Jonathan Freedland On Anti-Semitism And The Left

The British journalist knows his stuff on both sides of the Pond.

(Photo by Philippa Gedge)

Jonathan writes a column for The Guardian, hosts their “Politics Weekly America” podcast, and is the co-host of the “Unholy” podcast with Israeli journalist Yonit Levi. He’s also the author of The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, along with several thrillers under the pseudonym Sam Bourne.

You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on “white supremacy” shifting to “Jewish supremacy,” and a character study of Keir Starmer — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: Jonathan covering US politics since the 1992 election; how Hamas didn’t expect the IDF failures on 10/7; the PR battle over Gaza; Israel in a “desperately bad place”; Hamas wanting the deaths of civilians on both sides; disturbing quotes from the settler movement; the impossibility of a two-state solution; the crude worldview of the woke left; how progressives have often been “on the wrong side of history” (e.g. eugenics); Jeremy Corbyn and anti-Semitism; his meeting with Hamas and Hezbollah; the hooked-nose mural in East London Corbyn defended; Corbyn insidiously trashing a piece by Jonathan; the abuse hurled at Margaret Hodge as a child of Holocaust survivors; inherited trauma; Keir Starmer’s stand against the anti-Semitism in his party; his “Eliot Ness” persona as a chief prosecutor; the likelihood of him being the next PM; Tony Blair’s unflattering portrayal in The Crown; Brexit and migrants; the Rwanda Plan; how Biden is fatally weak on immigration; Iowa evangelicals deifying Trump; and Trump as the favorite for winning in the fall.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Justin Brierley on his book The Surprising Rebirth of Belief of God, Nate Silver on the 2024 race, Christian Wiman on resisting despair as a Christian, Jeffrey Rosen on the pursuit of happiness, George Will on Trump and conservatism, and Abigail Shrier on why the cult of therapy harms children. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other pod comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Last week’s episode with Jeff Greenfield was a big hit: “One of your very best interviews!” Another fan: “What a great, thoughtful, and informative conversation.” Another stays optimistic about 2024:

Having just listened to your conversation with Jeff Greenfield, I wanted to drop you a quick note to say thank you for tactfully pushing back on his vision of Armageddon should Trump be elected president in November.

Like you, I am repulsed at the prospect of Trump returning to the White House, but should he win the Electoral College, our beloved republic will survive. We’re Americans, for crying out loud.

And defaulting to Kamala is not a given. Good grief, has the Democratic Party no cojones? If “our democracy” is indeed at risk, does no one at the DNC not have Michelle Obama’s phone number?

On another part of the episode:

I didn’t know Jeff Greenfield before, but I found his historical perspective refreshing. At one point you mentioned, almost as an aside, that Bill Clinton presided over the execution of a mentally disabled inmate, Ricky Ray Rector. I first heard about this in one of Hitchens’ books, and as far as I can tell, there is much more nuance to this case than as it is usually presented.

Rector was not mentally disabled at the time of his crimes. When unable to enter a bar, he shot three people, killing one. After being on the lam for three days, he agreed to turn himself in — but only to a childhood friend who had become a cop. The friend went to Rector’s mother’s house. They chatted, and when the cop turned his back, Rector shot him twice, killing him. Then he went outside and shot himself in the head. The shot wasn’t fatal, but it left him lobotomized and thus intellectually impaired. He was later imprisoned and executed.

You can, of course, argue that a mentally impaired person should never be executed. Normally that defense has something to do with the fact that they couldn’t understand their crimes. It seems like Rector certainly could understand his crimes at the time that he committed them. After they were committed, due to his own actions, he was mentally impaired. That doesn’t seem like a slam-dunk argument of, “Oh my goodness, can you believe Clinton executed a mentally disabled adult?”

The fact that Clinton took a trip to Arkansas to oversee this execution of a lobotomized man in the middle of his primary campaign seems relevant to me. But thanks for those details. They do add a nuance I missed.

Here’s another clip from the Greenfield pod — on how the Democratic Party has hindered us in the fight against Trump:

A guest rec:

I recently read Tim Alberta’s book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory and found it to be a fascinating exploration of the modern American evangelical movement. I think he would be a fabulous podcast guest. He has made the podcast rounds recently, but I would love to hear him speak with you.

