state recognizes individual rights equally for all. If the above IHRA example is taken literally, then the state of Israel is a racist endeavor. All individuals have a right to their own personal self-determination, whether acting individually or in voluntary agreement with others as a group. But none should be favored or disfavored under the law.

So, is the State of Israel designed to guarantee only the Jewish people their collective right to self-determination?] If so, Israel is racist. But Israel's Declaration of Independence states: 

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be the Jewish people their right to self-determination and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

Despite the opening nod to  "the Jewish people [and] their right to self-determination," that paragraph doesn't sound racist to me. In fact, Israel, while majority Jewish, includes 20% Palestinian, ranging from Arab descent to Christian orientation, as well as Muslim. There are atheists and the non-Jews also, all of whom live in equality under the law. But the point is that accusing Israel of being a racist state, or of having racist policies or laws, does not necessarily make that person anti-Semitic. The IHRA definition of antisemitism seems to shield racists who happen to be Jewish from criticism. But a racist who happens to be Jewish is still racist, and people should be free to call that person out without being accused of being an anti-Semite. 

The IHRA definition of antisemitism includes some uncontroversial manifestations. For example:

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.

Yes, this is anti-Semitic. But such views are racist across the board. Substitute “Jews” with black and “Jewish” with black (or any other ethnic group), and you still get racism. Racism is the idea that a person's beliefs, character, choices, and moral standing are inherited through body chemistry—such as skin color, genes, or blood—and thus should be judged by the actions of ancestors of his ethnic group. That definition already describes anti-Semitism. It doesn’t need a special exception. 

The IHRA’s definition of antisemitism is a bad, biased definition. It seems more designed to shield Jews from criticism than to present an objective definition of anti-Semitism.

I should clarify that NJ’s adoption of the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism would not have legal teeth, as there are no hate speech laws in the state, which would be anti-free speech and unConstitutional under the First Amendment. NJSN reports:

A bill that would have New Jersey adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism has overwhelming support in the state Assembly, with three primary sponsors and 56 co-sponsors out of 80 possible representatives.

Supporters say a clear definition of antisemitism would protect Jewish people and make hate speech easier to spot and stamp out.

But it is clearly a step toward censorship, especially given the prevalence of DEI initiatives in NJ. The government should never be in the business of “stamping out” any speech, either explicitly through laws or implicitly through biased legal language.

Related Reading:

Racism—Ayn Rand

Fighting Racism With Collectivism is No Way to Exterminate Racism

Facebook Backtracks on Free Speech Policy; Political Extortion?

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

Cohen: Hate-Crime Laws are "Totalitarian Nonsense"

Free Speech, not Self-Censorship, is the Answer to 'Offensive' Free Speech [UPDATED]

HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship (Inalienable Rights)--Nadine Strossen

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. For His Moral Ideals Rather Than His Politics

In commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Peniel E. Joseph, the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts University, said in a 2014 article:

King emerges as a talented individual whose rhetorical genius at the March on Washington helped elevate an entire nation through his moral power and sheer force of will.

The March on Washington was when King delivered his famous 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. Joseph goes on:

Yet missing from many of the annual King celebrations is the portrait of a political revolutionary who, over time, evolved into a radical warrior for peace, justice and the eradication of poverty. During his last three years, King the “Dreamer” turned into one of the most eloquent, powerful and scathing critics of American society. King lent his moral force and power to anti-poverty crusades that questioned the economic system of capitalism and called for an end to the Vietnam War. . . . King’s powerful rage against economic exploitation and war is often overlooked when we think of him as only a race-healer.

The "moral power" of King's famous "Dream" speech in Washington was actually the moral power of the Founding Fathers resurrected. In that speech, King reminded Americans of the ideals laid down in the Declaration of Independence—the philosophic blueprint for the constitution and the new nation—and called on Americans to fully live up to those ideals. “In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check,” King said.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Yet, King's Dream was to be corrupted by an inner contradiction. In his later years, King questioned the legitimacy of capitalism and turned to what he termed "democratic socialism," a hybrid of two evil systems (democracy and socialism) that repudiates the very ideals he espoused in his speech.  In a supreme irony, King unwittingly aligned with the political ideology of America's first encounter with Democratic Socialism, the Confederate Slavocracy.* Therein lies one of the great American paradoxes—the clash between King the moral force and King the political revolutionary.

When the Founders drafted the Declaration of Independence, they laid down the radical principles that would give birth to capitalism. These 55 brilliant words—the opening lines of the second paragraph of the Declaration—sum up the essence of capitalism:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . .

