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Put your hand up if you still think Elon Musk did a Nazi salute a week ago in Washington

My late poodle used to do this thing with her arms. I say arms, knowing that dogs don’t have arms, just front legs, and I say she, knowing that grammatically, a dog is more of an it. But for the purposes of this story, she had arms. And she would sometimes lift one of them up in this rigid way, with a determined expression on her face. Yes, this fluffy little dog appeared to be heil-ing Hitler.

It was incongruous and therefore funny, in the way of 1967 Mel Brooks comedy The Producers or the iconic Fawlty Towers episode, “The Germans.” There is at this point a long tradition of humour—Jewish and mainstream, professional comedians and everyday chit-chat—about Nazism, and at Nazis’ expense. I think of ‘Allo ‘Allo!, of the “Soup Nazi” from Seinfeld, and of the Waiting for God episode where a stern young German woman comes to work at a retirement home (“I vaz not born during zee war” –“That’s what they all say.”). Also of the phenomenon of the “kitler,” the cats whose colour pattern gives the impression of a Hitler mustache. Do you know where I learned of the “kitler”? On the free trip I took from Birthright. There are cats roaming around in Israel and some of them missed the memo regarding who won the war. It’s hard to hold this against them.

So there’s postwar comedy mocking Nazism. There’s also a now-extensive recent history of people comparing their enemies with Nazis and using Nazi imagery to make their point. Much like the humour mocking Nazis, this usage of swastikas and what have you is not pro-Nazi. The protester with the placard equating an Israeli flag with one of Nazi Germany is doing something abhorrent, but the thing they are doing is not praising Nazism.

Everyone—well, ish—agrees that Nazis were bad, which is why everyone’s always calling people they disagree with Nazis, but also why internet trolls—and their offline teenage equivalents—gravitate to the shock value of Nazi gesturing.

All of this prologue is to get at why, in 2025, when confronted with Nazi symbolism, it’s not immediately obvious what to make of it. They’re joking, and joking because they hate Nazis, right? Right?

So when X owner and electric-car gazillionaire Elon Musk—now a member of the new Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency—doing what appeared to be a fascist salute at a Trump rally, there was no consensus about how to interpret it. The context allowed for plausible deniability—and he denies it. That he also followed it up with a Nazi joke and by uh going to Germany to tell far-right Germans that Germans need to stop feeling guilty about the past.

The argument set forth by Musk’s arm-raise is less about the gesture itself than about whether America is or not a fascist dictatorship as of a few days ago. For those who already thought yes, this was just the latest and most visually upsetting data point. As for those who either supported Trump’s candidacy or see his win as a disappointment from which America will one day move on, the gesture was interpreted as something between a nothingburger (edgelord provokes, film at 11) and a smear.

Musk is, if I may repeat my 2022 self, an edgelord. He wants to get a rise out of the people this sort of behaviour gets a rise out of. He’s not just very online but so online that rather than use his billions not to need to bother with social media, he bought Twitter so he could meld it into something of his liking. The big-picture significance to his purchase is that the edgelords and fringe-right sorts whom one could roll one’s eyes at back in the day are now front and centre in Washington, D.C.

Jewish opinion on the arm-lift has been divided. Divided along partisan lines, but with a particularly strong dose of convictions on both sides that the gesture obviously was or wasn’t what it looked like.

I mean in fairness all they have to go on about Musk is that he’s likened Soros to Magneto and said he’s trying to destroy civilization, blamed the ADL for Twitter’s (excuse me, X’s) money drying up, and agreed it was the “absolute truth” that Jews hate white people, and

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— Emily Tamkin (@emilyctamkin.bsky.social) January 20, 2025 at 6:10 PM

Something that can be confusing for many Jews (or, at least, for this Jew) is that while there’s widespread consensus that Nazis are bad news, there’s no consistent reason why people think this about Nazis. And if your reason for hating Nazis happens to be the thing where they mass-murdered Jews, you might find yourself if nothing else disoriented by the fact that the same progressive movement prepared to look the other way when people praise Hamas (indeed, whose adherents sometimes praise Hamas) considers Nazism the height of evil.

Some were more than disoriented.

Weird how so many Canadians upset about Elon’s Nazi salute didn’t say anything when it happened right here, in Toronto and Montreal.

Same folks who were silent about the gunshots, firebombs, arsons, and terrorist plots against Jews they know…

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— Jesse Brown (@jessebrown.bsky.social) January 21, 2025 at 11:04 AM

Jews often stand accused of oversensitivity to antisemitism. And some of us are! There’s a concurrent tradition of Jews being well aware of that stereotype and wanting not to make mountains of molehills.

