Thursday, June 15, 2023

Rahul Gandhi embarks on truck journey in US, engages in candid conversation with driver

New YorkEdited By: Navya BeriUpdated: Jun 15, 2023, 

Photograph:(PTI)


STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Rahul Gandhi during his ride remarked that the truck drivers in India were struggling to make ends meet, whereas their American counterparts were receiving decent wages.

Congress leader, Rahul Gandhi, during his recent visit to the United States, took a truck ride with driver Taljinder Singh Vicky Gill from Washington to New York.

The two engaged in a candid conversation where the congress leader enquired about the challenges the Indian-origin truck drivers faced in the United States. They further discussed similarities, differences in the working conditions of both India and America.

Gandhi had earlier shared the experience of a similar ride from Delhi to Chandigarh where he spoke to the truck drivers to understand the problems that they were facing.

Gandhi further put out the video of his 190 km ride on his official YouTube handle

“Continuing on my journey to listen to a variety of voices, I recently went on a 190 km ‘American Truck Yatra’ from Washington DC to New York. Much like my Truck Yatra from Delhi to Chandigarh here in India, I enjoyed a candid heart-to-heart conversation- this time centred around the everyday lives of Indian-origin Truck drivers in America,” he wrote in the video’s description.

“Was happy to find out that our brothers in America earn fair wages, and work in a system that is focused on the ‘Driver’s comfort’. The hardworking Truck drivers’ community in India deserves a life of dignity too, and an inclusive vision that takes them forward is bound to have a positive cascading effect on the economy of our entire country,” he further added.

During their ride, Gandhi noted that the trucks in the United States were designed as per the needs and comfort of the driver, something that according to him was not being taken care of in the Indian vehicles.

The Congress leader also remarked that the truck drivers in India were struggling to make ends meet, whereas their American counterparts were receiving decent wages.

“Trucks in India have nothing to do with the comfort of drivers and in comparison, with India, safety in the US roads are much better,” Gandhi said.

“As compared to India we earn a lot and drivers here earn anywhere between $8-10k (Rs. 8-10 lakhs) every month. There is a lot of work here and people who don’t have an opportunity to study or invest in a business they can opt to be a truck driver in the US. We are happy with our families in the US as truck drivers which is difficult to comprehend in India,” the driver, Taljinder Singh, replied to Rahul Gandhi.

The Congress party released a statement saying that there were a lot of lessons that could be drawn from the American industry and incorporated in India.

"There are a lot of lessons we can draw from the American truck industry to plan a new vision for the truck industry here in India. Indian truck drivers are the lifeline of our logistics and deserve a life of dignity too," the statement said.

(With inputs from agencies)

 




PM Modi to speak on diaspora’s role in India’s growth story at his community address in US

Prime Minister Modi is visiting the US from June 21-24 at the invitation of US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden. They will host Modi at a state dinner on June 22. The visit also includes an address to the Joint Session of the Congress on June 22.

By: PTI
Washington | June 15, 2023 

“The topic is going to be the role of the diaspora in the growth story of India. We want to see what we can do as a diaspora to help India and the people of India come up to the new place in the world,” , Chicago based Dr Bharat Barai said . ( Photo : File)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will speak on the role of the diaspora in India’s development during his address to Indian Americans here next week, according to a community leader in charge of hosting the event.

Prime Minister Modi is visiting the US from June 21-24 at the invitation of US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden. They will host Modi at a state dinner on June 22. The visit also includes an address to the Joint Session of the Congress on June 22.
Also Read | Through PM Modi’s visit, US looks to convey India-US relationship is of ‘positive strategic consequence’

Chicago-based Dr Bharat Barai, who was at the Ronald Reagan Building venue in Washington DC on Wednesday to give final shape to the next week’s event, said that it is a sold-out event, with registration completed for all 838 seats.

“As far as the registrations are concerned, they are closed for the host committee as well as other people. We had an extraordinary response, all by word of mouth because we had only 838 seats. So there was no time and there was no capacity if we advertised outside,” Barai told PTI.

“We used the database that we had from the previous public meetings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and even before we could contact the people, they contacted us and it’s all filled up,” he said.


Modi will address an invitation-only gathering of diaspora leaders from across the country at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington on June 23.

“The topic is going to be the role of the diaspora in the growth story of India. We want to see what we can do as a diaspora to help India and the people of India come up to the new place in the world,” Barai said.

