Uncategorized
Does anime have a Nazi problem? Some Jewish fans think so.
TAIPEI (JTA) — When the Season 3 plot twist of “Attack on Titan” aired in 2019, viewers wasted no time in jumping online to discuss what they saw.
In the world of “Attack on Titan” — an extremely popular Japanese anime series now in its final season, which started in March and does not have a known end date — humanity has been trapped within a walled city on the island of Paradis, surrounded by Titans, grotesque giants who mindlessly eat any person who gets in their way.
In the third season, the Titans’ origins are revealed as a group called the Eldians, a group that made a deal with the devil to gain Titan powers with which they subjugated humanity for years. A group called the Marleyans later overthrew the Eldian empire and forced them into ghettoes, forcing them to wear armbands that identified their race with a symbol similar to the Star of David. Political prisoners were injected with a serum that turns them into the terrifying Titans.
The implications that a race meant to represent Jews had made “a deal with the devil” to achieve power were too much for some to bear. Fans debated the meaning on Twitter and Reddit as think pieces pointed to the show’s “fascist subtext” and possible antisemitism as ratings and viewership climbed. Some viewers defended the series as a condemnation of those ideas and a meditation on moral ambiguity, but others said the plot’s condemnation of fascism was too weak. The New Republic in 2020 called “Attack on Titan” “the alt-right’s favorite manga.”
Either way, in November 2021, the show’s production team announced it would cancel the sale of Eldian armbands — the ones Eldians were forced to wear in their ghettos — explaining that it was “an act without consideration to easily commercialize what was drawn as a symbol of racial discrimination and ethnic discrimination in the work.”
“Attack on Titan” is only the latest manga (a specific type of Japanese comic books or graphic novels) or anime (TV shows or movies animated in the manga style) series on the chopping block. As it continues to gain popularity outside of Japan’s borders, the Japanese animation medium as a whole has been hit with criticism for alleged glorification of antisemitism, fascism and militarism. The debate has been fueled by a stream of examples: the literal evil Jewish cabal in “Angel Cop,” (references to Jews were later removed in the English-language dubbed version), the Fuhrer villain in “Fullmetal Alchemist,” the Nazi occultism (in which Nazis channel the occult to carry out duties or crimes) in “Hellboy,” and the Nazi characters in “Hellsing” and “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” to name a few.
Western viewers are not the only ones taking issue. Fans of “Attack on Titan” in South Korea — which was subject to Japanese war atrocities during World War II that Japan continues to deny — have taken issue, too. Revelations from Hajime Isayama, the creator of the original “Attack on Titan” manga, that a character in the series was inspired by an Imperial Japanese army general who had committed war crimes against Koreans were met with heated discussion and later death threats from Korean fans online. Some also pointed to a private Twitter account believed to be run by Isayama that denies imperial Japan’s war atrocities.
“Ridiculous the lengths a fandom will go to downplay the blatant antisemitism in a series and protect and lie about the creator of said series,” wrote one Twitter user. “[Y]ou doing this and ignoring koreans and jewish people says a lot.”
These themes are so common in manga and anime that some independent researchers like Haru Mena (a pen name) have begun creating classifications for the many Nazi tropes that make regular appearances. Mena, a military researcher who lectures annually at the Anime Boston convention about World War II and Nazi imagery in anime and manga, says the phenomenon is a result of how Japan remembers its role in World War II — not as the aggressor, but as a victim of war.
“Japan does not want to be the bad guy. They love to have other people be the bad guy,” he said. “That’s why they’re using all these Nazi characters. We all agree Nazis are bad, war crimes are bad, no decent self-respecting nation would ever do [what they did].”
But many Jewish anime fans, like Reddit user Desiree (who did not offer her last name for privacy reasons), have taken issue with the way some anime and manga series portray Nazis while reducing the Holocaust to narrative devices.
“I think that most people who are telling these stories aren’t coming from an area where this would be as personally familiar,” she said. “There’s almost no resonance to it. Because they take away all these details they make it a big trope.”
hi
anime and manga have an antisemitism problem
good day
— Kay (he/they, she for friends only) (@Cayliana) February 19, 2022
East Asian interest in Nazi imagery has also bled over into the West in the form of news headlines in recent years — involving everything from Nazi-themed bars and parades to Nazi cosplay in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Korea.
But some experts say that repeated references to Nazi villains and World War II in manga and anime have more to do with Japanese history and culture than with antisemitism.