There is also, beyond the Jewish community, the thing where the hypersensitive environment of the last decade-plus had people flagging trace-amounts or imagined instances of racism, most egregiously in the form of out-of-context “Karen” videos. But to limit this to Jews, there was the time in 2014 when one was meant to be mad at Zara for an outfit that supposedly looked like a concentration camp uniform, or in 2023—January 2023, crucially—when the New York Times did a crossword puzzle that some believed to be in the shape of a swastika.

Oct. 7 certainly changed things where anti-antisemitism was concerned. It made squint-and-you-see-it stories of Nazi imagery in fast fashion and word games seem like nonsense from another era… while also heightening many Jews’ sense of awareness of antisemitism for perhaps the first time.

And Trump’s second, Muskier term is shaping up to be a bunch more of an illiberal break from norms than his first. The deportations, the tariffs, the objections to birthright citizenship, and the general approach of coming in day one and announcing that nothing would be as it had been. Even if you object to left illiberalism, this is yeah maybe not the sort of pushback you’d want. (Anti-woke opinion, like Jewish opinion, is divided.)

The #Resistance approach to Trump’s first term seemed hyperbolic from the vantage point of the Biden years. He was just a meh one-term Republican president, right? And now that there actually is an authoritarian turn, we’re at a place where you seem hysterical if you suggest as much.

Elon Musk is not a Nazi in the 1930s-1940s sense of the term for the same reason that no one today is. There are successors to Nazism and groups with echoes of Nazism and people (and bots) who wish Hitler had won. But specific groups end when they end, so it’s a bit like asking whether Michelle Obama is a 1920s flapper, whether Justin Trudeau is a beatnik, or whether Ariana Grande is a medieval monk. The relevant question is not whether the US is now full-time cosplaying another era, complete with the same victims (aka Jews, mainly). It’s whether things are going all-out authoritarian, in America and, perhaps, beyond. It’s whether liberal democracy is kaput.

At least for now, though, the Trumpism-is-Nazism interpretation has a silver lining for Canadian Jews, at least unless you take a full-doomer perspective and assume this culminates in Canada’s annexation into a Trumpian Reich. But assuming the US doesn’t annex the Annex, we’re looking pretty, pretty good at the moment. Everything is up for interpretation, but it easier to generously interpret a Free Palestine yard sign (or a few hundred of them) than the richest man in the world sending a bat signal to right-wing extremists that America is now in their pasty outstretched hands.

The CJN’s opinion editor Phoebe Maltz Bovy can be reached at pbovy@thecjn.ca, not to mention @phoebebovy on Bluesky, and @bovymaltz on X. She is also on The CJN’s weekly podcast Bonjour ChaiFor more opinions about Jewish culture wars, subscribe to the free Bonjour Chai newsletter on Substack.

The post Put your hand up if you still think Elon Musk did a Nazi salute a week ago in Washington appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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Northwestern University Touts Progress on Addressing Campus Antisemitism Amid Federal Scrutiny

Signs cover the fence at a pro-Palestinian encampment at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. on April 28, 2024. Photo: Max Herman via Reuters Connect.

Northwestern University on Monday touted its progress in addressing the campus antisemitism crisis, issuing a statement containing a checklist of policies it has enacted since being censured by federal lawmakers over its handling of pro-Hamas demonstrations which convulsed its campus during the 2023-2024 academic year.

“The university administration took this criticism to heart and spent much of last summer revising our rules and policies to make our university safe for all of our students, regardless of their religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, or political viewpoint,” the statement said. “Among the updated policies is our Demonstration Policy, which includes new requirements and guidance on how, when, and where members of the community may protest or otherwise engage in expressive activity.”

The university added that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.

“This included a live training for all new students in September and a 17-minute training module for all enrolled students, produced in collaboration with the Jewish United Fund,” it continued. “Antisemitism trainings will continue as a permanent part of our broader training in civil rights and Title IX.”

Other initiatives rolled out by the university include an Advisory Council to the President on Jewish Life, dinners for Jewish students hosted by administrative officials, and educational events which raise awareness of rising antisemitism in the US and across the world. Additionally, Northwestern said that it imposed disciplinary sanctions against several students and one staff member whose conduct violated the new “Demonstration and/or Display Policies” which regulate peaceful assembly on the campus.

“In closing, although Northwestern has made significant progress in the fight against antisemitism on campus, the university remains vigilant and will continue to do what is necessary to make our campus safe,” the statement concluded. “Importantly, the fight against antisemitism is NOT [sic] a zero-sum game. All members of our communities on campus — all religions, races, national origins, genders, sexual orientations, and political viewpoints — deserve to feel safe and know that our rules will be enforced to protect them against hate, discrimination, harassment, and intimidation. Northwestern is committed to this principle.”

