Westboro should be taken as a warning
October 9, 2009 Jewish Community
There is a lot of concern over the Westboro Baptist Church. I would rather not focus on their misdeeds, nor strategies on how to combat them.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the preferred focus of our community.
The Forward’s Rebecca Dube writes,
The unwelcome attention from the fringe group has forced Jewish organizations to grapple with the question of how best to respond to such loose-cannon hatred: engage or ignore? Mainstream Jewish organizations mostly recommend not responding to the Westboro protesters, thus depriving them of the attention they seek. Others argue that turning the other cheek to hatred, no matter how marginal its messengers are, allows evil and antisemitism to flourish. Some organizations targeted by the Phelps’s church have found creative ways to exploit the church’s hateful antics to their own ends.
This is missing the point utterly.
What interests me more is that it seems to me that this would not be happening if the American Jewish community had not been misbehaving on so many levels.
It’s was a very bad year for the Jews, and it has not been our grandest decade. We really need to shape up.
Instead of asking, “How do we counter anti-semitism,” we might instead ask, “What have we done to inspire this kind of anger, and how can we improve our communal behavior?”
Any plan that doesn’t include inward looking questions should be suspect, as it surely comes from a place of aggression or victimology, and most of all, as is always the case in the Jewish communal world, fundraising.
Alternatively, we avoid the hard questions, blame “anti-semitism,” and pretend to be shocked as open rage and resentment increasingly spreads to the center.
19 comments
DK, I don’t know how much you know about Westboro, but they have a virulent hatred of everybody. It isn’t even a real church; it’s made up almost entirely of members of the Phelps family, led by Fred Phelps and his daughter Shirley, both of whom are clinically insane.
These are not your garden variety fundies (for whom, as you know, I also have no love). They go all over the country attacking anyone who they think harbors even the slightest sympathy for gay people, for any reason. Also, Fred and Shirley are lawyers. Anyone who attempts to interfere with them in any way finds him or herself on the business end of a lawsuit. They abuse the legal system more shamelessly than Orly Taitz does. If I were the mayor of Topeka (chos v’sholem!), I’d let it slip to the Chief of Police that if Fred and Shirley were to have an “accident” I’d understand if the police were too busy to investigate thoroughly. That really is the only way to be rid of them at this point.
I don’t mean to take the wind out of your sails, but this particular incident isn’t the result of Jewish communal whining or malfeasance. This is due to the fact that there are a lot of really batshit insane people out there.
I just read that article, and the two that preceded it.
Phelps’ daughter Margie told JTA that the group is now focusing on the Jewish community because church members have been “testifying” to gentiles for 19 years that “America is doomed” and they haven’t gotten the message… Margie Phelps added, “one of the loudest voices” in favor of homosexuality and abortion is “the Jews, especially the rabbis.”
Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project tracking hate groups, said he didn’t think there was any real significance to the church’s new focus on Jews.
“With a group willing to picket the funerals of little girls killed in a school bus crash, it’s hard to be surprised by anything they do,” Potok said.
As to why the Westboro Church has decided to target Jews now, the best guess is that they’re simply seeking a new opportunity for publicity. In a rambling e-mail, Shirley Phelps-Roper explained that her interest in Jews has to do with the role that Jews and Israel will play in the apocalyptic end-time, which her church believes is imminent.
And she confirmed that for her and the other protesters, any reaction to their hateful message is welcome. “It brings out the beast, the true face of the hating Jews,” Phelps-Roper wrote. “How happy are we! The reaction we get is the same reaction the prophets in the Bible got. Yikes!! They killed the prophets. They don’t get to kill us.”
She ended the sentence with a smiley face emoticon.
They’re just nuts, and they crave attention. It’s almost certainly a congenital mental illness. I don’t know why they aren’t taken into custody on that basis, or on the basis of inciting to violence. I’m wondering if the govt. is gun-shy after the Branch Davidian fiasco.
Maybe it is a fluke, and maybe these are just crazies.
Or maybe it is a beginning symptom of a larger problem.
Time will tell.
If it hadn’t been on a Saturday, they might have gotten a few Satmar or Neturai Karta guys out there picketing with them. They’re pretty much on the same page!
The Westboro folks aren’t quite as crazy as those people.
LOL!
No one like Westboro Baptist. No one. Except probably the Muslims. They protest the funerals of our troops, for crying out loud.
What I find ironic is that Abraham Foxman expected to see all kinds of this behavior after “The Passion of the Christ” came out, but it never materialized. Meanwhile, the Muslims say stuff like this all the time. They routinely have protests at UCI calling for the death of “Zionists” (wink) and in NYC they use signs saying things like “Death to all Juice!” But this gets almost zero coverage from the Jewish community for its blatant antisemitism and only calls for more dialogue.
