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A Jewish journalist takes sides in America’s ‘slow civil war’
(JTA) — Jeff Sharlet admits up front that his book about what he and others call the “Trumpocene” epoch is not objective.
“Transparent subjectivity is a virtue for this kind of reporting,” he said. “I am trying to understand the proliferation, which is very real, of fascist flags [across America]. I don’t like it when I see a movement [creating] fascist folk art.”
In “The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War,” the religion reporter and writing professor chronicles his recent journeys across America interviewing QAnon acolytes, Christian nationalists, proud misogynists, unrepentant January 6ers, armed militia men and strict anti-abortion activists — all still in thrall to Donald Trump.
It’s a familiar story of an America on the edge, but Sharlet adds the perspective of a journalist who has long covered religion. He was among the first to note that Trump rallies were less political events than religious revivals. And like many religions, he says, Trumpism is resistant to the kinds of “civil discourse” that many people propose as an antidote to polarization.
“We cannot fact check a myth, right?” Sharlet told me in a video interview from his home in Vermont. “It’s not going to work to say, ‘That’s not true.’”
I wanted to speak to Sharlet to discuss what he calls the “gospel of Trump” and how it differs from partisan politics as usual. And I wanted to know more about his own Jewish background and how that has informed his project.
Sharlet, a professor of writing at Dartmouth College, shapes his narrative largely around the story of Ashli Babbitt, the 35-year-old woman who was killed by a Capitol police officer during the Jan. 6 riot. He talks to those who lionize Babbitt, standing on porches under flags reading “F— Biden” and “No Surrender.” He describes the ways she has become a martyr on the far-right, part of a mythology that inverts what happened on that day.
Babbitt, he suggests, was a victim of the “undertow” of the book’s title: a sense of “grief and loss and mourning” that animated protesters like her. Trump spoke directly to this “erosion of white power, which was felt more severely down the socio-economic ladder,” Sharlet said. “Ashli Babbitt experiences it as a loss, but she can’t name the structural details – like the fact that there’s such a lack of banking regulation that she ends up with a loan that literally nobody can pay back.”
So she joined the mob charging the Capitol. “Unprocessed grief curdles into rage, rage that just sits there until along comes Trump,” said Sharlet. The result is a stew that he unhesitantly calls fascism, which he has defined as a right-wing cult of personality that takes pleasure in violence, disdains democracy and considers its opponents decadent.
Sharlet visits churches where the same rage is heard in the pulpit and where Trump is regarded as a prophet, leading outsiders to wonder how faithful Christians could embrace Trump despite his own lack of Christian values.
On the latter assertion, Sharlet notes that Trump does have Christian values, rooted in the teachings of his childhood pastor, Norman Vincent Peale. The author of “The Power of Positive Thinking” and a proponent of the “prosperity gospel,” Peale saw material wealth as a sign of divine providence, and “applied Christianity” as a way to achieve it.
“Politicians have long borrowed from religion the passion and the righteousness, but no other major modern figure [before Trump] had channeled the tension that makes Scripture endure, the desire, the wanting that gives rise to the closest analogue to Trumpism: the prosperity gospel, the American religion of winning,” he writes.
He also speaks to pastors and followers who would read Trump’s words “like Scripture”: “Every tweet, every misspelling, every typo, every strange capitalization — especially the capitalizations, said [one pastor] — had meaning.” Sharlet compares this to Gnosticism, the heretical Christian movement that believed in “a form of exclusive knowledge reserved for the faithful, a ‘truth’ you must have the eyes to see.”
Sharlet, whose earlier book “The Family” was about a fundamentalist ministry influential among the Washington political elite, said Christian nationalists who are drawn to dictators and flawed strongmen often cite the story of King David. The Old Testament king gains God’s favor despite killing his rival Uriah and, depending how you look at it, seducing or raping Uriah’s wife Bathsheba. “They’re very invested in this idea of chosenness, and King David is chosen,” said Sharlet.
All this mixing of religion, power and grievance made me wonder if liberal denominations have an adequate response to the stirrings on the far right.
“In the book I go to Glad Tidings, a church in Yuba City, California. And you walk in and there’s no crosses, because the pastor thinks the cross is a weak symbol of sacrifice. Instead the pulpit is made of swords,” said Sharlet. “That’s not to say that liberal religion is always weak — I mean, you have Reverend William Barber of the Forward Together Moral Movement in North Carolina, and liberal, religiously motivated activists who put themselves in the position of abortion clinic defenders.”