Another rec:

I admire you hugely, but I’d admire you more if you invited Victor Davis Hanson on to your show. His views on Trump are clear, and so are yours. The clash between them would be instructive.

Good idea. One more:

With the world in a precarious state, I believe a good guest for your podcast would be Bret Stephens. The two of you have much in common, believe or not: you both were anti-woke before anyone was aware of the danger; you both were never Trump from day one; you both backed the Iraq War and then had regrets. I’m guessing you would consider him a neocon and would differ on Israel, but his belief in Pax Americana, and your view — which I am not exactly clear about — seems to be venturing toward Fortress Americana. It would be an interesting debate.

Speaking of debates, MSNBC’s Ari Melber and I got into it on Real Time last Friday. Here’s the Overtime segment if you missed it:

This reader sides with Melber:

It was easily one of your most disappointing showings. At one point you essentially blamed Democrats for the degradation of our democracy. As an example, you used the Russia investigation — the “Russia hoax” as you called it, using Trump’s language. What a disgraceful thing to say. The Special Counsel was initiated by Jeff Sessions, a Republican attorney general, to investigate Russia’s role in the 2016 election. And that’s what they did.

Ari was being kind when he says you did the “both sides” thing. Was far worse.

I blamed Trump primarily for liberal democracy’s decline. And my objection was not to the Mueller investigation, which I supported. It was to the huge leap so many left pundits made to regard Trump as some kind of Russian asset or stooge, the airing of completely unverified gossip in the media, and the notion that somehow Putin rigged the election. Here’s a liberal reader who does want to hear more from the other side:

I actually think it was one of Bill Maher’s best episodes (not in a small way because you were there, too). I’ll never be a Republican. But you, sir, are a conservative I can read and listen to. Keep speaking. Keep writing. Some liberals are paying attention.

And another: “Just a quick thank you for bringing some sanity and diversity of opinion from an older independent who rarely hears both sides of a story. Very refreshing.” This next reader wants to hear more about the DEI that Melber and I debated:

Though I don’t agree with everything you say, I do like how you make me pause and think, as you give a perspective I often have not considered. You said to Bill Maher that DEI makes people more racist and referred to some data that supports that. Can you share with me that data?

Jesse Singal pored through the data for this NYT op-ed. Money quote:

There’s little evidence that many of these initiatives work. And the specific type of diversity training that is currently in vogue — mandatory training that blames dominant groups for D.E.I. problems — may well have a net negative effect on the outcomes managers claim to care about.

More via Friedersdorf:

The Harvard Business Review has been publishing articles that cast doubt on the efficacy of mainstream DEI approaches for years. “One reason why I found Jesse’s piece so compelling is that he’s echoing arguments I made more than a year ago,” David French wrote in The Dispatch. “I quoted from a 2018 summary of studies by Harvard University professor Frank Dobbin and and Tel Aviv University professor Alexandra Kalev that said, ‘Hundreds of studies dating back to the 1930s suggest that anti-bias training does not reduce bias, alter behavior or change the workplace.’” […]

For more, see a podcast debate that Jane Coaston hosted on diversity initiatives and my 2021 profile of the entrepreneur and public intellectual Chloé Valdary, who offers an alternative approach to DEI training that she calls the Theory of Enchantment. Finally, for a deep dive into the history of the diversity-training industry, see Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn’s 2002 book Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensitivity Training, and New Age Therapy Hijacked the Civil Rights Revolution.

Another reader on Real Time:

Melber kept quoting the Fortune 50 in a span of 13 years — the smallest, hardest club to crack into, if you think about it. He never mentions the Fortune 500 — the usual reference in these discussions. That would be a more realistic indicator of progress, going from 12 female CEOs to 53 in that same timespan.