Noting that the event will have very few cultural elements, he said the organisers want to make it primarily an engagement between the diaspora and the prime minister.

“The diaspora is very much excited about having such a visionary and working person who has propelled India to the fifth largest economy in the world. Not only that, he has elevated India’s reputation,” he said.

Amitabh Mittal from Chicago thanked US President Joe Biden for inviting Modi on an official state visit.

“He is the man of the action. He has transformed India. India has been waiting for someone like him to come and take charge,” Mittal said.

Mittal hoped the prime minister would make an announcement on the Hindu Heritage Month in October.

“We have received his letter twice already in the last two years. But since he’s here on the ground, I would love for him to mention that October is celebrated as the Hindu Heritage Month.

“Not only in America, but Canada, Australia, New Zealand and six other countries have joined in, and we have 30 proclamations already,” Mittal said.

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Fights for Climate, Labor and Indigenous Rights Converge at Auto Supply Chains

The electric vehicle supply chains are neither green nor just — but they are crucial organizing spaces, activists say.
Published June 8, 2023   
Left: An electric car is manufactured in a factory in Bursa, Turkey. Right: Nickel, a critical component used in electric vehicle batteries, is mined in in southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia.
MUSTAFA YILMAZ / ANADOLU AGENCY 

A global boom in the production of electric vehicles (EVs) propelled by battery power instead of internal combustion engines is imminent. Worldwide, around 14 percent of all new cars sold in 2022 were electric, up from less than 5 percent in 2020. In the U.S., electric car sales increased from 0.2 percent in 2011 to 4.6 percent in 2021, and then jumped to 8 percent in 2022. Analysts predict that number could rise to 40 percent or more by 2030.

But the shift away from fossil fuel-powered vehicles, while broadly welcome, raises numerous other questions about the production process behind EVs.

For instance, will the carbon-intensive production of the steel that makes electric vehicles also be decarbonized? Will the rights of Indigenous communities disproportionately impacted by the extraction of critical minerals be respected, including their prerogative to withhold consent around mining projects? Will new jobs respect the rights of workers, including their right to organize into unions?

Earlier this year, a new network called Lead the Charge, comprised of several advocacy organizations, came together to address these concerns and pressure automakers to account for climate and environmental justice, labor and Indigenous rights issues. The goal is to ensure that, from the beginning, the world-defining transition to EVs will accelerate a categorical shift away from climate-destroying fossil fuels and advance goals around basic rights, especially for Indigenous communities and workers.

By focusing on automakers, whose decisions hold immense leverage over the future of crucial global supply chains, Lead the Charge hopes to advance a just and fossil-free future across the entire supply chain — not just around what comes out of exhaust pipes.

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By Adriana Daroqui , TRUTHOUT
May 23, 2022

“We want to make sure that the transition is not just shifting tailpipe emissions to other emissions and abuses throughout the production side of the supply chain or exacerbating existing issues,” said Erika Thi Patterson, auto supply chain campaign director for Public Citizen’s Climate Program.

In addition to Public Citizen, members of Lead the Charge include the Sunrise Project, Mighty Earth, First Peoples Worldwide, Cultural Survival, Sierra Club, and other groups.
Lead the Charge

Simply put, there’s no way to address the climate crisis without decarbonizing auto transportation. Passenger vehicles account for around 15 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions globally.

Of course, this means moving away from vehicles powered by burning fossil fuel and toward transportation run on fossil-free energy sources. But when it comes to more fully decarbonizing the total emissions released by automobiles and advancing a just transition, that’s just a start.

Electric vehicles are the final link in a vast global supply chain that currently involves the carbon-intensive production of raw materials like steel and aluminum that contribute enormously to global warming, as well as mining that involves practices that often run roughshod over the rights of Indigenous people and workers. According to one report, the manufacturing and supply chain for EVs must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 81 percent by 2032 to keep at the 1.5 degrees Celsius Paris Agreement goal.

This makes auto supply chains more than sequential lines of production whose end results are vehicles. Rather, they are sites where the battle for climate, racial and economic justice is playing out, making them crucial organizing spaces for anyone who cares about equality, rights and sustainability.

Automakers sell around 80 million cars a year globally. Their production needs to structure entire global supply chains. Steel, for example, makes up more than half of the average vehicle. This gives automakers immense leverage to set terms for purchasing requirements within those supply chains.