“There is a fascination with Nazism in Japan to some degree or another,” said Raz Greenberg, an Israel-based writer whose Ph.D. research examined Jewish influence on Japan’s “God of Comics,” Osamu Tezuka, an artist sometimes referred to as Japan’s equivalent to Walt Disney. In 1983, Tezuka released the first in a five-volume series called “Adolf,” a popular manga set in World War II-era Japan and Germany about three men with that name — a Japanese boy, a Jewish boy and Hitler.
“I think there’s something fascinating about Nazi aesthetic, certainly for countries that never actually participated in the war against the Nazis. But I don’t think it’s that different from, say, the way George Lucas made the Empire in the ‘Star Wars’ films very Nazi-like in its aesthetic,” Greenberg said.
As Greenberg notes, Western media is also full of Holocaust references — some more successful in its repudiation of Nazi ideology than others — like the numbered tattoos and recent use of a Lithuanian prison camp as a filming location in the Netflix hit show “Stranger Things.”
“What makes people angry is, people think when the Japanese approach it, they approach it without understanding. And it’s easier to think that they don’t understand it when you look at a show like ‘Attack on Titan,’” Greenberg said.
Liron Afriat, a Ph.D. candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Asian Sphere program and the founder of the Anime and Manga Association of Israel, said while shows like “Attack on Titan” reference the Holocaust and use World War II-era imagery, it’s likely that Western viewers are misinterpreting its intended parallels to Japanese politics. … particularly Japan’s past of aggressive and corrupt militarism and late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s attempts to reinstate a non-defensive military.
“Western people are very eager to jump to conclusions when it comes to Asian media. This is something I see a lot in my work and it’s very frustrating,” she said. “There is a sense that because Japanese pop culture is so popular nowadays, it’s very easy to kind of dogpile on it and say it’s racist.”
In recent decades, anime series have been watched by hundreds of millions of people around the world, and the medium has gone from being seen in the West as a geeky niche genre to a mainstream phenomenon. Though show creators may be conscious about their references, some fans say the fascist and Jewish references, especially the more clear-cut ones — like the Jewish conspiracy in “Angel Cop” — have real-life consequences.
Many in the anime fan community today remember a 2010 incident at Anime Boston when a group of cosplayers dressed up as characters from “Hetalia: Axis Powers,” a series that anthropomorphized Axis and Ally countries, was photographed making Nazi salutes just around the corner from the city’s Holocaust memorial.
“It used to be like, I can go to an anime convention and they would be selling uniforms that were clearly meant to be Nazi uniforms, but sans the swastika,” Desiree said. “And then over time, I noticed conventions started banning that kind of thing.”
“JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” features a Nazi character named Rudol von Stroheim. (Screenshot from YouTube)
Noah Oskow is the managing editor of the digital magazine Unseen Japan and a Jew who has lived in Japan for seven years. He recalled similar experiences at U.S. anime conventions.
“I think that it is problematic to portray Nazis and the Holocaust in the very frivolous way that it’s often portrayed,” he said. “Even in a place that is so far removed from Japan, that aesthetic of Nazis from manga or anime was seeping into somebody’s choices in a far-removed anime and manga event.”
Oskow says recent portrayals of Nazis and fascism in anime and manga lack the depth necessary to confront an issue like the Holocaust, but that some subtext in shows like “Attack on Titan” is likely missed by Western viewers since it is created for a Japanese audience.
Still, he says, as a Jew, there is a discomfort with these depictions, and the problems with simplifying themes like fascism and genocide should not be ignored just because the product came from Japan — particularly as stereotypes about Jews as having outsize influence remain common. In Japan, as in other East Asian nations such as South Korea, China and Taiwan, books and classes on how to become as smart and wealthy as Jews — believed to be among the most powerful people in media and finance — are not uncommon.
“In my years of discussing Jews with Japanese people…they really think of Jews as an ancient historical people or the people who were killed in the Holocaust unless they have some sort of conspiratorial idea. But most people have no conception of Jewish people,” Oskow said. “So when they’re portraying Jews in manga or anime or any sort of media, and when readers or viewers are engaging with that media, I just don’t think there’s this thought of how a Jewish person would perceive how they’re being portrayed.”