When King reaffirmed those ideals—that all men are created equal, possessing inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness protected equally and at all times under a government of objective law rather than of men—he was really, though apparently unwittingly, affirming the foundational principles of capitalism.

Capitalism is the system based on individual rights, rights-protecting government and the only kind of equality consistent with justice—equality of individual rights before the law. Because of these principles, Capitalism is the only social system that banishes exploitation and war, because individual rights banishes aggressive or initiatory force from human relationships—particularly aggressive force by government against the people. Under capitalism, exploitation is replaced with voluntary trade to mutual benefit among individuals, a win-win in which individuals trade value-for-value and get better together. Capitalism liberates every individual to think and act on his own judgement and work to lift himself from poverty, and protects those who take up that life-affirming challenge from would-be exploiters who don’t. And under capitalism, war is replaced with peaceful coexistence among nations based on that principle of trade.

So why would King uphold the moral principles of capitalism in his most famous speech while repudiating it in his politics? It's obvious that King didn't understand capitalism or fully grasp the moral implications of the Declaration of Independence that he so eloquently honored.

He undoubtedly viewed the America of the 1960s as capitalist, when in fact what America had was a mixed economy; a mixture of economic freedom and government controls—that is to say, an economy corrupted by heavy political interference, which included the virulently anti-capitalist Jim Crow segrgation laws. America in the 1960s was just emerging from a time when large segments of blacks were legally oppressed and hence unable to enjoy “the riches of freedom and the security of justice” that is capitalism. Blacks, King failed to understand, were not victims of capitalism but of statism.

King’s legacy includes an end to state-sponsored segregation and oppression—a monumental achievement. But his democratic socialist political policies also “succeeded,” strengthening and entrenching the mixed economy in America, which he mistakenly perceived as capitalism—the result being, in turn, to reduce economic opportunities for many poor but ambitious people, including African-Americans.

To his credit, King explicitly opposed full-blown socialism, which he believed leads to communism, a system that he correctly understood "forgets that life is individual." But he wrongly believed that "Capitalism forgets that life is social," leading him to his hybrid democratic socialism. He failed to see that capitalism, by leaving individuals free to pursue their own values in the absence of physical coercion, provides the only proper moral foundation for both individual flourishing and robust benevolent social interaction. That moral foundation, rational egoism, is implicit in the Declaration of Independence, which defends the inalienable rights of every individual to pursue his own happiness.

Thus is the paradox of Martin Luther King.

Commentators like Joseph urge us to elevate his politics to at least the level of his ideals. That, of course, would be an impossible contradiction. But ideas are where the real power lies. Since ideas are the driving force of human events, Martin Luther King, despite his politics, remains one of my heroes. Standing in a line that includes John Locke, the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and Ayn Rand, among others, King reaffirmed America's Founding ideals at a crucial point in American history. That, to me, is his real legacy contribution to America. For that, I am grateful to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

HAPPY MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY!!

* [See Randy E. Barnett, Our Republican Constitution, Chapter 4 “How Slavery Led to a More Republican Constitution.” See George Fitzhugh, "Centralization and Socialism." See especially C. Bradley Thompson, America's Revolutionary Mind, Epilogue, Page 359-386: Thompson documents the "common intellectual heritage" of 19th Century pro-slavery intellectuals and 20th-21st Century Progressives.]

Related Reading:

Martin Luther King: An 'Authentic American Hero'—or Not?

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Fundamental Principle of America

“I Have a Dream”: Martin Luther King Urges Consistency to Founding Principles

On This Constitution Day, Remember the Declaration of Independence

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal—Ayn Rand

Martin Luther King: Right On Racial Justice, Wrong On ‘Economic Justice’

Who Represented the ‘American Institution’ -- Martin Luther King or His Enemies?

Axios’s Slam of Meta’s Elimination of Fact-Checking System Exhibits Shocking Political Ignorance—Or Worse?

Meta just walked away from fact-checking, and AXIOS didn’t like it one bit. In More Speech and Fewer Mistakes, Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, Joel Kaplan, explained:

In recent years we’ve developed increasingly complex systems to manage content across our platforms, partly in response to societal and political pressure to moderate content. This approach has gone too far. As well-intentioned as many of these efforts have been, they have expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable. Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in “Facebook jail,” and we are often too slow to respond when they do. 

We want to fix that and return to that fundamental commitment to free expression. Today, we’re making some changes to stay true to that ideal.

The changes? “Ending Third Party Fact Checking Program, Moving to Community Notes.” These “Independent Experts,” Kaplan explained, are “like everyone else.” [They] have their own biases and perspectives. This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact check and how. 

Great!

