Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt on Stamping Out Hate

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Jonathan Greenblatt is here, Head of the Anti-Defamation League. He has a new book whose title speaks for itself, called It Could Happen Here: How America Is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable -- And How We Can Stop It. We'll also get his take on the Whoopi Goldberg comments about race and the Holocaust that got her suspended for two weeks from The View on ABC. Greenblatt went on The View with Whoopi Goldberg the following day for a dialogue on the topic.

Jonathan Greenblatt grew up in the greater New York area, Trumbull Connecticut. Has been a social entrepreneur starting the bottled water company, Ethos Water, that gave a portion of the proceeds to water projects in the developing world. He served as President Obama's Director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, and more before heading up the ADL. Jonathan, thanks for coming on with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jonathan Greenblatt: Brian, thank you for having me on the show. I'm a big fan.

Brian Lehrer: Let's begin on the news. Here's a little of what Whoopi Goldberg said originally on The View last week.

Whoopi Goldberg: It's not about race. [crosstalk] No, it's about--

Speaker 4: [crosstalk] Jews are a different race.

Whoopi Goldberg: It's not about race, it's not about race.

Speaker 4: What is it about?

Whoopi Goldberg: It's about man's inhumanity to man, that's what it's about.

Speaker 4: But it's about white supremacy. It's about [crosstalk]

Whoopi Goldberg: Well, but it's not about [crosstalk]

Speaker 4: Jews and race.

Whoopi Goldberg: But these are two white groups of people. How do we--

Speaker 4: They don't [crosstalk]

Speaker 5: They didn't see them as white people.

[crosstalk]

Whoopi Goldberg: You're missing the point. You're missing the point. The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let's talk about it for what it is, it's how people treat each other.

Brian Lehrer: That was on The View. Here's a little of how she began to explain it. I think it was the following night after the backlash began, she talked to Stephen Colbert on the Late Show on CBS.

Jonathan Greenblatt: Same night.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, same night, sorry.

Jonathan Greenblatt: Yes, same night.

Whoopi Goldberg: As a Black person, I think of race as being something that I can see. I see you and I know what race you are. The discussion was about how I felt about that. I felt that it was really more about man's inhumanity to man and how horrible people can be to people, and we're seeing it manifest itself these days, but people were very angry and they said, "No, no, we are a race." I understand. I understand.

Brian Lehrer: Whoopi Goldberg on Colbert. Jonathan, you and Whoopi were on The View together, I guess that was the next day. I think I've got my days a little messed up here, but what's your basic take?

Jonathan Greenblatt: Well, look, the Holocaust was about a kind of racialized antisemitism that led to the systematic annihilation of European Jew. Literally, the Nazis saw themselves as the Aryan master race and again, and again, and again, framed the Jewish people as a subhuman race. What we need to keep in mind is that race is a social construct and it varies in time and place, and sociopolitical context. For Whoopi Goldberg, who was thinking about race in the context of America 2022 and looking at it purely as an issue of Black and white, she couldn't see the link, because she was very ill-informed. Because Jews like my grandfather who was a Jew from Germany, his entire family was slaughtered by the Nazis because they saw him as a different race.

What I'll acknowledge is that the Jewish people were complicated. We are a religion. We are an ethnic group. We have our own language, our own customs, our own rituals, our own culture, that has persisted and persevered for thousands of years in diaspora. Again, if you try to fit the, if you will, the hexagonal Jewish people into like a round peg into a square hole concept, Brian, the hexagonal Jewish people into the square hole of race in America, it doesn't fit very neatly. The other thing I would just say, Brian, is her comment that this is white on white, this notion that Jews are all white is also simply wrong. We are a multiethnic multiracial community. There are Jews of all hues, if you will. While many of us present as white, many of us do not, and so I think there was also a myth there.

Even if we were presenting as white, if we see what happens in this city, in Brooklyn, every single day we see Jewish people who are visibly Orthodox and observing, being harassed, being assaulted. We're dealing with a case right now that happened this past weekend. Again and again, the Jews are targeted because of how we look, because of where we're from, because of what we believe. That kind of the antisemitism just needs to be called out. Whether she was intending to malevolent or not, the ignorance is still the same.