For the Lead the Charge campaign, this all adds up to a sense of urgency, not merely to push slow-moving auto giants to ditch fossil fuel-powered vehicles more quickly, but to ensure that, amid a once-in-a-lifetime transition to a new world of electric vehicles, the emerging supply chains respect and protect Indigenous and worker rights, and show a commitment to decarbonization that goes beyond only tailpipe emissions.

The problems in the current auto supply chain are multiple, says the campaign.

The materials that go into auto production — aluminum, steel, batteries — are themselves the end products of production chains with huge carbon footprints. The steel sector, for example, is behind 8 to 11 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, and its production relies heavily on coal-fired energy.

“When mining companies come to the territories of Indigenous people … the resources leave, without any or very little economic remuneration…. But of course, the environmental degradation stays.”

“Electric is really just the start,” said Matthew Groch, a senior director on heavy industry at Mighty Earth, a climate advocacy group and a member of the Lead the Charge network. He points out that steel and aluminum “make up 40 to 60 percent of embodied emissions for motor vehicles.”

“We’ve had conversations with automakers,” says Groch, “where steel and aluminum decarbonization in their supply chain just isn’t something they’re even considering.” (Mighty Earth and Public Citizen have taken action calling on steelmakers to move toward green steel that relies on decarbonized production.)

Moreover, the reliance on mineral extraction — lithium, nickel and cobalt, for example — clashes with Indigenous rights because vast amounts of mineral deposits are located on or near Indigenous lands. The global auto chain also has a checkered record on workers’ and human rights.

With all this, Lead the Charge is making three core demands around how future automobiles should be produced: equitably, with a respect for Indigenous rights, workers and local communities; sustainably, with a commitment to upholding environmental health and biodiversity through the supply chain; and fossil-free, meaning “100% electric and made with a fossil fuel-free supply chain.”

To illustrate their view on how most auto companies are faring — or failing — on these goals, Lead the Charge released a scorecard earlier this year — featured in a Washington Post guide for buying electric vehicles — that rates 18 automakers on a range of metrics tied to “commitments, progress, and concrete action” toward fossil-free and environmentally sustainable supply chains and in upholding Indigenous and workers’ rights across supply chains.

Many of the scorecard results are very low. Scores are weighted toward indications toward “implementation” over mere gestures or promises. (For more details on both of these, see the scorecard’s methodology section.)

“The Industry’s Biggest Climate Laggard”

One of the lower-scoring companies is Toyota, the world’s second-biggest automaker.

This might surprise some readers. Afterall, Toyota is well-known for its hybrid Prius, long imagined as a greener alternative to entirely gas-powered cars. But campaigners with the Lead the Charge say Toyota’s association with sustainability is sorely outdated.

“While many other companies have come out with new EV technologies, Toyota has continued to double down on their investments in hybrid technology,” said Thi Patterson.

“Because they’ve invested so much in their hybrid technology, they’re trying to prolong the transition to EVs,” she said, noting that customers are “often unaware that there are cleaner, zero-emission options out there.”

Toyota scored a dismal 6 percent on the Lead the Charge scorecard.

“Toyota continues to be the industry’s biggest climate laggard,” says Lead the Charge. “It’s among several automakers that have made the least progress on the EV transition: Battery-powered electric vehicles comprised less than 1% of the company’s total sales in 2022.”

All this has significant repercussions. As one of the giants of the global auto industry, Thi Patterson says that what Toyota does can have “tremendous influence over global supply chains.”

Moreover, she says, Toyota is a major anti-climate lobbying group. According to the nonprofit think tank Influence Map, Toyota, despite its green messaging, has had “mostly negative engagement globally on policy mandating the full electrification of the automotive sector.” For example, Toyota has opposed or “appeared to oppose” national policies to phase out internal combustion engines in Canada, the U.K., Japan, New Zealand and California, according to Influence Map, and it did not sign on to a 2021 pledge by several major automakers to phase out internal combustion engine-powered vehicles in leading markets by 2035 and globally by 2040.

Public Citizen and other groups are stepping up the pressure on Toyota, which has a new CEO and is facing growing pressure from investors around climate issues. They sent a March 30 letter to the company demanding that it “phase out internal combustion engine vehicles (including hybrids and plug-in hybrids) in the U.S. and Europe by 2030 and globally by 2035” and that it “require 100% renewable energy use throughout [its] supply chains globally by 2035.”