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Northwestern University struggled for months to correct an impression that it coddled pro-Hamas protesters and acceded to their demands for a boycott of Israel in exchange for an end to their May 2024 encampment.

University president Schill denied during a US congressional hearing held that year that he had capitulated to any demand that fostered a hostile environment, but his critics noted that part of the deal to end the encampment stipulated his establishing a scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contacting potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, creating a segregated dormitory hall that will be occupied exclusively by students of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim descent, and forming a new advisory committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.

The status of those concessions, which a law firm representing the civil rights advocacy group StandWithUs described as “outrageous” in July 2024, were not disclosed in Monday’s statement.

Northwestern University is not the only school creating distance between itself and the anti-Zionist movement, a step many colleges have taken in response to US President Donald Trump’s vowing to cut the flow of taxpayer funds supplementing their budgets should they refuse to crackdown down on illegal protests and antisemitism. Following the Trump administration’s cancelling of over $400 million in federals contracts and grants awarded to Columbia University, former interim president Katrina Armstrong proposed a list of reforms the school would agree to undertake — in areas ranging from undergraduate admissions to campus security — to restore the funds.

Armstrong later resigned from her position, saying in a statement which explained the decision that she wishes to return to her role as executive director of the university’s Irving Medical Center, as well as several other positions she holds.

Meanwhile, Harvard University recently fired a librarian whom someone filmed ripping posters of the Bibas children, two babies murdered in captivity by Hamas, off a kiosk in Harvard Yard and denounced him as “hateful.” Additionally, it paused a partnership with a higher education institution located in the West Bank, a move for which prominent members of the Harvard community and federal lawmakers had clamored in a series of public statements. The Trump administration initiated a review of $9 billion in taxpayer funds it receives anyway, prompting interim president Alan Garber to defend Harvard’s handling of the issue.

“For the past fifteen months, we have devoted considerable effort to addressing antisemitism,” Garber said. “We have strengthened our rules and our approach to disciplining those who violate them. We have enhanced training and education on antisemitism across our campus and introduced measures to support our Jewish community and ensure student safety and security.”

Northwestern University is in the Trump administration’s crosshairs too. It is one of 60 universities being investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights over its handling of campus antisemitism, a project that will serve as an early test of the administration’s ability to perform the essential functions of the agency after downsizing its workforce to increase its efficiency.

“The department is deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite US campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in March. “US colleges and universities benefit from enormous public investments funded by US taxpayers. That support is a privilege, and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Northwestern University Touts Progress on Addressing Campus Antisemitism Amid Federal Scrutiny first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Pressure Mounts on UN Members to Block Reappointment of Controversial Anti-Israel Official

Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

The United Nations is facing growing pressure to block the reappointment of Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who has an extensive history of using her role to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize the terrorist group Hamas’s attacks against the Jewish state.

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is set to reappoint Albanese for another three-year term on Friday, despite calls from several countries and NGOs urging UN members to oppose her reappointment due to her controversial remarks and alleged pro-Hamas stance.

Since taking on the role of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories in 2022, Albanese has been at the center of controversy due to what critics, including US and European lawmakers, have described as antisemitic and anti-Israel public remarks.

In the months following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities, across southern Israel, Albanese accused Israel of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli actions.

She has also previously made comments about a “Jewish lobby” controlling America and Europe, compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and stated that Hamas’s violence against Israelis — including rape, murder, and kidnapping — needs to be “put in context.”

Last year, the United Nations launched a probe into Albanese for allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.

In the past, she has also celebrated the anti-Israel protesters rampaging across US college campuses, saying they represent a “revolution” and that they give her “hope.”

On Monday, US Rep. Brian Mast, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a letter to the president of the UNHRC, Ambassador Jürg Lauber, to express his strong opposition to Albanese’s reappointment.

In the letter, Mast claimed that Albanese has failed to act “in an independent capacity with a professional, impartial assessment, and maintain the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity.”

“Ms. Albanese unapologetically uses her position as a UN special rapporteur to purvey and attempt to legitimize antisemitic tropes, while serving as a Hamas apologist,” the letter read.

“In her malicious fixation, she has even called for Israel to be removed from the United Nations while likening Israel to apartheid South Africa,” Mast wrote in a letter signed by six fellow lawmakers. “Regrettably, Ms. Albanese’s rhetoric has perverted the very institution and its foundational principles in which she was appointed to serve.”

Governments worldwide, including France, the UK, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands, have condemned her statements as antisemitic and urged that she not be given another term in her role.