Brian Lehrer: Can both things be true in a way that Nazism and the Holocaust were about white supremacy, and Hitler saw the Jewish people as a different race from himself, but in the context of the United States, where there is obviously antisemitism, but Jews, for the most part, have the same white privilege. I think about 85% of Jews are what would be considered white typically in this country and have the same white privileges other white Americans compared to Black Americans.

Jonathan Greenblatt: Look, as the British writer David Baddiel says, for the extreme right, we're not white, and for the far left-- I mean, we're not white enough for the extreme right, and then for the far left, we're too white. To be really honest, the Nazi death machine was about Aryan supremacy. It was about the notion that the Germanic people were superior to Sloves and to Russians, and certainly to Jews, and to Roman, and to other ethnic groups. Even describing that as "white supremacy" the way we think about it today, Brian, I don't think works.

Again, to bring it back to today, my own wife is Jewish woman from Iran, she's dark-complexioned. She doesn't look white. I just think trying to fit the Jewish experience into this current convention is not helpful and antisemitism is at the beating heart of right-wing white supremacy. It is core to their ideology, it is central to their malevolence, the idea that there is a Jewish cabal trying to subvert the "white race". I think we just need to recognize that antisemitism takes many forms. Whether it was the antisemitism that we saw in this city last May when Jews were getting beaten up in broad daylight, that wasn't white supremacy, those people were coming from anti-Israel rallies.

The antisemitism that Jews are facing in Brooklyn today, that isn't white supremacy, that's Orthodox Jews being beat up by local, often teenagers or adults, who often are people of color. Antisemitism can't be put in one box, it is just too complicated and it comes from all sides.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to go on to some of the larger themes in your book and away from the topic of what Whoopi Goldberg said in a few minutes, but as you might have guessed what happened, all of our lines have filled up without me even giving out the phone number on this one, which happens to be, listeners, 212-433-WNYC. Let's take a few phone calls. The way I was going to put the question out was particularly for Jewish listeners, in this case, to talk about whether you consider yourselves white, or if you consider yourselves something else. If you are, not obvious Jew of color, do you consider yourselves white and what did the Whoopi Goldberg comments tip off for you or trigger for you in terms of your own perception of yourself in that respect?

Jordy in Lower Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jordy.

Jordy: Hi, perfect. I'm so glad you put the question that way because that's exactly what I wanted to address. I am Jewish. I was not offended at all by what Whoopi Goldberg said. I, from my youth and my parents, was taught that my Jewishness was a religion. I understand that it's more complicated in some regards because we are also a culture and can be ethnic groups, and we do have a long-lasting culture as Jonathan Greenblatt said, but I was taught and do hold to this day that I'm a religion. On the census, I check white.

I know Jews come in every color so are we of two races? Are we Jewish race and whatever color we are a race? It doesn't make sense. I refuse to accept that Hitler defined me as a race. I refuse that, I reject that idea, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm white. Whoopi Goldberg made a very valid point, it is about inhumanity of one group to another group and it continues today with many other groups. I just don't see the value or the importance of calling us a race. I think it's going to make things worse.

Brian Lehrer: Jordy. Thank you. Jonathan.

Jonathan Greenblatt: Look, Jordy. I hear you. If you open up the book Mouse, that was the jumping off point for her comments. The first page of the book is a quote from Hitler that literally says, "The Jewish people are absolutely a race, they are just not a human race." To your point, Jordy, racism doesn't make sense, nor does racialism make sense, but the reality is that the Nazis define us a certain way and literally obliterated the Jewish people of Europe and the kind of Holocaust that was perpetrated across countries, across continents. Never before had one single group been exterminated that way.

Look, the race card that Hitler used can't be denied. You might not see yourself that way. Frankly, I don't see myself that way because Jews do show up in all shapes and sizes. You can convert into Judaism. You can choose not to be Jewish, but whether or not you choose to go to synagogue every week, Jordy, I know lots of Jews who don't do that. Most still say, "But I'm culturally Jewish," or "My grandparents were Jewish." I think that's just where we are, like it or not.

With respect to Whoopi, can I just say something, Brian, I believe in the Jewish value of teshuvah or repentance. We all make mistakes. I have made plenty, all of us do, and so she apologized, so I accepted her apology because I think it's important to recognize when people make an error and just say, "Hey, I got it wrong." There's nothing wrong with embracing them when they do that.

