Why Do People Get So Academic About Antisemitism?
How Jew-hatred became cool at one civic tech organization
I interviewed multiple employees from the same company for this essay. Not one was willing to go on the record. They feared reprisals at work, being blackballed by the field, and becoming permanently unemployable. I assured everyone those things had a good chance of happening, and many had happened to me.
During the McCarthy era, which largely took aim at Jews, my grandmother was fired from her teaching job. My grandparents had fleetingly been members of the Communist Party years earlier. As laborers they were staunchly pro-union, along with many other Pale of Settlement Jews1. After Grandma was fired, the family had no income — she was the primary wage earner2. To this day, my mother fears reprisal if I write that her parents were Communists.
Over the course of my career, I’ve interviewed many government people who feared recrimination if they spoke with the press, but I’ve never experienced anything like these interviews. Reporting this piece, I heard in my interviewees’ voices the raw shock, horror and exhaustion of living through a Jewish purge.
In my last piece, I wrote about how I became Head Cheerleader for a field called Public Interest Technology, and authored a book on the field. Since 10/7, an organization I’d glowed about in my book has become so antisemitic, most Jews there no longer believe there is a place for them in the field. This essay is about that organization, which I refer to as GoodGovTech.
The silence in the #general Slack channel after 10/7 unsettled the Jewish employees of GoodGovTech. Previous tragedies affecting Americans usually set Slack atwitter with hugs for those affected, or links to help. But after the Hamas attacks: silence.
After Israel began retaliating, GoodGovTech’s senior management addressed the silence in the main Slack channel with their own post. Management understood everyone had a lot of grief and strong feelings about what was transpiring in Israel/Palestine. Therefore, Management was sharing links for employees to donate to help Palestinians, UNWRA, or Hamas.
Management’s post quickly led to a thread of links to learn about Israel’s settler colonialism, the writings of Mohammed El-Kurd, or simply expressions of gratitude toward the “resistance.” Employees added watermelon emojis to their screen names. Someone shared an article on why the barbarous attack was justified.
Solving government’s technical problems was hard, but the employees of GoodGovTech sure could stick it to the Jews, which was now the most important part of the movement to make government technology functional.
Several Jewish employees spoke to leadership, who understood GoodGovTech’s Jews were distressed, but couldn’t put their finger on why. Something about the thread in the main Slack being antisemitic? One employee offered a detailed spreadsheet to explain why certain links, people or slogans were antisemitic. Management chose to take no action. Long-standing institutions like the UN, Doctors Without Borders or the New York Times couldn’t possibly all be antisemitic. When had that ever happened before?
“It’s great that you care about Palestinians,” a Jewish employee said about his coworkers posts. “We should all care about Palestinians. I’m just asking you to do it in a way that’s not antisemitic.”
After two days, Management closed the thread for comments, though it remains in GoodGovTech’s general Slack, a permanent reminder to Jewish employees that both Management and their fellow employees had dismissed their concerns. Luckily, employees had a different channel, invisible to Management, where they could carry on saluting each other’s efforts at stoking and/or funding Jew hatred.
Part of the left’s giant step toward McCarthyism involves a deep misunderstanding of who unions are for and what they do. Toward the end of my tenure at the Tank, employees began to unionize, along with those at most elite, high-paying progressive organizations like GoodGovTech. Not one of these highly paid, health-insured, flextime-acquiring employees required a union. But unionize they did, creating a union Slack channel where everyone cosplayed my grandmother by calling each other comrade, minus any true personal or financial risk.
But after Management shut down the thread in the organization’s main Slack, the union Slack’s #solidarity channel became a vibrant place to let your antisemitism hang out. GoodGovTech espoused the value of realtime data to their clients — now, GoodGovTech’s Jews got to collect data, in real time, on which of their work colleagues aligned with known terrorist organizations.
Meanwhile, employees flocked to speak with the senior-most Jew, who was now also Head Jew in addition to her regular duties. Head Jew’s days involved comforting Jewish employees, explaining antisemitism to higher management, and answering antisemitic questions from non-Jewish employees.
“Since Jews call everything antisemitism, how do you know when it’s really antisemitism?” asked an employee whose job had nothing to do with foreign policy or Jews.
The Jews of GoodGovTech began to filter in to HR, desperate for help and understanding. One Jewish employee showed HR that a hostage was held in an UNWRA facility, making UNWRA an unacceptable place to promote for donations. HR shrugged. Sometimes, you get a few bad apples. Another GoodGovTech Jew attempted to explain why the work environment was antisemitic to HR Head.
“I’m not aware of any antisemitism here,” replied not-Jewish HR Head. She was from South Africa, she said, so she knew what it was like to be a colonized people.
Finally, Head Jew told HR Head that the workplace felt unsafe for Jews.