A week later, Toyota announced an update to its EV buildout strategy, saying it aims to sell 1.5 million battery electric vehicles annually by 2026. Public Citizen called it “a modest improvement for an auto giant that lobbied for decades to delay the EV transition,” and “a mere baby step considering the price we will pay for Toyota’s failure to fully reverse course on the internal combustion engine.”

Public Citizen and allies from Jobs to Move America deliver a petition with over 6,500 signatures to Japan’s Los Angeles Consulate demanding that the country stop allowing Toyota to halt climate action at home and across the globe
.JUSTIN KNIGHT
Public Citizen and allies from Mighty Earth and the Sierra Club deliver a parallel petition calling on Japan to stop Toyota from halting climate action at home and across the globe, at the U.S.-Japan Embassy in Washington, D.C.JUSTIN KNIGHT
“Our Fundamental Right of Self-Determination”

One of the lowest-scoring areas among all automakers analyzed by Lead the Charge was around Indigenous rights. Indeed, two-thirds of all 18 automakers scored a zero in this area.

This is alarming, several Lead the Charge partners told Truthout, since Indigenous communities are disproportionately impacted by the shift to EVs, and specifically the transition’s reliance on mining critical minerals needed to make vehicle batteries.

One new study estimates that, among 30 “energy transition minerals and metals” that “form the material base for the energy transition,” more than half of this resource base globally “is located on or near the lands of Indigenous and peasant peoples.” Another study finds that within the U.S., “97% of nickel, 89% of copper, 79% of lithium and 68% of cobalt reserves and resources” — all critical energy-transition minerals — “are located within 35 miles of Native American reservations.”

Kate Finn is the executive director of First Peoples Worldwide, which is part of the Lead the Charge network. A member of the Osage Nation, Finn has written extensively on violations of Indigenous rights by extractive industries mining for energy-transition minerals.

“Indigenous peoples in the U.S. have engaged with mining companies for 400 years,” she told Truthout. “It’s not new what happens when mining companies come to the territories of Indigenous people. Indigenous leaders are often not even consulted about what happens on their lands, and then the resources leave, without any or very little economic remuneration,” Finn said.

“But of course, the environmental degradation stays,” she said.

However, Finn says, “we have an opportunity now to not repeat this pattern in the green economy.”

To this end, a key demand of Lead the Charge is that automakers uphold Indigenous rights and self-determination by honoring the processing of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC).

Spelled out in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, FPIC posits that Indigenous communities have the right to grant or withhold consent around projects that impact their land and resources, and that this decision should come after a substantive, prior period of consultation and dialogue. Indigenous communities can also negotiate the terms of approval for any project and withdraw their consent at any time.

Ultimately, FPIC is a mechanism to protect Indigenous self-determination.

Finn calls FPIC “the global consensus on minimum standards to respect the rights and well-being of Indigenous peoples globally” and “the safeguard of a whole basket of rights” for over 5,000 different Indigenous entities around the world.

Galina Angarova, the executive director of the Indigenous-led nonprofit Cultural Survival and a member of the Buryat people, the largest Indigenous group in Siberia, calls FPIC “a very specific right of Indigenous peoples that flows from our fundamental right of self-determination.”

Cultural Survival is also a Lead the Charge partner, and both Angarova and Finn are leaders in the Securing Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in the Green Economy (SIRGE) Coalition, which helped shape the Indigenous rights’ focus within Lead the Charge.

Angarova says the SIRGE Coalition formed after the Nornickel disaster of 2020 that spilled 21,000 tons of diesel into the Arctic subsoil and waters of a western Siberian region occupied by several Indigenous groups. The spill decimated water and fishing sources and hunting grounds. In the disaster’s aftermath, several groups came together to advance FPIC with private sector and governmental actors and, more broadly, to foreground Indigenous rights, self-determination and leadership in the green transition.

Angarova says the SIRGE Coalition’s goal is ensure that Free, Prior and Informed Consent is “implemented throughout the supply chain for the green economy, from the exploratory stages, to the end of the cycle, the product.”

“Unfortunately,” she says, “the initial Lead the Charge scorecard showed that, across the board, automakers are generally failing to incorporate Free, Prior and Informed Consent and Indigenous rights into their policies and to implement the practice.”