If there is to be a real backlash from gentiles, it will likely be because things like L’Affaire Polanski are becoming too common to ignore. I mean, guys like Harvey Weinstein obviously believe we are complete idiots.
But this gets almost zero coverage from the Jewish community for its blatant antisemitism and only calls for more dialogue.
True, but not in these parts.
Crazy nutters hate us so we should undertake introspection to work out why. Gayest blog post I’ve read in a long time.
Introspection is a sign of intelligence. It is always wise to introspect so that if things go wrong, you can confidently say, “It’s not me.”
David,
Would a survey of Christianity and Christian demographics in the US be helpful to you? It’s becoming obvious that Jews don’t have a good grasp of it.
For example, much of the Evangelical world sees the Jews and Israel as part of its eschatology (dispensationalism), so you have little to worry about there.
Evangelicalism tends to be a white baby boomer thing. The children of Evangelicals tend to leave the church by their second year in college, so demographic support for the Jews/Israel is definitely ebbing in this country over time.
Mainline Protestantism (PCUSA, Episcopal, etc) tends to be pro-gay/feminist/pro-Islam. It has been in decline since the 1930s, but you will often hear calls to “divest from Israel” and support of the Palestinians from these churches. I can dig up some numbers later.
Mexicans tend to be Catholic and a large minority are antisemitic, but many of them are joining the evangelical and charismatic churches because there are more bells, whistles, bread and circuses there. Catholicism is definitely a more mixed-bag than evangelicalism when it comes to the Jews.
There are less than a million confessionally Reformed Christians in north America, but they aren’t antisemitic though they don’t espouse the same eschatology as Evangelicals.
The Emergent church is a post-Evangelical post-baby boomer phenomenon and is shaping up to be anti-Israel pro-Muslim. I’m not quite sure where the numbers are on that.
The eschatology of Evangelicalism has it that Jews must be disunited and eventually at the verge of extinction for their messiah to come. Their support of Israel stems from the belief that their messiah will return there. I met an Evangelical preacher-to-be from Brooklyn who was taking special classes at his “Bible Seminary” that helped him pose as an Orthodox Jew, made-up family tree included; he mingled with blogging Zionist egos that he hoped would help him “make aliyah”. His designated mission is “to preach Jesus to the Jews of Jerusalem”.
Roman Catholicism outright condemns anti-Semitism. There are anti-Semitic individuals that also are Roman Catholic, but if their anti-Semitism is brought to the attention of superiors, e.g. bishops, Catholic administrative law allows for taking measures like excommunication as per definition, all Roman Catholics must abide what is stated and postulated in Nostra Aetate, 4.
Actually, if there is going to be bigotry, one should be glad it manifests itself in such a goofy manner. It is so easily lampooned. It’s the more subtle stuff I would worry about.
Joe,
It isn’t goofy. These have crafted their image perfectly, and their-shock-jock tactics are brilliantly executed. They are also very earnest in their desire to seek out “good figs,” — though they seem to dislike Jews as well, likely for the reasons DK has presented; their corruptive liberalism. As Phelps Roper told me herself in an interview, she doesn’t like that her teenage daughter is an odd-man-out in contemporary society because she wants to remain a virgin until married.
HalfSours,
I don’t have the knowledge you do so I am happy to defer. I just know what I get from general news reports. From such sources, Westboro is not impressive.
Draw your own conclusions. Impressive is relative. I was very impressed, or fascinated. Something like that. I think they’re a lot more interesting than just a hate group. Also — despite the fact that Phelps Roper says her group shrinks with passing years — this has the potential to grow into a full scale movement. Have you seen their satire videos? Check this one out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vratQPrC6N4
As a side note, I didn’t get why Phelps Roper would say that she didn’t have anything against Jews and “fags” when I spoke to her, but still call Jews “filthy,” then I realized that she only used the word “filthy” when she was putting some action or lifestyle choice into context. I don’t think “filthy” is so much a racial epitaph as much as an expression of disdain for Jewish liberalism. I think DK kind gets them. Roper was most offended by the film “Capturing the Friedmans.” She said that Jews were so talented, and so smart, but yet still act depraved. I’m just so fascinated by them. I think their thinking is more nuanced than the ADL would let us believe.
Introspection’s always a good thing, I guess, but these guys are kooks who give Christianity (a term I’m reluctant to associate with them) a bad name. I’d tell ‘em to piss off.
Tom, goodness, where have you been?
I’m worrying myself sick here.
I’d tell ‘em to piss off.
We can do both introspection and tell them to piss off.
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