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White Supremacy Erases Its Violence: The Predictable Blaming of Antifa

By Stephen Young

…idea of White Supremacy emphasizes how wealthy whites benefit from working- and middle-class whites identifying with them, often against their own economic interests. So, apart from simply failing to take responsibility for their followers’ actions, how does blaming Antifa or BLM for the violence at the Capitol fit into all of this? There’s a long history in the United States of leaders who are aligned with or benefit from White Supremacy exhibit…

In Just 10 Years ‘The Book of Mormon’ Musical Has Gone From America’s Darling to America’s Latest Problem — The Inverse of the Mormon Story

By Jake Johnson

…Contrary to the source of their ridicule in the nineteenth century, twenty-first-century Mormons were now too white, too American, too representational of values receding into a problematic past. Mormons found few defenders when The Book of Mormon came out of Broadway’s gates swinging; left to its own devices, the Church made lemonade by taking out ads in the Playbill. “You’ve seen the play,” boasted one, “now read the book.” Clever. But it might…

War Criminal Henry Kissinger, First Jewish Secretary of State, Had a Lengthy History of Antisemitism

By Noah Berlatsky

…lity. Marginalized or colonized people who attempt to oppose the righteous march of power—like the Vietnamese, Allende, or yes, even American Jews—are irritants to be swatted aside or (if they’re lucky) ignored. Empowerment fantasies are popular, as any number of successful superhero franchises will assure you, and Kissinger has many admirers and apologists. These include Hillary Clinton, the New York Times (whose obit tellingly praises him as “th…

Are Churches Making Americans More Racist?

By Kristopher Norris

…o see ourselves through white-washed lenses. In the wake of each of the far-too-many incidents of racialized violence over the past few years I see conservative and progressive Christian writers alike use the term “white supremacist” to refer almost exclusively to individual agents or groups. We have been taught to see racism as the product of bad actors: Dylann Roof at Mother Emanuel, Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd. Ye…

Updated: Netflix’s Gay Jesus Upsetting Brazilian Christians Has a Centuries-Old History

By Bernard Schweizer

…s against Life of Brian or the angry letter-writing campaigns against Jesus-as-loser on South Park. They may constitute a brief inconvenience and perhaps put a dent into the profitability of the Porta dos Fundos YouTube channel, but they’re unlikely to put a stop to the steady march of the triumph of humor. For reasons that are beyond the scope of this article (but which are detailed in my book), Christianity has accommodated itself to the forces…

Catholic-Jewish Tension and the Rededication of Catholic Holocaust Memorial

By Benjamin Weiner

…the Conversion of the Jews,” caused a firestorm. The seemingly relentless march of Pope Piux XII toward sainthood, despite his Holocaust-era quietism, continues to ruffle Jewish feathers. (This is a metaphor. We don’t have feathers.) And, most recently, the reinvestment of Lefebvrist bishop Richard Williamson, a delusional anti-Semite, though since moderated in a rare admission of papal fallibility, provoked ongoing aggravation. All of these even…

Countering the “Countering Violent Extremism” Program

By Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

…’s not counting likes, or scouring for cleavage. CJ is trying to lure would-be-jihadists into conversations about radical Islam on the internet. CJ is not on the verge of becoming the first ever West Point-educated member of the Islamic State. Quite the opposite: his Facebook activity is sanctioned by the State Department and the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point. Last week, for the third semester in a row, the State Department hosted the…

A Memoir of Jewish, Transgender Spirituality

By Joy Ladin

…my personal experience, I limit its range. I’m only one trans person, male-to-female transsexuals constitute a small fraction of the transgender world, I am very much a product of a white, middle-class, mid-twentieth-century upbringing, I’m a religious (though not Orthodox) Jew, I’m an academic, and so on. But my hope was that by presenting my experience as specifically and intimately as possible, others would recognize aspects of that experience…

The Anti-Gay Highway

By Kathryn Joyce

…conservatives who are going to Africa, and they started spreading this anti-gay rhetoric across sub-Saharan Africa. We started getting a lot of statements from US evangelicals that homosexuality is wrong and that there is this Western agenda among gays to take over world. So it is coming from the West. Why is it a proxy war? In America, these politics have been going on for a long time—since the ’80s they have been used as a political tool to gain…

Herd Heroism in an Age of Rebels: The Cultural Roots of the Anti-Vaxxer Movement

By Michael Schulson

…ntal-figures material. But it’s not just teens for whom this kind of social-order-smashing destiny seems to hold a certain appeal. The notion of being chosen; of stepping out of society’s governing order, and there finding a more authentic expression of the self has, of course, a powerful cultural heritage. You see it in Emerson and the Transcendentalists, and you see it in the sort of anti-authoritarian Christianity that animates so many of Offit…