Some have raised frustrations with how corporations can approach FPIC — for example, treating it as one-way pro forma “information sharing” that glosses over Indigenous input and approval, a mere box to check before moving forward with a project.

Angarova stresses that “consultation does not equate to consent” under FPIC. Companies must have a “social license to operate” that can only be granted through the substantive and informed permission of Indigenous communities prior to the beginning of any operations.

She says that even when different actors warm up to FPIC, ensuring enforcement can be “very difficult,” and that the coalition is strategizing about how to ensure accountability. She highlights a range of injustices occurring today — for example, with a new lithium mining deal between Lithium Americas and General Motors opposed by the People of Red Mountain in Nevada.

“Indigenous lands, territories and resources are under direct threat,” says Angarova, because of the booming demand for transition metals such as copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium.

“As the demand for these minerals increases, Indigenous peoples also want to see an end to the climate crisis,” she said. “But this needs to be achieved in a way that respects their rights.”

All this begs the question: In addition to decarbonizing the auto supply chain, might a just energy transition also involve expanding modes of transportation that rely less on extraction — whether fossil fuels or critical minerals — altogether?

A recent report from the Climate and Community Project argues that lithium demand could be significantly reduced without impeding the shift away from internal combustion engines through building out public transportation. A greater role for green industrial policy and public ownership of key infrastructure could allow for planning that’s less reliant on mining the world’s critical energy-transition minerals.

Indeed, achieving a truly green and just transition will likely involve multiple and combined fronts.
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Southeast Iowa biodiesel plant stops production

Jared Strong Iowa Capital Dispatch

The fat from animals such as pigs, cattle and chickens being used to make green jet fuel could end up being worse for the planet.

A biodiesel refinery in Crawfordsville that was capable of producing about 10 million gallons of the fuel each year has ceased operation.

“We would have loved to have kept it going, and we really tried — we just need more certainty,” said Roy Strom, chief executive of W2Fuel.

To keep the facility in operation would require investments in equipment that might not pay off, he said, depending on how federal policy changes toward the industry. Specifically, it’s unclear how long a $1-per-gallon federal tax credit for biodiesel production might be extended into future years and whether federal mandates for the use of biofuels will expand.

The facility is among 11 biodiesel refineries in the state that last year produced a total of about 349 million gallons of the fuel, according to the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. That was a production increase of about 3% over the previous year but was less than the 365 million gallons produced in 2018.

That year, the per-gallon tax credit for biodiesel production lapsed. The Crawfordsville facility ceased production temporarily in September 2019, according to Iowa Department of Natural Resources records.


The W2Fuel biodiesel refinery in Crawfordsville struggled to restart its production after a shutdown in 2019. (Image via Google Earth)

However, later in 2019 the tax credit was reinstated and retroactively applied to the fuel produced in 2018 and 2019.

W2Fuel sought to restart the facility and eventually began production again in June 2021, DNR records show. Since then it had struggled to operate and failed to adequately test its air emissions for methanol and carbon.

“The facility has had numerous startup issues and (has) been unable to operate consistently since shutting down in September 2019,” the company’s audit and compliance manager wrote to the DNR in November 2021, as the department pressed for tests of the plant’s air emissions.

The company had anticipated testing its emissions at full production rates in the first half of this year, but in April it notified the DNR that production would cease by the end of May.

Strom said the plant began its shutdown process a couple of months ago and that it has almost concluded. W2Fuel has no immediate plans to sell the facility, and its future is unclear.

Strom estimated that the facility produced about 1 million gallons of biodiesel last year. W2Fuel continues to operate a biodiesel refinery in Michigan, where the company is based, he said.

Grant Kimberley, executive director of the Iowa Biodiesel Board, which advocates for the industry, said the closure is unlikely to have much of an effect on overall biodiesel production in Iowa because the other facilities have additional capacity. The uncertainty about federal policies will have a greater effect.

“That makes it hard to make investments in a facility that needs upgraded, needs more efficiencies, and the economy of scale put toward it,” Kimberley said, noting that the Crawfordsville plant has among the smallest production capacities in the state.

Strom said it was also a struggle to hire employees. There were five at the plant leading into the shutdown. Two of them are taking jobs at the Michigan facility, he said, and the other three have found other employment.

Biodiesel production increases demand for the state’s soybeans and is estimated to add about 13% of value to a bushel of soybeans, according to the Iowa Soybean Association.