A closer look at the Fortune 500:

Thank you for holding your ground with Ari Melber. I’m sure he’s a nice person, but he proved your ongoing argument about the myopia of the left. Frankly, people like him are the reason that I — a registered Democrat for much of my life — have voted Republican for various candidates over the last 10 years (with one giant orange exception, of course, and all who seek to emulate him). For instance: the discussion about female CEOs was a perfect example of how the left loses people like me. I assume Ari was talking about the following Qualtrics chart when he was talking about the gender and race of Fortune 500 CEOs:

When I look at this chart, I see progress. It’s true that only 10% of CEOs are female. I agree that I’d like to see more. But when you questioned Ari on whether gender should be the only measuring stick for what constitutes a good CEO, he jumped to, “Well, seems like you agree that only 10% of women are qualified to be a CEO.” First of all, that’s not how statistics works. Second, you never said that. You simply said CEOs should be chosen because they’re the best person for the job — shocker! The instant urge to cast anyone who resists cramming women into leadership roles based solely on their gender as sexist or horrible makes me want to run for the hills. And vote Republican.

Anyway, I don’t usually wade into this stuff, but as the election approaches I’m getting into many discussions with liberal friends who are horrified that I criticize this kind of sloppy logic, and the social justice efforts that flow from it. They think it means I’m turning MAGA or something. I tell them that of course I’m not going to vote for Trump, but I feel betrayed by the party I supported for over 20 years because it caved to bullies like Mr. Melber, who doesn’t even (I assume) represent the real fringe of the left.

Sigh.

Well that made my day. A dissenter writes:

Ari made an interesting point about the current state at the top of the corporate power chain, but instead of debating the point (which I think is worthy of intellectual debate!), you pivoted to the more-or-less canned and emotionally-laden rebuttals against DEI. Was Ari making a case for DEI? Probably. But if he was, he was doing it in a clever, analytical way. And I honestly expected you to take his point on directly and analytically (vs. indirectly) through an emotional screed about why you can’t solve for what he’s sharing through DEI.

To be fair to Ari, he wasn’t necessarily advocating a specific policy prescription to address the data he shared (even though we all know he probably does internally). But you skipped over that step and presumed he was advocating DEI. I think that was a mistake. A better move would be to ask him what he thinks of that data, and how he’d go about resolving it if it is problematic to him. Then you can attack him on his proposal if his proposal is illiberal in any way.

Maybe I should have said that the CEO question is not as clear-cut as it might seem. The kind of insane sacrifice of your actual life that a huge job like that requires is something that more men than women are likely to tolerate. There is choice and agency here, as well as a legacy of sexist discrimination. But you’re right. I didn’t want to explore the issue on his narrowly tailored terms.

Another reader looks to the legal field:

Ari’s position implicitly assumes that the causal factor behind this statistic is sexism. This “thinking” reduces a hugely complex phenomenon to the one causal factor — victimhood, in this case, sexism — which rings the progressive bell. But clearly this is fallacious. Jordan Peterson has spoken to this at length regarding law firms; there are multiple causal factors that have nothing to do with sexism, so to reduce this “fact” to sexism is flawed:

But there is a second point that is perhaps more obscure. CEOs represent a TINY, TINY portion of the American population. Can you really infer the health of the whole sociological system by looking exclusively at that population? Of course not, and therein lies the sophistry! Ari is doing the trick of focusing on the exception as if it were the norm. A sincere discussion would look across the broad sociological data which would in fact support your view that things have gotten MUCH better. (Indeed, in many cases, men and boys now need help.)

Here’s a November 2023 update on business schools:

Women’s enrollment in MBA programs has been on the rise just about everywhere. Thirty-four out of 58 Forté member business schools reported 40% or more women enrolled, up from 27% in 2022 and 19% in 2018.

And another report from that month: “Women now make up at least half of full-time M.B.A. students at five top business schools, the most to reach that milestone in a given year, new data show.” Another turns to surgeons:

I enjoyed watching you on the Bill Maher show. Merit should come before all else.  If I’m getting open heart (or brain) surgery, I don’t care what segment of the population the surgical team is from. My only concern is that they are the best group of humans available to do the job. The last thing I need is to wake up mid-surgery because the person in charge of keeping me unconscious got the job to fill a quota or some chart.

Another reader tells his own DEI story:

I just wanted to say I agree with you 100% on your DEI commentary. I work for a progressive national Christian church group, and they have been fully on board with DEI and restorative justice since 2020. We have annual anti-racism seminars led by a DEI professional who happens to be a Black woman. It’s billed as a safe space for conversation where we can reflect on privilege.