Brian Lehrer: Whoopi Goldberg is not the problem. I think everybody would agree. She's coming from a place of good faith. There are malevolent anti-Semites out there.

Jonathan Greenblatt: Correct.

Brian Lehrer: Plenty of them. Whoopi Goldberg, her whole history, and even the way she approached this issue is she's not the problem, right?

Jonathan Greenblatt: Yes. The way she approached the issue, to your point, came from a kind of ignorance, or I think a narrowness in how she saw it, and yet she immediately pivoted. Look, by inviting me on show, Whoopi opened up a national conversation that needed to happen, and so I credit her for that and I credit her for being willing to acknowledge her mistake and move on.

Brian Lehrer: One more call on this topic and then we'll move on with Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League. Sonic in Newark, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sonic.

Sonic: Hi, thanks for taking my call again. I was born in the Soviet Union, in my passport it was written that I'm a Jew, but the saying was that they don't hit you in the passport, they hit you in the face. There's an expression to look Jewish and many Americans, including American Jews, don't understand what it means. It doesn't mean that you wear a Kippah. That means that you have a facial features, and most of the 6 million who were murdered during Holocaust were first identified as Jews. They were identified by total strangers, some by their neighbors. Again, there are plenty of examples, for example, in the [unintelligible 00:13:26], Jews were trying to get out, get Aryan papers and Polls were telling them, "Look, with your face, you would not pass as a Poll."

Again, there are certain Jewish features, of course, in this country, it's a little bit more obscure because they're Italians, they're Greeks, so we don't look exactly like Germans or Slavic people. That's why Whoopi Goldberg had this problem. You can admit that, or at least most of the people identify Jews as been Ashkenazi European Jews. There's a mix up right now with this Jews from different countries and whatever, but again, there are definitely Jewish features, and many American Jews, including you don't understand that we look different, and that we are definitely a race.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. You're talking about having descended from a people from ancient times in what we now call Israel. Jonathan, what do you think as you hear Sonic?

Jonathan Greenblatt: It's true that you can look at the DNA of many people who identify as Jewish and find that their heritage goes back to the Levant, to that region of the world. That's simply true. Again, I think race is a social construct. The way we think about race today in America in 2022 is not the same way the Nazis thought about race in 1932. It's not the way Americans thought about race in 1822. These things change. Again, Jews are complicated. In Russia itself, you have Bukharan Jews who look different than Ashkenazi. This is a phrase we often use, Brian, it's complicated and that's true for this issue as well.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Did you ever have a conversation with Whoopi Goldberg about why she took that stage name? Goldberg was not her given name. Whoopi was not her given name. The New York Times in reporting on this issue said in many past interviews, Ms. Goldberg has said that while she does not practice any religion, she identifies as Jewish and adopted her distinctive stage name, partly because of that family heritage.

Jonathan Greenblatt: I don't know. I didn't talk to her about that.

Brian Lehrer: All right, let's go onto your book, and again, this ominous title is, It Could Happen Here: How America Is Tipping from Hate Toward the Unthinkable―And How We Can Stop. It could happen here is a historical literary reference, right?

Jonathan Greenblatt: Correct. I was making an illusion to Sinclair Lewis's book from the 1930s when he wrote something like a satire about what was happening in Europe and the notion that it could actually happen here in America as well. People thought back then that America was entirely different than Europe. That you could never see the rise of a strong man like Hitler, but the reality is, his book was written before the emergence of Charles Lindbergh, who was an avid anti-Semite, and a national hero and was someone that many people thought was going to run for elected office.

The reality is the Philip Roth book, The Plot Against America is about a potential Lindbergh presidency. I wrote the book using that title in mind, but also because, Brian, as I was alluding to a few minutes ago, my Jewish grandfather from Germany, the country he was born, the only country he ever knew could have never imagined as a young man before the rise of the third Reich and the Nazi death machine, that the country would turn on him, regard him as an enemy of the state, destroy everything that he ever loved, and murder almost his entire family and friends, and force him to flee to this country as a refugee.

When he was a young man, he never could have guessed he'd have a grandson in America that would be me, or my sibling, or my cousins. Then my father-in-law, was born Jewish in Iran. The only country that he and his family ever knew, and never could have imagined before the Islamic Revolution and the rise of the Khomeini death and cult, that they would turn him into an enemy of the state, that would destroy everything that he ever loved, and force him and his family, including my future wife to flee and come to this country as refugees.