About 71% of Iowa’s biodiesel is made with soybean oil, according to the IRFA. It’s also produced with animal fats, canola oil and used cooking oil.

Biodiesel is blended with oil-based diesel and sold for fuel, typically in concentrations as high as 20% biodiesel.

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Elon Musk is the most dangerous antisemite in America

In his tenure as Twitter CEO, Musk has amplified antisemitic rhetoric and made the social media platform fertile ground for extremist recruitement
Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City.

Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City. Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue


Elad NehoraiJune 8, 2023

“I’m not trying to compare this s*** to Aum Shinrikyo or even Rwanda but I’m gonna be totally honest with you Elad, I’m scared scared this time.”

I got this text from my friend Sarah Hightower, an independent researcher who specializes in the far right and online extremist movements. I had been spending a year warning people about Elon Musk’s increasingly overt antisemitism, but I wanted to know if she felt his most recent Twitter interaction was as alarming as I thought it was. 

Musk replied to an initial tweet that uses the word “Js” to refer to Jews, while referencing a modern blood libel conspiracy theory about the chemical compound adrenochrome, which alleges that “global elites” torture children to extract the chemical from their blood for the purpose of maintaining their health and youth.

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At no point in Musk’s response did he call out this blatant antisemitism. As is common for him when interacting with bigotry, Musk responded obliquely, referencing Mel Gibson’s physique while ignoring the substance of the tweet. While this could theoretically be construed as an oversight, Musk consistently finds himself chatting it up with Twitter’s best-known antisemites; what happened this week was just more explicit. 

Musk’s history of amplifying antisemites and antisemitic rhetoric on Twitter, along with his control of the social media platform itself, make him the loudest, and most powerful antisemite in American history.

Elon Musk has 140 million followers. That’s 40 times more of an audience than Tucker Carlson’s average viewership on Fox News. That alone makes him a massive cultural influencer, able to shape conversations on an international scale in the way traditional media could only dream of. Unfortunately, due to the traditional primacy and respect accorded totelevision and mainstream media, it is easy for Musk’s power on social media to be overlooked.

Elon Musk’s behavior is part of a larger pattern that puts all Jews in America in urgent danger. Musk is engaging in essentially a scaled-up, far more widespread version of rhetoric that has directly led to violence against minorities.

“This isn’t just endorsement by omission,” Hightower said of Musk’s most recent Twitter activity. “He’s positively, unapologetically engaging with the sort of rhetoric that’s written multiple blank checks for genocide in the past.”

Hightower referenced Aum Shinrikyo and the 1994 Rwandan genocide as two instances that embody the devastating potential of inflammatory rhetoric propagated through media, triggering violence on a mass scale.

In Aum Shinrikyo’s case, the Japanese cult effectively weaponized media to enthrall followers and justify their apocalyptic vision. From publishing their own magazines to engaging in public relations campaigns, they were able to use coded media messaging to recruit and eventually mobilize their members. Perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide used extremist messaging on radio stations to drum up hatred against the Tutsi minority, which ultimately led to the murder of at least 500,000 people.

In both cases, there was an earlier coded stage, in which messages were spread through conspiracy theories, drumming up terror of the “other.” As these coded ideologies spread, the hatred became more explicit, leading to mass violence. 

I made a similar point almost a year ago in reference to the rise of hateful rhetoric targeting the transgender community in America. I drew parallels to pogroms targeting Jews, describing how they often started with conspiracy theories. This grew and evolved, leading to violence, sometimes followed by genocide.

Today trans people are more targeted than ever.

Musk frequently cloaks his antisemitic rhetoric in the language of conspiracy theories. Whether he’s claiming it is “accurate” that George Soros is a “Lizard God-King of the world” who controls the fate of each business on earth, or linking Soros with the Rothschilds (one of the most overt and well-known antisemitic conspiracy theories in recent history), or engaging in the New World Order conspiracy theory that claims a small elite (Jews) are on the verge of turning the world into a single government, or interacting with those who spread the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, Musk is regularly spreading the kind of coded messaging that leads to the spread of antisemitism. 

Whatever his intentions, the simple reality is that Musk is amplifying and spreading antisemitic hate speech.