Jessica, a 29-year-old Jewish and Chinese anime fan from Vancouver who also requested her last name be left out of this article, said she deliberately chooses not to watch shows such as “Attack on Titan” and “Hetalia” because she finds the discussions about them among fans to be unproductive and frustrating. Desiree echoed Jessica’s experience of being ignored when raising the topic of antisemitism within the medium or within the fan community on platforms such as Reddit.
“I saw the reactions of other Jewish fans and, more importantly, saw the reaction of the goyish fans — the way ‘Hetalia’ fans did the sieg heil in front of a Holocaust memorial, the way that [‘Attack on Titan’] fans would swarm concerned Jewish fans in droves to tell them that they should perish in an oven, and I decided I didn’t want anything to do with anime that attracted that sort of fanbase,” Desiree said.
“Attack on Titan” returned to streaming services on March 4 with the first part of its final season. In the first episode, the protagonist Eren, whom audiences have followed for a decade, begins carrying out a global genocide known as “the rumbling” with the end goal of destroying all Titans for good and bringing peace. The end result is a wipeout of 80% of humanity, an act that Eren believes was the only path to freedom. He thinks humans must all suffer as a consequence of being born into the world — a nihilistic philosophy that can be found among the manifestos of school shooters and incels.
In the original manga series, Eren’s supporters on the island militarize in order to defend Eren’s violent act, chanting a slogan: “If you can fight you win, if you cannot fight you lose! Fight, fight!” The ending was seen as morally ambiguous and was not popular with fans, who mostly refuted it due to poor writing. Many hope that the anime series will go a different route in its final episodes, which have not yet been released or given future release dates.
—
The post Does anime have a Nazi problem? Some Jewish fans think so. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
After attacks, Jewish security watchdogs warn of ‘most elevated and complex threat environment’ in recent history
(JTA) — A string of recent synagogue attacks across North America and Europe has left security officials sounding the alarm bells.
“We are in the midst of the most elevated and complex threat environment the Jewish community and this country has seen in modern history,” said Kerry Sleeper, chief of threat management and information sharing for the Secure Community Network, a Jewish security organization.
Sleeper’s comment came during an SCN webinar on Friday, held in response to the previous day’s attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, where an assailant rammed into the synagogue armed with rifles and smoke bombs.
Though the attack was successfully thwarted by existing security measures, Mitchell Silber, executive director of the Community Security Initiative, said in an interview that Jewish institutions may now need additional layers of protection.
“This might be a bit of a tipping point where we’ve gone to a new level, where really what’s required to secure a Jewish institution in the U.S. starts to look like almost a Europeanization of security,” Silber said.
That would include posting multiple armed guards outside entrances and requiring increased screening before entry, he said. Many European synagogues also require attendees to go through security screening at some distance from the building, rather than at their doors.
“Unfortunately that seems to be where we are right now — the Jewish community has to up its game in terms of the external security of its locations,” he said.
Currently, a shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security since Feb. 14 is halting the review of millions of dollars in security funding for nonprofits, constraining the ability of Jewish institutions and other vulnerable groups to upgrade their security infrastructure.
The Temple Israel attack came within two weeks of attacks in Austin, Texas, and at Old Dominion University in Virginia. Those other attacks were not on Jewish institutions, but Sleeper, a former FBI assistant director, said the “various motivations of the attackers appear to be affiliated with the war between the U.S., Israel and Iran.” He added that the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran, and President Donald Trump’s stated desire to facilitate a regime change, have “contributed to the extremely high threat environment.”
Meanwhile, things have escalated outside the United States. Three Toronto-area synagogues were hit with gunfire over the last couple of weeks, and a synagogue in Rotterdam was targeted by an arson attack early Friday morning, allegedly by a group that has also claimed credit for an explosion at a synagogue in Belgium.
The flurry of attacks has the entire Jewish world on edge going into Shabbat — and some watchdogs say things could soon get worse.
“It is not entirely shocking to those of us who’ve watched this space for a long time,” said Mike Jacobson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who served in the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau. “I would think things would continue to ratchet up again, at least in the short term.”
He pointed to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ activation of sleeper cells — their agents lying in wait until called to action to commit an attack — across the West, as a danger to vulnerable targets, which includes Jewish communities.
Another source of danger, Jacobson said, comes from copycat attacks.
“There’s also this mix that makes it really hard to sort out in the initial stages, where you’ve got people, not only who may be directly tied to Iran, but people who are so-called ‘inspired’ by this,” Jacobson said. “Those are often really hard for law enforcement to get advance notice on.”