When he was a young man, he never could have guessed that his grandchildren would one day be born in America. Those are my kids and my nieces, and nephews. Brian, I don't think knowing my own family's history that I can take for granted that my grandchildren will be born in this country, unless you really fight for what we have, because it could happen here. The conditions could change. Democracy is not ordained by natural law, and the pluralism that has given Jews and so many others, so much privilege and so many rights is not some foregone conclusion. If we want it, we've got to work for it to keep it, and I really believe that.

Brian Lehrer: Many people might say, "Yes, we have plenty of antisemitism in the US, plenty of racism in the US, and other forms of hate in this country," but not the conditions or even the large majority demographics of one group anymore, like say Germany in the '40s to impose anything like a Holocaust. Do you disagree?

Jonathan Greenblatt: Well, I would tell you this, when the ADL was founded in 1913, we're the oldest anti-hate group in America. When we were founded, Jews in this country literally lived with more uncertainty than Jews in Germany. In this country, Jews couldn't buy homes in many places. Quotas kept us out of universities. Discriminatory practice kept us out of medical institutions. The reason why we have all these hospitals named Beth Israel, Cedar Sinai, et cetera, is because Jews had to found their own healthcare institutions. This is the reality.

Jews in Germany lived with more certainty, with more security than Jews in this country when we were created. I interviewed, in my book, Barbara Walter, who's a professor, who just wrote her own book called How Civil Wars Start, who talked with me about the fact that the conditions are ripe in this country for literally civil war in a way they haven't been in well over 100 years. I interviewed Greg Stanton, who is a former professor from George Mason University for this book. He runs the genocide; it's called the Genocide Watch Network, and his organization monitors countries for genocide. He says a number of the determinants seem to be in place in this country in ways they've never been before.

At a time when democracy seems to be failing, when institutions seem to be buckling, when the norms seem to be changing every single day, I do worry and it doesn't mean that there's going to be a wholesale slaughter of the Jewish people? I'm not saying that, but I think a social unraveling, civil unrest, I think these things could be imminent realities if we don't engage and do so quickly.

Brian Lehrer: Matt, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League. Hi, Matt.

Matt: Hi. I know you've at least moved on from that topic, but I was calling to comment to Jonathan Greenblatt. First of all, thank you for calling, thank you on to the ADL for calling out Tucker Carlson on what is far more egregious and far more in your face, and far more dangerous anti-Semitism coming from his show, which also has a humongous large audience, much more than the view, and to ask you to keep the focus on not disproportionately on women of color when these kinds of things happen and even when these kinds of things don't seem to happen, when way less mild stuff happens. It seems like the focus is highly disproportionate on women of color as what's it called anti-Semitism, in some cases actually as anti-Semites.

Brian Lehrer: Jonathan.

Jonathan Greenblatt: Yes, I think we call it to hate wherever it happens. The reality is I've spent a lot of time in the last five years calling out the extremists who were circling around President Trump. I think in many ways he gave license to these people and his bully pulpit was so big, so prominent that we spent an awful lot of time calling attention to the things that he was doing that we found so problematic. At the same time, I think the anti-Semitism, as I said before, comes in many forms, and I don't think we have a disproportionate consideration of women of color who say anti-Jewish things.

We'll call it out whenever it happens, whoever is responsible for it, whether it's a member of Congress or it's a president, or it's another person in public office, or another person, a celebrity type who’s in public life. In the book, I detail Meyers Leonard, the basketball player for the Miami Heat who I dealt with. Nick Cannon, the celebrity who's African-American who I dealt with. Again, President Trump and many others who certainly aren't all women of color.

Brian Lehrer: Well, Trump and much of the Christian right in this country positioned themselves as the strongest defenders of Israel, mostly the Netanyahu, if you will, conservative political branch in that country and have adopted the phrase "Judeo Christian." I think largely to separate themselves from Muslims and from people of color. I've even heard commentators say, “Trump wasn't such a booster of Netanyahu to get Jewish support. He wasn't going to get much of that anyway. He did it to mobilize conservative Christian support.”

How much do you agree with that at all? When you talk about the unthinkable as you put it possibly happening in the United States, is it not possible that Jews would be considered the in-group with the majority who is most likely to perpetuate that unthinkable?