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The potency of the conspiracy theories Musk endorses lies not in their validity, but in their ability to tap into existing prejudices and fears, providing a convenient scapegoat for complex societal issues. When Musk links Soros to the Rothschilds or implies a shadowy elite are controlling the world, he isn’t simply making an offhand comment. He’s tapping into deep-seated antisemitic tropes. In doing so, Musk emboldens those who already hold such prejudices, while also subtly introducing these harmful stereotypes to a broader audience.

However Musk is not just a popular influencer, which would be harmful enough already, but is the owner of the social media platform where he trollishly wields that influence. This means Musk dictates the rules of Twitter’s online environment, getting to rule over what is considered hate speech, who gets amplified and who gets suspended.

He has wielded that power with gusto. Musk has gone out of his way to reinstate some of Twitter’s most notorious antisemites, including David Icke (who argues that the world is run by a cabal of lizard people who funded the Holocaust) and Andrew Anglin, the founder of neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer.

In less than a year as Twitter CEO, Musk has decimated the content moderation teams, with the trust and safety division, the team responsible for content moderation, not even having anyone to run it after its most recent resignation. Even if Twitter had a robust content moderation division in place, Musk has made it explicit that he doesn’t believe antisemitic conspiracy theories are antisemitic.

The results have been quicker than even many of us expected: Antisemitic messaging has doubled since Musk took over eight months ago. According to the same analysis, hate speech as a whole has tripled, with a “sustained volume of antisemitic hate speech” on the platform. 

More to the point, extremists have made it clear that they see this as an opportunity to recruit. Organizing in places like 4chan, they have coordinated Twitter campaigns since the day Musk took over. They celebrate his attacks on figures like Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL and use Musk’s trolling to find new followers.

Combined with Musk’s validation of their conspiracy theories along with essentially nonexistent content moderation, Twitter now offers the best opportunities for extremists to recruit and for antisemitism itself to become mainstream.

This makes Musk the most dangerous antisemite in America, and possibly the most dangerous antisemite in American history. No other person has ever had this much power over media and to spread a message.  

On top of the already rising antisemitism in America prior to Musk’s takeover, we are now in an especially precarious moment. And we need to all collectively face it before it gets darker than ever.

To contact the author, email opinion@forward.com.

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Dabbling in antisemitism, Pat Robertson portrayed himself as a friend to certain kinds of Jews

The televangelist, who has died at 93, once likened non-Christians to ‘termites’
Pat Robertson at Jerry Falwell's funeral, 2007

Pat Robertson at Jerry Falwell’s funeral, 2007 Photo by Getty Images

By Benjamin IvryJune 9, 2023

Pat Robertson, the televangelist who died June 8 at age 93, could at times appear to cherish Jewish traditions. His 700 Club program, a chat show expounding right-wing Christian ideology, regularly organized Rosh Hashanah celebrations because, as Robertson claimed during one broadcast, “We identify with our dear friends in the Jewish community and Israel.”

Yet he was also capable of comments like this, made during a 2014 program in which Robertson hosted the Orthodox rabbi Daniel Lapin and claimed: “What is it about Jewish people that make them prosper financially? You almost never find Jews tinkering with their cars on the weekends or mowing their lawns.”

To which Rabbi Lapin concurred that he paid others to tend his car and lawn. Robertson added that the rabbi was busy “polishing diamonds, not fixing cars.”

When this exchange was reported in the media, Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) issued a press release attempting to defuse the exchange as a mere “jovial back-and-forth” featuring “good-natured ribbing” by Robertson, rather than a “slur on the Jewish people.”

Yet Robertson’s long and lucrative career was littered with comparable misunderstandings, in part because his attraction to Jews and Israel was complicated by a need to convert Jews to Christianity, through associations with groups like Jews for Jesus.

This imperative was evident even in his less blatant comments about Jews. Robertson began a televised presentation around 2004, “Why Evangelical Christians Support Israel” by citing an anecdote in which Queen Victoria supposedly asked her Jewish prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, for evidence of the existence of God. Disraeli’s reply: “The Jew, your majesty.”

Although doubtless intended as a tribute to the resilience of Jewish survival, the specious tale, as theologians Aron Engberg and Stephen Haynes have explained, has been used about a variety of European leaders in antisemitic, as well as philosemitic, contexts.

As Engberg suggests, the fictional story casts Jews as a species apart from the rest of humanity, seen with hatred and love, what the Polish Jewish literary critic Artur Sandauer termed allosemitism.