Not always does the threat come from direct orders from Iran, he said. “It’s often difficult to tell: Is this something that is directly tied to the organization, or is this something that is more by someone inspired [by the IRGC]?”
He added, “They are trying to inflict pain in as many directions as they can.”
As security organizations encourage increased caution and awareness of suspicious activity, they are also emphasizing that those measures shouldn’t come at the expense of gathering in communal Jewish spaces.
“We’re not going to let the terrorists take away our confidence or the ability to embrace our religion,” said Michael Masters, SCN’s national director, during the Zoom webinar.
Masters’ sentiment is also shared by congregational leaders like Rabbi Adam Roffman, of Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas.
“Sure, security is something we think a lot about, and we’ve done our best to protect ourselves,” Roffman said. “And at the same time, the life of this community goes on.”
At Temple Israel, Shabbat services are being streamed from the nearby country club that served as a reunification center for families after the attack. The synagogue wrote on Facebook: “We’re so glad you’re joining us tonight as our community comes together to welcome this much needed Sabbath.”
The post After attacks, Jewish security watchdogs warn of ‘most elevated and complex threat environment’ in recent history appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Muslim advisor to Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission resigns to protest ‘Zionist political agenda’
(JTA) — The Trump administration’s Religious Liberties Commission was wracked again this week over anti-Israel sentiment, as a second affiliated individual has exited while claiming it had been hijacked by a “Zionist political agenda.”
Sameerah Munshi, a Muslim member of a board that advises the commission, announced late Thursday that she would be stepping down. Her reason, she said, was to protest the dismissal of commissioner Carrie Prejean Boller, who was ousted last month after she used a hearing on antisemitism to expound on her objections to Israel and Zionism.
“In this country, people of faith are having their free expression stripped away, and even their lives put at risk, because of their deeply held beliefs about Palestine, all for the sake of a Zionist political agenda,” Munshi wrote in a resignation letter she posted to Substack. “The removal of a Catholic commissioner for expressing dissenting views grounded in her faith is the exact affront to free expression and religious liberty that I spoke out against.”
Munshi posted her resignation to X just before 10 p.m. Thursday, hours after an attacker drove a car into a Michigan synagogue while a preschool was in session. She did not mention the incident in her letter, which she said instead was timed to Prejean Boller’s formal ousting by Trump earlier that day.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations praised both Munshi and Prejean Boller on Friday for their “courage.”
“Ms. Prejean Boller and Ms. Munshi fulfilled the commission’s stated purpose by opposing all forms of anti-religious bigotry and standing up for every person’s right to express their religious beliefs, including opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” the council said in a statement. “The commission is now clearly meant to protect Israel from criticism, not to protect religious freedom for the American people.”
Munshi is a recent Brown University graduate and onetime director of the Muslim organization Coalition of Virtue. She was embraced by the Christian right after publicly opposing a change in a Maryland public school system’s policy allowing parents to opt their children out of curriculum, including LGBTQ material, that went against their religious beliefs. The policy Munshi protested was eventually taken to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of parents who had challenged the school.
Munshi’s biography on the commission’s website was still active as of Friday. It states, “Sameerah has courageously spoken out against forcing children to learn radical gender ideology in schools.”
Munshi had been outspoken for weeks about her support of Prejean Boller, with whom she was ideologically aligned on Israel, after Prejean Boller’s remarks during the antisemitism hearing caused a firestorm.
Like Prejean Boller, Munshi is also a follower of Candace Owens, the right-wing pundit who has embraced a number of antisemitic conspiracy theories. She praised Owens’ conversation with Jewish pro-Palestinian academic Norman Finkelstein last fall, writing on Instagram that Owens had a “rare willingness to confront uncomfortable truths head-on,” and suggested future guests for Owens to interview.
Munshi has been aligned with Prejean Boller since the fall, when Prejean Boller approached her after Munshi testified to the commission in favor of public schools’ rights to protest Israel. “Carrie has been wonderful. We’ve become pretty good friends at this point, and we’ve shared a lot,” Munshi told Middle East Eye.
On her Instagram before last month’s antisemitism hearing, Munshi wrote that the two of them had pushed the commission to invite “fair witnesses” to the hearing that would have reflected their own perspectives, including Finkelstein, left-wing Israeli academic Miko Peled, anti-Zionist rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, and David Spevak, an American Jewish activist and descendant of Holocaust survivors who has compared Jewish summer camps and cultural programs to the Hitler Youth.
