DeSean Jackson, a wide receiver for the Eagles American football team, posted, during the 4th of July holiday weekend, a quote attributed to Hitler.
This quote was wrongly attributed to the man who created so much destruction throughout Europe and hurt throughout the world, with disastrous consequences for all minorities. Yet, Mr. Jackson, in the Instagram photograph, showed a highlighted quote from a book. The quote reads:
“Hitler said: because the white Jews knows that the negroes are the real Children of Israel and to keep Americas secret the Jews will blackmail America. The will distort America, their plan for worldwide domination won’t work if the Negroes know who they were. The white citizens of America will be terrified to know that all this time they’ve been mistreating and discriminating and lynching the Children of Israel.”
When I first read this quote, I was puzzled. All the mistakes that you see in the quote are copied, verbatim, from the Instagram post. The picture sparked my curiosity; who wrote, published, and edited this book? According to the Philly Voice, the quote likely came from a book called Jerusalem, self-published by Dennine Barnett. The author also has published a book entitled, Hand Book to Heaven Biblical Truth and the 12 Tribes of Israel (again, I copied the name of the book verbatim). The writing doesn’t make sense, not only because it is poorly written, but also because it verges on lunacy. In an effort to explain why racism against blacks is wrong, this author propagates lies and hatred about Jews, power, and secret conspiracies. It reminded me of another book that had atrocious consequences for Jews, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This is a fraudulent document used as a rationale for antisemitism in the early 20th century, and unfortunately still quoted today. The document claims to report on a series of meetings of the leaders of the Jewish community during the first Zionist Congress. It falsely describes the plans of Jews to achieve world domination. It was a forgery most likely composed by officials of the Russian secret police in the end of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th century.
The Protocols were widely quoted and used against Jews throughout the beginning of the 20th century. Jews know well that misinformation, miseducation, ignorance, and a need for a scapegoat will invariably lead to tragedy. We know the danger is real. We also know that we always lose, for every time in history when people in power needed to have a repository for all the ills that befell society, we ended up paying with our lives. We are living in a moment filled with rampant anxiety, with financial insecurity, fears about our health, and misinformation, therefore the existence of this book and the fact that it is being quoted by a football star on social media sends chills down my spine.
When generalizations are made about any group because of their race, or their beliefs, or their ways of being, chaos ensues, creating divisiveness, allowing for prejudice that destroys the fabric of any society, creating fertile territory for hatred and pain.
DeSean Jackson was widely criticized and wrote an apology that ended in the following way: “This apology is more than just words—it is a promise to do better. I will fully educate myself and work with local and national organizations to be more informed and make a difference in our community.”
Mr. Jackson, I truly hope that you will. I truly hope that you will take the invitation of another NFL player, Mr. Julian Edelman, to learn about what has happened to Jews in the last century, as well as teach him about the pain of black people in America. No group has a monopoly on pain. We all need to learn from each other, opening ourselves to learn the history of other groups.
We are now in the first of the Jewish tradition’s three weeks of admonition, between the 17th of the Hebrew month of Tammuz (when the Romans first breached the walls of Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E.) and the 9th of Av (the day in which the first and the second Temples were destroyed, in the years 586 B.C.E. and 70 C.E.). This is a moment for us to reflect upon the warnings that we are receiving, the dangers that surround us, and work diligently to ensure that the world is a better place.
I believe that this year the warning for us is to combat misinformation.
Our work centers on stopping the mechanisms that divide us by spreading lies and ostracizing others. Books that disseminate misinformation will invariable open our society to more pain and discord. When faced with words that destroy instead of build, I suggest we help people to see the untruths, and in turn get good information. In this turbulent year, we must insist that all people have access to knowledge, education, and are able to cultivate an openness to learning about each other so we can start the process of healing the wounds of this world.