“I don’t see it,” HR Head replied.
The Jews at GoodGovTech could not believe the abuse directed toward their people, culture, and indigenous land from their work family. Weren’t they, too, part of the public interest tech movement?
“I don’t need a lot,” confessed one Jewish employee about his interactions with HR. “I just need you to acknowledge that Hamas is bad.”
Desperate, the GoodGovTech Jews began attempting their own interventions. Perhaps HR Head could train her department on antisemitism? A few weeks later, HR Head reported she was now fully up to speed on Islamophobia.
The Jews of GoodGovTech were appalled. They’d sat through countless hours of required DEI training3. Yet HR couldn’t find a single professional to address antisemitism?
With Management gone and no one setting the rules, Project Managers, Designers and Developers with zero understanding of the Levant or Jewish history brought the local union rep in for a teach-in on why Palestine is a union issue. She shared the slides below.
Hoping to right the ship, the union held a meeting to let employees share their feelings. A safe space to collectively mourn the deaths of Palestinians, and express anger at Jews. The Jews in attendance shared their own fear and anger at being subjected to an antisemitic work environment in America in 2024. Then they tried, again, to explain antisemitism. And their colleagues responded with more empathy for Palestinians and ignorance.
“I feel like these accusations of antisemitism are keeping people from escaping Palestine,” a fellow comrade worker said.
Finally, the head of the local union showed up, discovered the union Slack at a to be focused entirely on Israel and Gaza, and shut it down. Meanwhile, the union agreed to bar all forms of hatred, except antisemitism, which they were unable to define. The IHRA definition was too restrictive, and it didn’t matter how the Jews in the company defined antisemitism, because Jews are liars.
“Why do people get so academic about antisemitism?” a Jewish employee asked. “If you bring up the history of other races’ etymology you’d be seen as a raving racist. But with antisemitism it’s okay.“
After management signed a contract with the union, all employees became union members by default, with dues deducted from their paychecks. Jews who did not want to belong to an antisemitic union had to submit a request writing. One Jewish employee went on medical leave. Another quietly left for the private sector.
As of this writing, the company union still has not agreed upon a definition of antisemitism. Some employees have watermelons appended to their screen names. Jewish employees can duck their heads and hold onto their jobs, or quit during a tech recession.
“I’m looking to get out of the civic tech space,” a Jewish employee told me, echoing the sentiments of other Jews in the field. “I want to clock in and clock out and have no one ask about my political beliefs. I just need a job where I can get my work done.”
Jews largely founded the labor movement in the United States. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/jewish-workers-and-trade-unions/
My grandfather was too filled angry/mentally ill/ravaged by poverty to finish high school or hold down a job. Grandma had a Masters’ degree.
Among other problems, DEI erases Jews entirely. Sitting through DEI as an erzatz White Oppressor is deeply uncomfortable for most Jews.
I understand many Jews on the Left were shocked to see their “comrades” were anti-Semites. But once everybody gets over the fact that their ersatz Commie colleagues are Jew hating bigots and ignoramuses, what will they DO about it? There are laws against supporting terrorist organizations. There are laws against discrimination in the workplace. There are other avenues as well. There’s actually calling out the organization and people by name and publicly shaming them. There’s all kinds of things to do beyond just saying that it’s a bad environment.
I've been wondering for over a year why there hasn't been more legal action about this issue, especially in universities where Jews can't get the education they paid for because of the barbarians. I thought class action suits were our people's specialty. I don't know if the problem is that too many Jews hope if they keep quiet this will all blow over, or if they're embarrassed that they aligned themselves with the Compassionate and Decent Evidence-Based political tribe, which turned out to be as phony as Al Gore and John Kerry flying around the world on private jets to "raise awareness" about climate change. I can certainly relate. But now I have realized why so many Holocaust survivors voted for Trump: They were old enough to remember how this tune goes, and how quickly you can find yourself on the wrong side of history. We all know that the foundation of right wing politics is law & order, which in dire circumstances can engender "blood and soil" nationalism; although I find it quite strange that hardly anyone on the left understands why legal immigrants often oppose open borders just as natives do. On the other hand, the foundation of left wing ideology is ostensibly equality and fairness, but it leads inevitably to class warfare, then ethnic hostilities, and then to pogroms. I voted for Obama in 2008, and for Trump last year. My conservative friends don't care; but my liberal former friends certainly do. My prediction is that, when the extent of the progressives' moral turpitude is fully exposed, it will be shocking to most of their traditional supporters. Remember, the very same folks who have boundless empathy for illegal migrants have as little to say about all the migrant children who disappeared with unknown "guardians" as they did about the terrorist attack on October 7. Moral relativism is, unfortunately, an inescapable feature of human nature.