After Prejean Boller’s performance at the hearing, during which she told Jewish witnesses that her Catholic faith compelled her to oppose Israel and Zionism, Munshi defended her from blowback from Jewish groups and the Trump administration. The Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial that the two “left together and appeared to be texting amid the hearing,” appearing to allege collusion in Prejean Boller’s line of attack.
“Christian views and beliefs were targeted as ‘antisemitic’ for merely expressing concerns about the ongoing conflation between criticism of the state of Israel and anti-Jewish animus,” Munshi wrote on her Substack in February. “During the hearing, an attempt was made by a collection of ‘Israel First’ actors to redefine antisemitism to include all criticism of Israel, smear many concerned citizens as bigots, and even gatekeep what counts as ‘real’ Judaism by confining it to Israel-first Jews.”
Trump established the Religious Liberties Commission last year, with the order’s text stating that it would “offer diverse perspectives on how the Federal Government can defend religious liberty for all Americans.” Munshi was one of three Muslims on the commission and the only Muslim woman; all three were chosen to serve in an advisory capacity, rather than as full commissioners.
In her resignation letter Munshi also said she was resigning in protest of the Trump administration’s war with Iran, which she wrote was being done “at the urging of a genocidal state.”
“I support America over Israel, and unfortunately that means I cannot support Trump or this government,” Munshi continued.
The post Muslim advisor to Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission resigns to protest ‘Zionist political agenda’ appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Oklahoma attorney general accuses officials of rigging vote on proposed Jewish charter school
(JTA) — Oklahoma’s attorney general is accusing a state board of trying to rig the legal fight over a proposed Jewish charter school — a dispute that could open the door for publicly funded religious charter schools across the United States.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a motion this week asking an Oklahoma County district judge to intervene after the Statewide Charter School Board rejected an application to open the Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School, a virtual statewide school that would combine secular studies with Jewish religious instruction.
Drummond alleges that the board engineered its vote so the rejection would focus only on the school’s religious character, strengthening the legal case for the school’s supporters, who are preparing a federal lawsuit challenging Oklahoma’s ban on religious charter schools.
“A state agency that deliberately hobbles its own legal position is not doing its job — it is betraying Oklahoma taxpayers. I will not allow that,” Drummond said in a statement.
He added: “The Board deliberately suppressed those findings to manufacture a cleaner path to federal court. I will not allow this Board to rig the record at taxpayers’ expense.”
Drummond asked the court to order the board to issue a new rejection letter detailing all of the reasons the proposal was deficient.
The dispute centers on the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, led by former Florida Democratic Rep. Peter Deutsch. The group applied to open a statewide online charter school serving kindergarten through 12th grade students beginning next school year.
The proposal called for a curriculum combining secular coursework with daily Jewish religious studies. If approved, it would have become the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school.
Jewish groups in Oklahoma have opposed the proposal, saying they prefer not to be thrust into the middle of a debate over church-state separation and that there is little demand for such a school among local Jewish residents.
The charter board voted earlier this week to reject the application, citing a 2024 Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that charter schools must remain secular.
That ruling overturned a previous effort to open a Catholic charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court ended in a 4–4 tie after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself, leaving the state court decision in place.
Several board members said the precedent left them no choice but to reject Ben Gamla’s application.
At the same time, the board has signaled it may support the school’s broader constitutional argument in court. The board hired the conservative Christian legal group First Liberty Institute to represent it in the expected litigation and has indicated it could back the school’s position once a lawsuit is filed.
Drummond, who also fought the Catholic charter school proposal, said the legal question about religious charter schools had already been settled by the state courts and insisted his objection to the board’s vote was procedural rather than religious.
Among the issues he says the board improperly left out was a discrepancy in Ben Gamla’s projected enrollment.
Deutsch initially said the online school would serve about 40 high school students, but the formal application projected enrollment of 400 students across grades K-12.
State officials also raised questions about the composition of the school’s governing board. Oklahoma law requires a charter school board to include a parent or grandparent of a student. Ben Gamla listed Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, as its parent representative.
Supporters of the school have said they plan to challenge Oklahoma’s prohibition on religious charter schools in federal court, arguing that excluding religious schools from charter programs violates the Constitution’s protections for religious freedom.
The post Oklahoma attorney general accuses officials of rigging vote on proposed Jewish charter school appeared first on The Forward.