I can tell you it’s not a safe space if you are a White male. In fact, it’s downright hostile. Every discussion centers on White oppression, harm to non-European groups, and White supremacy. At the start, HR separated us into groups based upon origin and ancestry. You were not allowed to challenge this. There were four groups: White, Black, Hispanic and Asian. So far we have had seminars for each of the non-White groups, where we discuss how they have been harmed by Whites. The Whites, especially males, sit there as visual and verbal punching bags during these seminars.

HR now puts out annual diversity reports, where everyone is assigned to gender and racial groups and the totals are measured companywide. They have clear targets, and HR clearly discriminates against White males to meet these targets. White male resumes are screened out before job interviews, almost all promotions have been non-White males, and older White males are encouraged to retire.

I can’t help but feel betrayed. I have always had an open mind on racial matters, worked well and supported non-White, female and LGBTQ+ coworkers. I now feel like I’ve stabbed in the back.

We are a primarily White Christian church, and I have difficulty understanding how a Christian church can willingly discriminate against an individual based upon his race and gender of birth. I don’t understand how individuals can be expected to be rewarded or punished solely for the actions of their ancestors. I can’t help but feel it’s more revenge than justice.

As you said, it’s not a meritocracy anymore. Your identity completely dictates your career path now. I feel like White males are only tolerated at our company, and HR would be gleeful to replace us all with other identity groups.

Here’s a dissent over my DEI views:

Last week you wrote, “I just worry that the campus illiberalism is so intense and suffocating that any outsider pressure to wake them up is a good thing.” Emphasis mine — that “any” is not a conservative worry. You may be inclined to write that criticism off as tone-policing, but it’s not, because that “any” appears to rudder your delight or schadenfreude. (For cred here: I attended the Harvard Law School during its Beirut-on-The-Charles years, and seeing blackboard posts promoting “a Party for Progressive Persons & Their Friends” made me gag; these people couldn’t even party properly; they were so full of ideology and virtue-signaling.)

A conservative should always worry how much worse things can get by deploying even our own solutions. You may not spend much time in the NY Times and WaPo reader comment boxes (I can’t blame you if you don’t), but I see on a daily basis far more liberals — and yes, even progressives — pushing back against the New Orthodoxy of the academic activist Left and observing, gradually, how the media cathedral has shifted in response to reader feedback.

On that note, another reader looks to the comments section of the NYT:

I call your attention to the long analysis in the NYT by Nicholas Confessore entitled “America Is Under Attack: Inside the Anti – D.E.I. Campaign”.  The article itself is a tiresome hit job on conservative activists. Much more interesting is the deluge of negative online comments on the piece. Even the NYT’s subscribership is abandoning the DEI ship. Maybe we are indeed at a turning point where a clear majority is getting the picture that this movement isn’t just wacky but rather is evil and dangerous.

Here’s the top comment from that NYT story selected by readers:

This article makes the same assumption that the DEI movement does: opposing any aspect of the DEI program is an opposition to diversity and thus is racist itself. Why can’t it be okay to think that the DEI program is the wrong approach to achieving diversity?

Packing more punch is the second-most popular comment:

Framing the anti-DEI movement as a purely right-wing obsession is inaccurate at best/misleading at worst. A sizable slice of moderate America, including many “traditional lefties,” are appalled by the new Progressive orthodoxy and all of its illogical (and many times illiberal) arguments. That right-wing hucksters are involved in bringing down DEI programs is hardly newsworthy at this point. The more interesting article would have been an open examination of the Left’s own views of DEI. This would also require dissociating the individual terms — diversity, equity, and inclusion — from the goals and methods of “DEI programs” as they operate within organizations.

That won’t happen at the NYT because the institution itself is captured by the DEI complex. It can hardly air debate about the racist practices it regards as a supreme virtue.

On my column last week on Oxford and Saltburn, a reader writes:

I had VERY mixed feelings about Saltburn, which at times seemed like a sneer at Waugh and Brideshead — a novel I found quite late but truly love. But your piece is by far, by miles, the most interesting one I’ve read about the film.

