CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MAY 24, 2019, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“SIMILAR CAUSES FOR MEASLES, ANTI-SEMITISM PLAGUES”
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MAY 24, 2019, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“SIMILAR CAUSES FOR MEASLES, ANTI-SEMITISM PLAGUES”
At
first glance, there appears to be no relation between two plagues now affecting
California and much of America, the return of measles and a rise in
anti-Semitic rhetoric, vandalism and violence.
But a
closer look reveals both are based on misinformation transmitted via the
internet and social media, which then becomes widely believed. Both also employ
scapegoating.
Neither
plague originated in California, or even in America. But Californians and their
government can move to stem the spread of both within this state.
With
the measles, there’s a grossly overblown autism claim. Vaccinations, goes the
frequently repeated trope, often cause autism. This great exaggeration has
lurked in the minds of some non-scientists for many years. Its best-known proponent
is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He leads anti-vaxxers who – lacking proof – charge
vaccinations increase the incidence of autism, a problem some doctors believe
is overdiagnosed. Lacking anything else to blame, some parents make
vaccinations the scapegoat.
So far,
there are several dozen cases of measles in California this year, and no
deaths. Nationally, more than 700 cases are reported, the most in this century
– and the year is still young.
Lies
and scapegoating are also behind the anti-Semitism plague that most recently
manifested as murderous gunfire in the Chabad of Poway synagogue near San
Diego. Some of those lies are perpetrated by a movement seeking a worldwide
boycott of everything to do with Israel, the world’s only Jewish country, along
with divestment from investments there and sanctions against anything Israeli.
It’s called BDS – boycott, divest, sanction.
This
drive is most vocal on college campuses, including Stanford University and UC
campuses like Davis and UCLA.
Hotly contested California
student government votes for and against pushing university administrations
toward BDS show the efficacy of widespread anti-Israel propaganda, which many
times bleeds over into outright anti-Semitism. They also show how ill-informed
students can be.
One lie
is that Israel is an apartheid state, despite taking in and making full
citizens of many thousands of black Ethiopians, not to mention millions of
ethnic-Arab Jews expropriated and exiled from several Arab countries at the
time of Israel’s founding. Plus, the more than 1 million Arab Palestinians
living in Israel have citizenship and full voting rights.
It was
likely no accident that the 19-year-old Poway synagogue shooter was a Cal State
student exposed to BDS rhetoric on campus. Just as it was no accident when
another white American fired on worshippers in the Tree of Life synagogue in
Pittsburgh, PA last fall after seeing Nazi-like ideas on social media.
Is it
reasonable to expect impressionable young people to disbelieve what they see or
read when similar tropes are purveyed in the New York Times, arguably America’s
most influential mass medium? Especially when the editors who print them go
unpunished despite the newspaper’s apologies?
When
the President of the United States says there were “good people” among white
supremacists who chanted “Jews will not replace us” – a slogan based on another
lie– during their infamous 2017 Charlottesville demonstration/riot, is it
reasonable to expect no one will act on it?
The notion that Jews seek to replace white
Protestant Americans is immediately disproven by the fact that Jews have fought
and died in every American war and have lived here as long as anyone other than
Native Americans. How can Jews replace white Americans when almost all of
them are themselves white Americans? But
here, as elsewhere, when economic times get tough, Jews get blamed. Such
scapegoating spans two millennia.
Of
course, anti-Semitism has a far longer, more complex history than anti-vaxx
ideology. But anti-vaxxers refusing to inoculate as many as 30 percent of
pupils in some schools make California children vulnerable to contagion, where
formerly they were not.
Falsehoods like those
slandering Jews and vaccinations can only take root among folks willing to
believe almost any conspiracy theory about people and things of which they know
little.
Sad
reality is that the rhetoric of anti-vaxxers and anti-Semites will never stop.
It can only be combatted by education, which means public school curriculum
must change or these very contemporary plagues will never end.
-30-
Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough:
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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