USC Shoah Foundation’s Dr. Robert J. Williams Stresses Why Challenging Extremism Matters Now More Than Ever
The Variety Summit on Antisemitism comes at a time when the world’s oldest hatred is having a clear resurgence. Jews across the world — and here in Los Angeles — have been targeted by hateful words, threats and guns. Show business has long been a target of antisemitism, and once again, we find ourselves at the vanguard, looking to push back at the tropes, conspiracy theories and other hateful stories online.
As a historian, it’s important to look back at where these hatreds come from, what they mean, and why we must stop them.
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About 100 years ago, H.G. Wells warned that humanity “is in a race between education and catastrophe.” He wrote these words in the shadow of World War I, a tragedy he believed was the result of our failure to respect one another and our tendency to ignore “every country but our own.”
A few years later, he and others watched as fascist, extremist and totalitarian movements appeared across Europe, from the former Russian empire to Britain, and across the Atlantic, eventually culminating in the Holocaust and World War II, where 6 million Jews and 25 million others were killed.
Those movements that succeeded followed a basic playbook. First, they embraced political violence. Second, they rejected the individual and believed people were bound by group stereotypes. Third, they promoted nostalgia for a past that never really existed. Fourth, they created cults of personality around a few would-be heroes. And fifth, they used the technologies of the day, from loudspeakers to film, to propagandize and recruit.
These movements were also able to find support from people who felt isolated by the political, moral or social norms of the day, and often sought solace in conspiracy theories or scapegoating minorities.
All of this should sound familiar — and frightening. Even scarier, many of these groups ended up coming into political power through democratic elections and established institutions.
After the war, we hoped we might establish an international system of human rights and cooperation that, however imperfect, could allow us to overcome the sins of the past. There has been progress, and we have seen the passage of laws that protect our basic rights and healthy democracies built on checks and balances.
But today, we sit on shakier ground. Across the world, major movements once again call for the end of liberal democracy, traffic in antisemitism and hate, and rely on divisive policies and rhetoric that put us all at risk.
Certainly, the past echoes loudly, but things have changed in important ways. For one, today’s extremists are more diffuse and apart from one another. There is no central movement or nexus of operations, or even coherent ideology. Instead, there is a grab bag of ideologies — often contradictory — from which today’s extremists pick and choose those ideas that fit or adapt to their preconceived biases.
Just go online and look at today’s social media platforms and you’ll see. In certain chats, you will find multiple movements talking to one another in the same space. In addition to extremists who have plagued us for generations, such as the Klan or neo-Nazis, you will also see a bevy of anti-government groups, so-called men’s rights advocates, conspiracy theorists, hardline nationalists, accelerationists, ethno-nationalists, religious extremists, online edgelords and others. There is also a horseshoe effect, whereby persons on the other end of the spectrum, including some eco-terrorists, communists, anti-globalists, and anarchists, adopt views similar to those on the far right. Occasionally, you also encounter religious extremists in the same space.
Most troubling of all, you will see average members of the public helping to normalize these hatreds. You see, being online has made all of us more aware of these problematic ideologies, increasing the risk that more people might radicalize themselves by simply clicking links.
Social media brings new dynamics and greater reach, and instantaneously connects vulnerable people with toxic ideology. Research shows that false information spreads at least six times faster on platforms like X, formerly known as Twitter, and USC scholars recently determined we all tend to repost content not because it is true or false, but rather because it is there. It is the gamification of media — and in some ways, of truth.
Extremist content often surges before and during moments that test our democracy, including elections, social protests and terror attacks. For example, antisemitic conspiracy memes spiked in the days leading up to the mass shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 17, 2019, where a deranged gunman killed 11 people and injured six others.
What do we do? At the simplest level, we must educate. A lot of people do not know when they engage in dangerous behaviors or use harmful rhetoric. Antisemitism is a belief system, and like any belief, it can be challenged and changed over time through open dialogue, engaged learning and thoughtful questioning of our assumptions.
And just as extremism cuts across ideological divides, so too must our response. Working to combat antisemitism and extremism is not political or partisan. There are clear differences between certain forms of extremism, but the outcomes are often the same. And extremists on the left and right almost always find their way to antisemitism.
We also need to remember our personal responsibility to stand up. Many atrocities borne of extremism — even the Holocaust — required tens of thousands of people or more who collaborated in one form or another in these crimes, as well as hundreds of thousands more who remained neutral, who were eyewitnesses and said nothing, or who profited off the suffering of others. Some people acted heroically, but ultimately there were too few people sufficiently educated to be stronger than hate. All of us have the personal responsibility to pay close attention to the content we are creating and sharing, and to be mindful of context and unexamined biases.
In addition, we must also remember that not every person who holds extremist views is a dangerous radical. Extremists live on a spectrum. Some are truly full of violent hate and very well might be irredeemable, but many are just misguided, neutral — and even persuadable.
That is why dialogue, education and understanding matters. That is why influential voices like yours matter. Whether we are influencers or not, well-known leaders or not, we must be brave enough to stand up so that we can all draw the world’s attention to the need for a more peaceful future.
We also need to engage in dialogue with the victims of extremist violence. Listening to people who have the experience, insight and awareness of the dangers of extremism illuminates our common humanity, strengthens our resilience and compels us to support one another.
If we run away from these opportunities, if we do not learn the lessons of the past, if we do not realize that we have responsibilities to educate one another, then catastrophe will win the race. We know how that movie ends. We cannot let that happen.
Dr. Robert J. Williams is the Finci-Viterbi executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation.
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