But in Behind the Curtain: The new gatekeepers, Axios responded:

The truth is, it is an almost impossible task for companies to police speech without bias or unfairness. That leaves two other options — the government or individuals. Both X and Meta are choosing people, with an imperfect ‘community notes’ mechanism to correct misinformation in real time.

That opens most of social media up as a Wild West of expression, where high-quality, trustworthy information will commingle with garbage and misinformation. That's what free speech absolutists have long fought for.

There isn't a tyrant past or present who wouldn't cheer Axios. What does Axios think the government is? It's people. Individuals. The only difference is that the government people are armed. Axios apparently believes that individuals, acting privately, are incapable of distinguishing between high-quality, trustworthy information and garbage and misinformation, but individuals backed by the power of legalized force—the law—are somehow capable of creating that perfect mechanism by successfully making that distinction! This, from a private media company!

Axios acts like "government or [private] individuals" is a balanced choice. Nothing can be further from the truth. Government has a legal monopoly on the use of force and violence. A government edict is imposed on all media, leaving both media owners and consumers no choice—and with the power to levy fines and jail terms for saying the “wrong” thing. A private individual (or company) has no such legal power of coercion of any kind. A Mark Zuckerberg speech regulation, or lack thereof, only affects his own company, which is subject to competition, leaving the field open to other platforms with different content moderation standards—and consumers free to switch and choose. 

But, in Axios’s view, we end up with some "Wild West of expression," which implies lawlessness. WRONG! Speech cannot be legally used to violate others' rights. That's why we have laws against inciting violence, making terroristic threats, or endangering public safety. We have libel and slander laws to give victims a chance to recover damages inflicted by others’ lies. Our real danger is a Wild West of arbitrary government speech regulation.

The choice "government or individuals" is a choice of despotism or individual freedom—nothing more and nothing less. The very fact that the choice is even posed as legitimate and balanced shows shocking ignorance of basic political philosophy, of America's very Founding ideals, and of history more broadly—or, worse, an understanding of the stakes involved with Axios deliberately opening the door to despotism, with Axios becoming one of the government’s gatekeepers. As Megan McArdle presciently puts it,

If you see someone advocating for more suppression of dangerous speech — be it heresy, hate speech or “misinformation” — you can be sure they expect their side to have exclusive use of the ban-hammer.

I’ll give Axios the benefit of the doubt and assume ignorance. But what does that say about the state of knowledge in our culture that a widely read social media outlet like Axios can spread such political misinformation with apparent impunity? 

Private platforms, of course, have a right to moderate content posted on their platforms by their customers. And they may find that some form of content moderation or suggestive bylines are necessary. Still, kudos to Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg for championing the powerful idea of intellectual freedom through  global information platforms governed by free speech — and the people — not by the platforms themselves.

The very idea of centralized fact-checking, whether by a private media company,  which is legitimate but can be problematic, or by the government, which is downright dangerous, ignores a crucial fact. What’s lost in all of the hand wringing over social media misinformation is the fact that it’s never been easier for the average person to do his own fact-checking.  Remember that consumers can easily reference professional fact-checkers on their own. All we need to do is get off of our lazy mental asses and do a bit of intellectual labor. 

Related Reading:

The Nature of Government, by Ayn Rand, From Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

The First Amendment Restricts Government, Not Private Citizens

Here’s the truth: Meta ending fact-checking is a win against censorship by Megan McArdle for WAPO.

The fact that merely letting people talk to each other feels like a dangerous concession to the right tells you just how much power progressives had amassed. Ironically, it reminds me of a quote cited often when conservatives complained about progressives throttling their opinions: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”

Meta's Content Moderation Turnabout by Roger Pielke Jur. for The Honest Broker

A Lesson From 1930s Germany: Beware State Control of Social Media By Heidi Tworek for The Atlantic

The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech--by Kimberley Strassel, especially Chapter 2, “Publius & Co.”

HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship by Nadine Strossen 

Meta Makes Major Moves to Advance Free Expression on Its Platforms By David Inserra

Quora: Is Luigi Mangione, who shot United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a hero or villain?

 Quora: Is Luigi Mangione, who shot United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a hero or villain?

I [posted this Answer:

The fact that this question is even posed is an indication of how close to moral rock bottom many people have sunk—and how much of the evil poison of Marxism has moved out of the University Ivory Tower and penetrated into American culture. It also raises the suspicion that America is in much graver danger than previously thought.

Any discussion of the pros and cons of American healthcare in the context of Thompson’s murder would be to effectively endorse violence, including assassination and terrorism, as a means of settling disputes among citizens. This is not only a moral abomination. It is a repudiation of freedom itself—the Enlightenment values of individualism, rule of objective law, economic, political, and intellectual freedom—and the inalienable rights that define that freedom. In other words, a repudiation of the United States of America.