Last month, 42 members of the French Parliament publicly urged the government to oppose Albanese’s reappointment, arguing that it “would send a regrettable signal to victims, human rights defenders, and states committed to credible multilateralism.”

This week, British Labour Member of Parliament David Taylor also objected to Albanese’s reappointment, saying “there is no place for such alleged antisemitism on the international stage.”

“Albanese’s response to the largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century was to describe it as ‘a response to Israel’s oppression,’” Taylor told the Jewish Chronicle. “She described Israel as being a ‘settler colonial conquest.’”

“Making statements of this nature in a UN capacity is abhorrent and does so much damage to communities already torn apart by horrific violence, going against everything the United Nations stands for,” Taylor said.

Human rights groups and NGOs have also campaigned to prevent the anti-Israel rapporteur from receiving a second term.

UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO, has organized a petition against her reappointment, which has garnered over 83,000 signatures.

Last month, Maram Stern, executive vice president of the World Jewish Congress, sent a letter to the president of the UNHRC urging him to reject the renewal of Albanese’s mandate, citing what she described as the UN official’s history of anti-Israel animus and antisemitic statements.

“Ms. Albanese has repeatedly made public remarks that propagate harmful antisemitic tropes, question the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and employ rhetoric that undermines the credibility of the Human Rights Council itself,” the letter read. “Her persistent lack of objectivity and failure to uphold a balanced and impartial approach required of her as special rapporteur compromises her credibility as an independent expert.”

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) also urged UN Members to reject Albanese’s second term, saying she “has systematically demonstrated a troubling pattern of conduct and expression that is incompatible with the responsibilities, neutrality, and integrity expected of a UN special rapporteur.”

“Her actions not only betray the victims of terrorism and antisemitism but also are a stain on the credibility of the Human Rights Council itself,” the AJC wrote in a letter.

The post Pressure Mounts on UN Members to Block Reappointment of Controversial Anti-Israel Official first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Three Jewish Coaches Lead Teams in NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Final Four

Florida Gators head coach Todd Golden and Auburn Tigers head coach Bruce Pearl talk before the game as Auburn Tigers take on Florida Gators at Neville Arena in Auburn, Ala., on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect

The men’s 2025 NCAA Tournament Final Four bracket includes four No. 1 seed teams, three of which have Jewish coaches who will lead the way in the two national semifinals taking place on Saturday.

Auburn University Tigers head coach Bruce Pearl has contributed Auburn’s success in the NCAA in part to God and his Jewish faith. He described Israel as the “ancestral homeland for the Jewish people” and called for the release of American-Israeli Edan Alexander from Hamas captivity at a post-game conference last month. He also took the Auburn team on a trip to Israel, where they made stops at the Western Wall and Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center.

The Tigers will compete on Saturday in the NCAA Tournament Final Four against the Florida Gators whose Jewish coach, Todd Golden, is an Israeli citizen who previously played two years professionally for Maccabi Haifa in Israel.

In 2009, Golden was co-captain of the USA Open Team, coached by Pearl, that won gold at the Maccabiah Games, which is an international multi-sport event for Jewish and Israeli athletes. Golden has been the coach of the Tigers for two seasons, but prior to that he was the assistant coach at Columbia, the head coach at San Francisco, and even worked under Pearl. Golden was director of basketball operations for the Auburn staff for the 2014-15 season and was promoted to assistant coach for the 2015-16 campaign.

Duke and Houston also play each other on Saturday in the Final Four. The head coach of the Duke Blue Devils, Jon Scheyer, also formerly played in Israel and holds Israeli citizenship. He played professionally for Maccabi Tel Aviv from 2011-12. In October 2023, not long after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Scheyer commented on the conflict and said in part: “My heart breaks for the people in Israel — that have hostages, American lives that are taken, mourning loved ones.” Scheyer is leading Duke to the Final Four in only his third year as head coach.

The Houston Cougars – the fourth men’s team competing in the Final Four – do not have a Jewish coach, but they have a player who was born in Israel and played for Israel’s national youth squad. Guard Emanuel Sharp, who is the son of Derrick Sharp, was part of Israel’s under-16 national basketball team and also played for Maccabi Tel Aviv for over a decade.

This year’s Final Four have a combined record of 135-16. Since seeding began in 1979, this is only the second time in history that all four No. 1 seeds advanced to the Final Four. It previously happened in 2008. Larry Brown was the last Jewish coach to win the NCAA Tournament when he led Kansas to the victory in 1988.

The 2025 NCAA Tournament Final Four begins on Saturday, with two national semifinals taking place at the Alamodome in San Antonio, and ends on Monday with the national championship.

The post Three Jewish Coaches Lead Teams in NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Final Four first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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