Rage also curdles into conspiracy theories. Many of his interviewees share the dark fantasies of QAnon, which imagines that the U.S. government is secretly controlled by Satan-worshiping pedophiles. As outlandish as these ideas sound, he said, “It’s hard to find Republicans now who have not absorbed some element of QAnon. People have never even heard of QAnon, but are worried about pedophiles in the schools, ‘grooming’ their children, apocalyptic visions of cities as battlegrounds of crime. This is straight out of QAnon.”
An audience member holds up a large “Q” sign, representing QAnon, a conspiracy theory group, while waiting in line to see President Donald J. Trump at his rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, August 2, 2018. (Rick Loomis/Getty Images)
I ask Sharlet if his sample is selective, and if he only looked for and included people on the fringe to prove a point.
He countered by recalling his conversation with a woman who believed that the deadly Las Vegas shooting, by a high-stakes gambler who left 58 dead in 2017, was actually an attempt by ISIS on the life of Trump (who wasn’t in Vegas at the time). Sharlet was convinced the idea was hers alone. But a Google search told him that the theory was gaining traction on the far right, and that Tucker Carlson had invited a former congressman and retired brigadier general to talk about the “Vegas mystery” on his Fox News show.
Before his abrupt ouster last week, “Tucker Carlson had an audience of 4 million and a reach they say of more around 70 million – which is immeasurably greater than mine,” noted Sharlet. “So who is fringe? Me or Carlson?”
QAnon, he said, agrees with those who say QAnon draws on classic antisemitism. “It infuses QAnon,” he said. “You know, the blood of children being used to keep a secret elite, a secret cabal, directed by [Jewish financier and philanthropist George] Soros, and all the ‘globalist’ language. I was asked on a podcast what they mean by globalists and my answer was simple: the Jews. That’s what they mean, even when they don’t know that they mean it.”
Sharlet, the son of a Jewish dad and a Christian mom, describes himself as “a weird Jew, a secular Jew.”
“I was maybe more forcibly aware of this Jewishness when I grew up in a small town called Scotia, New York, and I got beat up for being a Jew,” he said.
After getting a degree in American history at Hampshire College, he went to work at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he edited Pakn Treger, its literary magazine.
“I don’t like to say that my Jewishness is formed by antisemitism,” he said. “My Jewish education is working for the Yiddish Book Center and all the complications of Yiddish.”
He says the anger he encountered on the road has come to his small town in “a very blue area.” “The folks opposed to fascism still outnumber those who are coming to praise it,” he said. “But my kid goes to a school district that is facing legal threat from far-right people, including Jews, who think that it is too supportive of kids like my queer kid and they want the school to be reporting any instances of kids showing up not wearing the right gender clothes and so on.”
That experience has also shaped his response to those who ask if he is elevating a fringe through his writing.
“I have a queer nonbinary child who is being criminalized in about 20 states now. This is where I keep coming back to,” said Sharlet. “To the folks who say, ‘It’s just terrible what they’re doing to the trans kids,’ I want to say that they really haven’t learned from history. They think that fascism is like, ‘Well, we got our victim. We’re all done here now.’ No. It comes for everybody.”
If there is a solution to this unraveling, Sharlet says it will come from liberals who learn from their right-wing counterparts and create institutions that fight for their values.
“The prime example is higher education,” he said. “For a long time liberals want to insist that higher education is neutral.” And while the left is insisting on neutrality, the right is creating colleges — Regent University in Virginia Beach, the evangelical Liberty University, Oral Roberts University, Hillsdale College in southern Michigan — dedicated to its ideas. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is diverting state funding to transform a small liberal arts college, New College of Florida, into a conservative-leaning school.
“We have to build out cultural institutions and we have to recognize and own up to the fact that colleges are places of values,” he said. “They do not sit with fascism. So own that space, defend that space, be proud of that space. I think every synagogue in America whether it wants to accept this or not and even some of the politically conservative ones have to ask, which side are you on? Neutrality isn’t an option. As Jews especially, we don’t have a choice.”
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Brussels Airlines workers threaten strike over flights to Israel, citing ethical objections
(JTA) — A Belgian union has threatened to strike against Brussels Airlines for compelling staff to work on flights to Israel, saying that anyone with “safety or conscientious objections” should be able to refuse.
