Incidents of antisemitism have been on the rise over the past year, and a recent incident of hate in Los Angeles has shocked the city. Sullivan Barthel has more on the story.
Drivers on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles last Saturday were shocked to see a hate group standing on an overpass, performing Nazi salutes and hanging a banner saying ‘Kanye is right’ in reference to the controversial influencer’s recent antisemitic rants on social media.
These incidents follow West’s hateful rants on Twitter, which resulted in his suspension from the platform about two weeks ago.
Rabbi Dov Wanger leads USC Chabad. He knows that antisemitism is an age-old problem. But today, social media can amplify hate on an unprecedented scale.
Rabbi Dov Wagner: With Kanye West, you’re talking about somebody who has more than twice as many followers on social media as there are Jews in the world, that that carries a lot of weight. When you’ve got somebody so prominent saying horrible things online that makes the crazy person who’s doing Nazi salutes on the 405 feel more comfortable, feel supported, as you saw in the rhetoric they used was about Kanye being right.
Also last weekend, fliers spreading hateful antisemitic conspiracy theories were found around Beverly Hills and Bel Air. The same group that hung the banners is responsible for the fliers, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The hate group has also spread fliers elsewhere in the Los Angeles area on an almost-weekly basis.
Celine Masjedian, a student at Loyola Marymount University, noticed the fliers on her morning walk around her neighborhood. She says she was shocked, but didn’t report the incident to law enforcement.
Celine Masjedian: I wasn’t really sure what to do. I did pick up as many as I could. I put them in the garbage. I haven’t seen anymore, but I didn’t report it, no. It didn’t even cross my mind to contact law enforcement, because I felt that I don’t know if this is something they could deal with.
The Los Angeles and Beverly Hills police departments said they were investigating the distribution of the fliers. Rabbi Wagner hopes that those responsible for spreading these hateful messages will be prosecuted.
Rabbi Dov Wagner: What I do think is important is that law enforcement recognize that if these things are allowed to pass on unchallenged, they do inevitably escalate into something worse.
While law enforcement has been helpful, the extent of their response is limited, says Los Angeles Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League, Jeffrey Abrams.
Jeffrey Abrams: Unfortunately, law enforcement prosecution is not going to be either the way out of this problem or certainly not the sole solution. It really comes down to the people. There’s no question that there are far more people of good faith, far more people who care about their their fellow humans than these perpetrators of hate. So we the numbers are in our favor. So we need to use those numbers in our favor.
Abrams says that a recent ADL study shows that antisemitism surged by 34 percent in 2021 with a 28 percent increase in the Los Angeles area. It appears to be rising further in 2022.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Sullivan Barthel.