Jonathan Greenblatt: Okay. To unpack all of this, I think number one, the term Judeo Christian is a sociological term that was coined in the 1940s or 1950s. It far predates society as we know it today, and it's not necessarily intended to be exclusionary about the groups, but rather, it just speaks to the consonants between these two faiths and many of the shared values between them. I think number two, as it relates to President Trump, I mean, the reality is that he was a very complicated person in many respects. While as I've already said on the show, he was indeed playing footsy, if you will, with some of the worst offenders from literally his first interview with Jake Tapper, suggesting that he didn't know who David Duke was in early 2016, which was preposterous.

Brian Lehrer: Well, it was also a lie because he had spoken about David and denounced him years earlier.

Jonathan Greenblatt: Yes, it was a flat out lie to his campaign credentialing white supremacist media for their events, to going on the Alex Jones Show, to the Jewish star tweet against Hilary Clinton, to the “America First” slogan, which was Lindbergh slogan, to the last campaign ad with Soros and Lloyd Blankfein. I mean the whole thing and yet at the same time, let's recognize he has a Jewish son-in-law and his daughter converted to Judaism. He had Jewish grandchildren in the residents of the White House.

Literally, there had never been a president with as personal, a relationship with the Jewish people as Donald Trump, literally since the country was founded, and yet he enabled and emboldened these extremists and the anti-Semites. That contradiction is a reality and so we need to recognize that while there's much I criticize that also doesn't mean he didn't do some things that I agreed with over the course of four years. I recognize those things because like life, Brian, oftentimes it's not just Black or white, it's in bit nuanced and there are always shades of gray.

Tucker Carlson, as the last caller suggested, we have called him out again and again, and again, and again, because his invocation of anti-Semitic tropes is deeply problematic. Now, he can claim support for the state of Israel as might other political figures on both sides of the aisle, mainly on the GLP side in this narrow respect, but that doesn't necessarily take them off the hook where they engage in hate. In terms of who claims to be more supportive of the state of Israel or what's the political strategy of one part of the other, I can't really speak to that, but I can speak to the fact that whether you demonize or delegitimize the Jewish people or the Jewish state, I find all of it very problematic. That's why we call it out at the ADL without respect.

I don't think either political party, Brian, has a monopoly on morality. You can find intolerance on either so of the ideological spectrum. I think at the ADL, our job here is to call balls and strikes, and call out hate when it happens.

Brian Lehrer: Right. The conversation that we're not going to have time to go deeper in that have some people objecting to some of the things you're saying even here, is that some groups have much more power than others to enforce their hate, whether it is against Jews or anyone else.

Jonathan Greenblatt: I wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post last fall and I would describe it as follows. I think anti-Semitism from the right is like a bomb cyclone. If you look back at extremist-related murders over the last 25 years, the overwhelming majority were committed by people we would call far-right extremists, white supremacists, armed militia enthusiasts, sovereign citizens, accelerationists, and so on and so forth. You can go from Charlottesville to Pittsburgh, to El Paso, to Capitol Hill, and you can see the catastrophic impact these people can have.

Anti-Semitism from the far right is like a violent hurricane that will kill you in your tracks. The anti-Semitism from the far left, I would liken to climate change. It's changing slowly but surely and yet measurably, and people don't pay as much attention to it, might actually deny it, but it is absolutely real and it creates the conditions in which, again, as we saw last May, Jews are getting beaten up in broad daylight at Times Square. Jews are getting beaten up in broad daylight in the Diamond District. Jews getting attacked all over the country and none of the assailants are wearing MAGA hats.

I hear the point about the power dynamics, and when you had someone in The Oval Office, the commander in chief of our armed forces, who told the proud boys to stand back and stand by. That was a terrifying moment and it was real, but that doesn't mitigate and change the fact that you could have anti-Semitism coming from other people on the political spectrum. That simply is a statement of fact. It's not to say that there's an equivalence between the two.

Brian Lehrer: Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League. His new book is called It Could Happen Here: How America Is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable -- And How We Can Stop It. Thank you so much for coming on with us. We really, really appreciate it.

Jonathan Greenblatt: Brian, I'm a big fan of the show. Thank you for having me. I hope I can come back.

 

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