Opinion
Sharing a post on Instagram isn’t very brave
All too often, users oppose antisemitism when it’s trendy but then spread hate about Israel
November 10, 2022 18:07
3 min read
All too often, users oppose antisemitism when it’s trendy but then spread hate about Israel
November 10, 2022 18:07Being a mother of a newborn has meant I am digesting the world’s events at odd times. Discovering we have a new PM at 10pm under the darkness of a duvet, or scrolling through Instagram at 2am to discover that a global pop star has been spouting naked antisemitism.
On the one hand, I suppose we should be grateful that the likes of Kim Kardashian, Kayne West’s ex-wife, eventually took a pause in her constant push of products to condemn his antisemitism and pledge her support for the Jewish people.
But on the other hand, it is of course too little, too late for such performative gestures.
Hip-hop culture has long promoted the antisemitic narrative that Jews are rich and powerful. So it was no surprise to me that one of the genre’s biggest stars had descended into a full-on meltdown.
Musicians from Ice Cube and Jay Electronica to Jay Z have rapped about Jewish power and influence. And before his most recent outbursts, Kanye had given erratic interviews in which he had talked about his “admiration” for Jewish people, Israel and our sense of community. It was as if you could see what was coming.
I am not particularly comforted by the idea of a slogan posted on Instagram professing support for Jewish people, which was the viral response to West’s tirade started by comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s wife, Jessica, who caught the crest of a wave. “I support my Jewish friends and the Jewish people,” her post read, along with a plea to her nearly 600,000 followers to share the message.
“If you don’t know what to say, you can just say this in your feed,” she added.
When one of the world’s most famous artists started spouting tropes from Hitler’s playbook, with white supremacists hanging banners of hate in support of him on a LA freeway, the most anyone could seem to manage in response was to skirt around the obscene levels of racism with a version of “some of my best friends are Jewish and I like them”.
At least Kim Kardashian went a bit further. “Hate speech is never OK or excusable,” she wrote on Instagram.
She added: “I stand together with the Jewish community and call on the terrible violence and hateful rhetoric towards them to come to an immediate end.” Well, if I have any sympathy for anyone, it is with a woman destined to co-parent with a narcissistic racist for next 18 years.
But surely the point is that if you don’t know what to say in response to Kanye West’s overt and relentless racism, but are suitably outraged and disgusted about other forms of racism online, then you are not the antiracist you thought you were.
My eyes rolled at the predictable sight of social media users who regularly share and like misinformation and antisemitic tropes when violence sparks in Israel, suddenly professing their support for their Jewish friends.
Do. Me. A. Favour.
If the Hadid sisters had half a brain cell, they might have put two and two together. Both have shared numerous “free Palestine” memes to their millions of followers. In March, Gigi compared Ukraine to Palestine, writing: “HANDS OFF UKRAINE. HANDS OFF PALESTINE.” (Those capitals are hers.)
Why bother to engage with the complexities of the conflict when it is socially acceptable to share statements like that?
Racial hatred of Jews remains the most unsexy and un-Instagramable issue to get behind because of the pervasive nature of antisemitism itself.
I can’t speak for the Hadid sisters. But the uncomfortable truth is that for many users, deep down somewhere in their varying degrees of consciousness lie those same ideas shared by Kanye.
Take a mum in a baby group who — with no shame and a straight face — shared her opinion that a shadowy “group of elite people” were harvesting the adrenaline of children so they could live longer and control the world. Between rice cakes and nursery rhymes, these ideas exist in the brains of other people.
Kanye West’s praise-turned-antisemitism reminded me of a past interview with MC Wiley’s manager — before Wiley launched his own onslaught of hate directed at Jews (that saw him thrown off Twitter) — in which he revealed that the grime artist’s mother told him that he had to be represented by someone Jewish.
What was it, I wonder, that led her to believe a specific ethnicity in a manger might bring her son good fortune?