The Founders and their generation wrote a Constitution that creates the broadest possible field for settling disputes among its citizens, or between citizens and the government, peacefully and lawfully. Indeed, among the five freedoms listed in the most important amendment, the First Amendment, includes the right of the people “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” This indicates the critical importance the Founders attached to the peaceful settling of grievances and differences. To ensure this right, the freedoms of speech and assembly are backed up with Constitutionally guaranteed equal protection of the laws, a civil court system, protection from unreasonable searches and seizures and other property rights protections, a right to be represented by an attorney, free trade, and enforcement of the sanctity of contracts. 

The framers understood that civil society cannot exist without the ability to settle disputes peacefully and satisfactorily, and thus without violence—and that violence can only be averted by offering citizens a robust means of peaceful dispute resolution. Think of how common it is for activist groups to organize in order to advocate for and against any issue. Exercising freedom of speech and assembly, activist groups seemingly spring up like weeds around every issue. Show me an even minimally controversial issue, and you will find activist groups fighting peacefully on the intellectual and political battlegrounds of ideas. For example, when the city council of Paterson, NJ, considered (and ultimately passed) an ordinance to “ban sleeping or setting up camps in public places” that block public access, which was inspired by the problems caused by homeless encampments, homeless advocates jumped to oppose the ordinance. 

It’s not just that some people are celebrating the killing of Brian thompson. Those people are obviously monsters. There are always monsters. What’s so shocking is the apparently large number of people who are giving moral support to these cold-blooded monsters by simultaneously condemning the killing and in the same breath qualifying that condemnation with a “but . . .,” such as “but I can understand the frustration” or some variation. These people are effectively condoning the assassination of an innocent hardworking man through equivocation. The “It’s wrong, but . . .” equivocation is essentially saying that killing an individual who symbolizes some flaw in American healthcare is OK under some circumstances. Worse, this line of logic implies an endorsement of the broader idea that assassination can be a legitimate reaction of ANYONE with ANY grievance against ANY American institution. Equivocators, how do you think some would-be copycat assassin will interpret your “murder is wrong, but …” moral abomination? Likely, as a green light. I have a major grievance against the government’s K-12 education monopoly. If I took to shooting a random school superintendent or school board president as a symbol of my grievance, would the equivocators “understand” my “frustration?” If not, why not? Your feelings? Your opinions? Well, what about others’ feelings and opinions over other grievances? You’ve opened the door to violence as a legitimate means of expression. What limiting principle would prohibit my education assassination, or assassination relating to some other grievance over some other issue, once you’ve opened a “safe space” for political assassination, via the Luigi Mangione?

The CEO assassination has apparently drawn a bright moral line across America. One side represents the moral good, and the other the moral evil. The good side is where the people who firmly condemn this cold-blooded, premeditated assassination stand. 

The other side—the evil side—is where the monsters who cheer stand, obviously. But it’s also the same side where the “It’s wrong, but . . .” equivocators stand. Of these two, the equivocators are the most morally guilty. Why? These are typically otherwise decent people who unwittingly give moral cover to the monsters. Nonetheless, they cannot be excused. Evil thrives when good people give it moral sanction. And sanction for evil is exactly what the equivocators give to the monsters. 

We Americans love political, economic, and cultural debates, especially controversial—even rowdy—ones. But there is a line around debate that should NEVER be crossed or even blurred—the line where violence begins. 

Of the two groups on the side of evil, the guiltiest ones are not the monsters. The guiltiest ones are the “it’s wrong, but” equivocators. It is they who are paving the way for the monsters, because it is they who are giving violence an opening into America’s robust, Constitutionally protected system of peaceful grievance alleviation and dispute resolution.

Those who now sanction the political assassination of Brian Thompson, a good, decent, talented CEO with a family who heroically chose to bear the responsibility and heavy burden of running a great American insurance company, are turning their backs on Americanism and civilization and pointing us back to barbarism. By the standard of the politics of assassinstion, there is now a pathway—a safe space—for any individual or group with any grievance against any American institution to engage in terrorist murders of whomever they see as symbolizing that institution. 

Related Reading:

CEO Assassination Draws a Bright Moral Line Across American Culture

Against ‘But …’ by Jonah Goldberg

An Astonishing Level of Dehumanization By Peter Wehner: There is no defense of those who celebrated the murder of Brian Thompson.

Elizabeth Warren, CEO-Assassin Cheerleader by Liz Wolfe for Reason

The CEO killing is awakening the ‘yes, but ...’ brigade by Megan McArdle for WAPO

AOC's Justifications of Violence by Liz Wolfe for Reason