More love from this reader:

I was taken off guard by your column on Saltburn and Oxford — not a topic I would have guessed would interest me much. Yet, for a subject so personal to you and about a film I have not even seen, I was surprised how deeply moved I was. I’m a fan of your sociopolitical analysis and admire your philosophical scholarship, but I think your greatest talent is your writing — precise, convincing, beautiful. You conveyed the imagery and emotion of the movie and your own personal experiences as well as any writer I have read. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing the movie.

This reader, not so much:

I love how much the film spoke to you, and I was truly touched by how — like Proust and his madeleine — the film brought back memories and emotions of your younger self, and your days at Oxford. However, upon reflection, “movies I liked” is not really the reason I subscribe to the Dish. I get it. I truly do. But, please, for next time, your reflections on more weighty matters.

I felt I’d been writing about weighty matters for a very long time. An occasional relief seems fine to me. It’s gonna be a long, grim year of news.

Another reader simply didn’t like the film:

Saltburn sucked. The characters were not interesting. Did Oliver want Felix, the sister, or the friend? All of the above, or did he merely want to be in the house and would have sex with whoever would allow him to freeload? There was no character development. Felix and his group do not change. It was an incoherent mess, like this email.

Another can personally relate to the themes of Saltburn:

Oh Andrew, this was so touching, so brilliant — and so much like my own experience with a privileged English family as an impoverished colonial from Canada. Lovely manners and completely intoxicating until they unexpectedly ghost you. Bravo for your honesty in telling it like it continues to be.

Another reflects on Brideshead, Revisited:

I saw the mini-series the year after you did, when it first aired in the US, and I loved your description of it, and of Saltburn. But having never experienced the class system (I’m a Californian born and bred), and unlike you, I was immune to romanticizing the institutions and theater of the upper crust. For me, it was a first taste of romance between two men. Just that.

I’d imagined such a thing, but even 1980s California didn’t provide anything like the glorious, hopeful flirting between Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews. Certainly dinner jackets and champagne were part of it, but even today I can’t get the two of them snuggling through Venice out of my heart. Or Cara’s loving looks at the two of them together. Romance.

Like the most poignant romances, the two don’t end up together (see: Romeo & Juliet, Cyrano, Brokeback Mountain, Love Story, for heaven’s sake, and so many more). The longing that lingers after the end is what makes the romance stick with you.

More importantly, it was a turning point for me, realizing that being gay wasn’t just about sex, but about love, relationship, feeling. No one taught you that back then, and there wasn’t anywhere to see it. But Brideshead brought it front and center. Clearly that was nothing Evelyn Waugh had in mind, but God bless him, and God bless Granada Television and ITV. Talk about a public service!

Another recommends a book:

The post on Oxford was very evocative. In the early 1990s, I regularly visited friends studying there, and I felt envious but also lucky to be at LSE — which had none of the splendour. As an experience, London felt much less complete, but also free of the Brideshead curse you describe.

One recent book that does a fantastic job of portraying the glories and anxieties of Oxford is A Spy Alone, by Charles Beaumont. It parades as a spy thriller but is also a keen social study, throwing in a glimpse of what happens when house prices put such pressure on the middle-class security and political establishment that the center no longer holds. It’s also a great story of not ever being able to entirely let go of the intense love you had at Oxford and of Oxford in general. Its final analysis seems bleak in various respects, but it vastly cheered me up about what literature at its best can do.

Another book rec:

Your Saltburn piece was a beautiful blend of the personal and political (which, as you have rightly said, are not the same thing), and it took me back to reading Virtually Normal for the first time. I’m currently reading The Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart, whom I discovered through a 2022 Dishcast. The book has helped me make sense of some intuitions that I — a working class fellow from a rural-coastal constituency — experienced when I switched from serving fish & chips to studying at a Russell Group university. I was shocked by how little the Anywheres understood the perspective and values of Somewhere Britain, and I now have a vocabulary to describe that divide. Thanks for putting Goodhart on my radar.

Thanks as always for the dissents and other emails. You can join the discussion via dish@andrewsullivan.com.

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