ACV Puls, Belgium’s largest trade union, said on Tuesday that the company was breaking previous agreements to rely on volunteers for flights to Tel Aviv. The airline resumed flights to Tel Aviv on August 3, following a five-month pause because of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, and its first flights were operated with volunteers.
“Serious concerns exist among the staff regarding both physical safety and the mental and ethical impact of these flights,” ACV Puls spokesperson Jolinde Defieuw said in a statement. She added that making staffing mandatory was “particularly serious in the context of the ongoing war and the genocide in Gaza.”
ACV Puls, which represents aviation employees including pilots, cabin crews and ground staff in Belgium, said that a strike could follow if Brussels Airlines does not reverse its decision to resume regular staffing. The union argued that flying to Israel could not be deemed sufficiently safe, citing Belgium’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which advises against “all non-essential travel to Israel and Jerusalem.”
They also said that workers should be able to decline the flights for ethical reasons. Those who have “safety or conscientious objections must be able to refuse these flights without financial, professional, or disciplinary consequences,” said the union.
Nico Cardone, a spokesperson for Brussels Airlines, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that safety was the company’s “highest priority, whether we operate with volunteers or not.” He added that the airline was “not a political party” and made decisions about flight operations based on safety and demand.
“We do not engage in political discussions about the governments of certain destinations, and we ask our staff to uphold this same professional standard,” said Cardone.
ACV Puls said the airline was compelling crews to work because it had not found enough volunteers. Cardone disputed that, saying the airline always aimed to return to regular crew scheduling over time.
Along with threatening a strike, the union called on the Belgian government to weigh in. ACV Puls said the government should take a stance on the availability of commercial flights to Israel “despite the ongoing war, the massive civilian casualties, and the serious accusations of war crimes and human rights violations against the Palestinian population.”
Belgium has grown increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and Israeli settlements in the West Bank since 2023. Earlier this year, Belgium banned aircraft carrying military equipment bound for Israel from crossing its airspace. The government in July approved a ban on goods imported from Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Brussels Airlines workers threaten strike over flights to Israel, citing ethical objections appeared first on The Forward.
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Haiti saved Jewish lives then. Our silence is not an option now.
In the late 1930s, as Nazi Germany intensified its persecution of Jewish people and the warning signs of a far darker future became increasingly clear, Jewish families searched desperately for countries willing to receive them. While many nations turned their backs, Haiti did not. It issued life-saving visas and offered them safe haven.
Nearly 90 years later, history has come full circle.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians who have lived and worked lawfully in the United States under Temporary Protected Status (TPS) now face forcible deportation to a country engulfed in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
This moment is deeply personal.
My mother survived a Nazi forced-labor camp, where she was forced to manufacture explosives. My father and three of his nephews survived Auschwitz. The rest of my family perished. I grew up with that history and with a profound awareness of what it means to be uprooted, persecuted and abandoned by the world.
That history shaped not only who I am, but the course of my life. I began my career as an art historian, but eventually felt called toward a different path: working alongside communities confronting abject poverty, famine, conflict and disaster.
My humanitarian career began in 1988 at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), under the mentorship of Aryeh Cooperstock, who in the spirit of Tikkun Olam – repairing the world – led JDC’s international development work with non-Jewish communities around the globe. Aryeh fundamentally influenced my professional practice by instilling the conviction that true development starts with humility and listening to local partners who know their own challenges best.
While at JDC, its archive revealed a truth I never forgot. In the late 1930s, Haiti said yes to desperate Jewish refugees while bigger nations said no. My family wasn’t among those saved, but the grace of that gesture stayed with me forever.
Thus, in 2009, after working extensively across 24 countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and South America, I founded EcoWorks International to work in Haiti, as an enduring expression of profound gratitude.
For the past 17 years, we have worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Haitian professionals and communities in a broad range of sectors. Following the devastating 2010 earthquake, and with a generous grant from JDC, we built and equipped a physical rehabilitation center at Bernard Mevs Hospital, Haiti’s leading trauma center, restoring mobility and hope to thousands of victims.
Near the capital of Port-Au-Prince, we helped local farmers establish the first regional agricultural cooperatives that they own and manage.
After the 2021 earthquake, we worked with coastal fishing communities to rebuild the underwater systems that their livelihoods depend on. Today, in Haiti’s northern region, we work with 2,500 rice farmers to adopt a sustainable farming method that uses significantly less water, relies on organic fertilizer, and can nearly double yields.
Yet, in nearly two decades of standing with Haiti through natural disasters and socio-political upheaval, I have never witnessed such a level of unchecked violence, widespread displacement, and profound despair as now.
