H EADLINES
Katz Center Lecture Traces History of Hate
L OCA L
SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
THE THEME OF the 24th
annual Joseph and Rebecca
Meyerhoff Lecture in Judaic
Studies was soberingly timely.

The Herbert D. Katz
Center for Advanced Judaic
Studies at the University of
Pennsylvania hosted “Tracing
the History of a Toxic Present:
Antisemitism and Resurgent
Ethnonationalism” on Nov. 19,
just a few days aft er the FBI
reported a 14% rise in anti-Se-
mitic hate crimes in 2019.

Th is year’s lecture was deliv-
ered by Alexandra Minna Stern,
the Carroll Smith-Rosenberg
Collegiate Professor of History,
American Culture
and Women’s and Gender Studies
and Associate Dean for the
Humanities at the University
of Michigan. She is the author
of the books “Eugenic Nation:
Faults and Frontiers of Better
Breeding in Modern America”
and the “Proud Boys and the
White Ethnostate.” Th e latter
was published in 2019 and uses
historical analysis, feminist
studies and critical race
studies to deconstruct white
nationalism. She acknowledged the
urgency of her topic at the
beginning of her talk.

“2020 has seen the
emergence and the resurgence
en masse of far right actors
across the United States and
really across the world,” she
said. “According to the recent
Department of Homeland
Security threat assessment
report, which was issued
earlier this month, 2019 was
the most lethal year for white
supremacist violence in the
country since 1995. And you
may remember that was the
year of the Oklahoma City
bombing.” She added that white
supremacist extremists have
conducted more lethal attacks
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM in the United States than any
other movement since 2018,
attacks responsible for the
deaths of 39 people. Th ese
statistics are matched by a rise
in hate crimes.

Steven Weitzman, director
of the Katz Center, introduced
the event with a brief summary
of the organization’s 2020
fellowship program.

“Our fellowship program
this year has been focused on
America’s Jewish questions,
and our fellows have been
aiming to develop new perspec-
tives on the Jewish American
experience and on America
itself,” he said.

During her talk, Stern
explained that the wave of white
supremacy and extremism is
distinguished by the fact that
it has become increasingly
visible in mainstream culture
through conspiracy theories
and social media. She traced
this phenomenon to right-wing
movements in France in 1968,
which focused on infl uencing
culture rather than on existing
political parties.

Many on the American
far-right believe the Republican
party and
conservative movements have sold out to
Jewish interests, so they seek
to infl uence hearts and minds
rather than relying on tradi-
tional political organizing.

Stern wrote her latest book
because she has studied the
history of eugenics and was
interested in how it infl u-
enced contemporary far-right
movements. She argued that the
white ethnostate idealized by
white nationalists is a eugenic
project, and Jews are perceived
to threaten that project by
encouraging immigration,
interracial marriage and the
breakdown of gender norms.

“Jews are seen as the group
most responsible for the loss
of the white American Dream.

Nineteen-fi ft ies America has
vanished and will never come
back in large part due to Jews
and Jewish organizations,”
Stern said.

She identifi ed specifi c points
in history that American
white supremacists look to for
support of their views.

“Jews are blamed over and
over again for the passage of
the Hart-Celler Immigration
Act, which is seen as the point
of demographic no return,
as well as the Voting Rights
Act to enfranchise African
Americans,” she said. Th ese
developments would also set
the stage for women’s libera-
tion and gay pride movements
in the ’70s.

During her research, Stern
found that anti-Semitism sits
at the core of far-right ideolo-
gies and feeds into racism and
xenophobia. Israel is begrudg-
ingly admired and perceived
as an ethnostate, yet resented
for its Jewish population.

Jews are also viewed as the
nefarious force behind the desta-
bilization of gender and vilifi ed
for promoting non-hetero-
sexuality, women’s rights and
See Lecture, Page 16
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