Sandauer’s compatriot, the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, found the word allosemitism useful because it captured the ambivalence of multiple messaging. Pat Robertson specialized in this type of rhetoric.

Pat Robertson stumps for Donald Trump at Regent University, Oct. 22, 2016, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Photo by Getty Images

Despite his loud support for Israel as a place to be reclaimed by Christians, in 2006 Robertson reacted to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffering a stroke by suggesting that the illness was divine punishment for “dividing God’s land.” Sharon was seen by Robertson as making unacceptable concessions by ordering Israel’s disengagement from Gaza the previous year.

On the same broadcast, Robertson also diagnosed the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as God’s punishment for Rabin’s efforts to achieve peace by giving land to the Palestinians. Abraham Foxman, then-director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), called Robertson’s comments “un-Christian and a perversion of religion. Unlike Robertson, [Jews] don’t see God as cruel and vengeful.”

A 1994 ADL report on the religious right’s attempts to make America an entirely Christian nation so irked Robertson that he wrote to Foxman:

“It is painfully obvious that you are a deeply troubled individual who has somewhere along the way lost your Judaic roots. Please know, Abe, that I will pray earnestly that you may indeed meet personally the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

To which Foxman retorted:

“It’s just like you to decide for others what their spiritual needs are or should be. I have met my God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and do not need your guidance, prayers or intervention.”

Indeed, it was like Robertson to tell Israelis what to do in their own country, or what Jews should do to be acceptable in his eyes. Robertson’s 1991 book The New World Order repeated antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Jewish financiers Paul Warburg, Jacob Schiff and the Rothschild family. He also underlined that “Communism was the brainchild of German-Jewish intellectuals.”

In 1995, responding to ongoing controversy, Robertson told The New York Times that it was all a misunderstanding. Claiming that a reporter from Haaretz had once told him, “You’re more Israeli than Menachem Begin,” Robertson noted that he opposed American Jews who “have embraced the New Deal and the Fair Deal and incorporated them into Judaism,” adding: “And to me, they’re not a part of Judaism.”

For Robertson’s brand of approved right-wing Jews, toeing the line offered potential rewards. During a run for the presidency in 1988, as he later recalled in The New World Order, he was surprised that his promise to accept only Christians and Jews in government service offended some people. He was certain that “those who believe in Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims.”

On a 700 Club broadcast, Robertson had specified: “Individual Christians are the only ones really — and Jewish people, those who trust the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — are the only ones that are qualified to have the reign, because hopefully, they will be governed by God and submitted to him.”

Along these lines, in a 1986 interview with New York Magazine, Robertson likened non-Christians to “termites” who destroy “institutions that have been built by Christians,” before concluding with an apocalyptic warning: “The time has arrived for a godly fumigation.” Whether Jews who failed to fit his definition of Judaism were also candidates for fumigation went unmentioned.

Small wonder that during one of Robertson’s controversies, Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, commented that Robertson had long propounded a “prosperity gospel” that he likened to an Asherah pole, mentioned repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible as a cult object related to the worship of a rival deity to Yahweh.

According to one report, at a 1980 staff meeting of the CBN, Robertson asserted that Jews were “spiritually deaf” and “spiritually blind.” The English Jewish polemicist Christopher Hitchens noted that Robertson was given to referring to The Economist magazine as “the Rothschild publication.”

Classifying Robertson among his fellow televangelists as “Chaucerian frauds, people who are simply pickpockets who prey on the gullible,” Hitchens had undisguised contempt for their “antisemitic innuendo.”

Likewise, the journalist Bill Moyers, accepting an award from the American Jewish Committee in 1995, bemoaned that the “party of Abraham Lincoln has become the parish of Pat Robertson.”

Whatever his parish featured, Robertson was far from a regular churchgoer. In 1987 he admitted to an interviewer that although nominally a member of Virginia’s Freemason Street Baptist Church, he had not attended services in years, explaining: “It is boring. I didn’t enjoy going there.”

An Esquire Magazine report in 1994 visiting a private Christian university he founded in 1977, Christian Broadcasting Network University, later renamed Regent University, expressed surprise that no church had been included on the extensive campus. Only in 2013 did Robertson’s university add a chapel, as if in an afterthought.

So in evaluating Robertson’s troubled rapport with Jews and Jewish tradition, it may be useful to consider that perhaps his legacy really is primarily about political clout and money-making, with spirituality merely a “boring” detail.

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Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.

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