Armed gangs control almost all of Port-au-Prince, key regions, and major transit routes. Murder, kidnapping, rape, extortion and arson are daily instruments of terror. More than 1.5 million people are displaced and 5.7 million face severe hunger. Hospitals and clinics have been attacked, burned or forced to close.
Recently, Bernard Mevs Hospital, where we worked following the earthquake, was attacked and burned. In Ganthier, where our organization worked for years, the 400 Mawozo gang drove some 20,000 people from their homes. Their victims now live homeless and in hiding and our friends, partners and colleagues are still unable to return.
Today, Haiti has not one elected official. Basic institutions and services have collapsed. Parents struggle to feed their children. Pregnant women may have nowhere to give birth safely. Simply traveling to work, school, a market, or a hospital puts people at risk of kidnapping, rape or death.
This is the abyss to which some 350,000 Haitians in the United States now face forcible deportation, a process that has already begun.
The Haitians who lost their TPS are our neighbors, coworkers, healthcare professionals, teachers, business owners, taxpayers and friends. They built dignified lives and raised families here under a legal humanitarian program created to protect people from precisely the nightmare Haiti is experiencing today.
As we approach the High Holidays, a sacred season of Cheshbon HaNefesh, a call to reflection and duty, moral fortitude and a choice of who we choose to be, we are commanded not to stand idly by while our neighbors suffer.
In the past Haiti chose compassion over indifference toward the Jewish people. Today, the moral choice is ours. Write to your senators and representatives demanding the extension of TPS for Haitian people. Ask your rabbi, synagogue, Jewish Federation, and community leaders to issue public statements and take action. Share Haiti’s historical connection to our people.
Yesterday, Haiti opened its doors to save Jewish lives. Today, Haitians desperately need our voices. May history remember that when they needed us most, we did not remain silent.
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‘Israel is politics’: Was a woman kicked out of a salon for supporting Israel or being Israeli-American?
An Israeli-American woman who was denied service at a Northern Virginia eyebrow salon is now taking legal action against the business.
The Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law is filing a civil rights complaint on behalf of Jessica Walton, who was at Karimi Brows in Alexandria, Virginia, on Aug. 6 when Fatana Karimi, the shop’s owner, recorded and posted a video of her telling Walton to leave the store. The video has received more than 270,000 likes and garnered concern from antisemitism watchdog groups.
“This case is about a basic civil rights principle,” says Omer Wiczyk, senior counsel at the Brandeis Center. “A business that is open to the public cannot reclassify a customer’s Israeli identity as objectionable politics.”
The two sides disagree about whether Karimi’s decision was made based on Walton’s ethnicity, identity or politics.
Karimi said in a TikTok video that her decision to deny service to Walton was not about Walton’s identity but her politics. “Any ethnicity or nationality or person who comes from a certain religion, any religion, comes to me and tells me that they support Israel, I would kick them,” she said.
Karimi said she “would have, you know, let it slide by” if Walton had denounced the Israeli government and called the Israel-Hamas war a genocide.
Walton, in the video taken at Karimi Brows, characterized the dispute as being about her identity. “I had no idea that you would do this based on my ethnicity,” she said.
According to the complaint, Walton said she did not discuss politics and only mentioned she was Israeli-American before Karimi asked her to leave the studio.
In another video, Karimi explained that Walton said she was Israeli-American “three different times” before Karimi started “throwing shots back at her.” Karimi said that in that moment, she was imagining Palestinian people, “looking at me saying, ‘But I thought you supported us? Why are you playing nice with the girl that is the reason we’re going through this?’”
“I was like, ‘the gloves are f—ing off,’” Karimi said. “‘I’m not doing your f—ing brows. Get out of my f—ing face.’”
The complaint also says that before the camera started rolling, “Ms. Karimi stated that, for her, ‘Israel is politics.’ ”
Politics-based discrimination would not necessarily constitute a civil rights violation, said Michael Helfand, a professor at the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law. However, if Karimi was placing special scrutiny on Walton’s beliefs because of her Israeli identity, it would — facts that the parties dispute.
“I think this gets you into the question of how you want to classify anti-Zionism,” says Helfand. “I think that’s a bigger question that the law hasn’t fully wrapped its head around.”
Both women said they have received violent messages online following the incident, including death and rape threats. Karimi said her Yelp reviews were spammed with negative comments from users she doubted had been to the store.
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