The Kyrie Irving saga shows how selective the organized Jewish world can be when it comes to calling out antisemitism
"Antisemitism Notebook" is a weekly email newsletter from the Forward. Sign up here to receive the full newsletter in your inbox every Thursday.
Do you remember when one of the NBA’s most famous players promoted a documentary that claimed Jews had deceived the world into believing they were God’s chosen people and fabricated the Holocaust?
Kyrie Irving's endorsement of “Hebrews to Negroes” coincided with antisemitic comments by Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, but generated only a brief outcry.
He was suspended, donated to the Anti-Defamation League, made more inflammatory comments, saw his donation get rejected, eventually apologized, and returned to the court. Then, months later, he deleted the social media post containing his apology after being traded from the Brooklyn Nets to the Dallas Mavericks.
Now, he's leading the Mavericks on a playoff run, and concerns about his alleged antisemitism have all but disappeared.
“It doesn’t come up unless Kyrie Irving does something good,” explained my colleague Louis Keene, who covered the original controversy. When that happens, Irving’s legions of young fans lament the past efforts to cancel him.
Louis recently published a piece about his conversations with Jewish Mavericks fans who, whether they like Irving personally or not, are rooting for him to succeed. “I’ve forgotten about the antisemitism,” said Ben Calmenson, a 28-year-old who grimaced when Irving wore a keffiyeh to a recent press conference but quickly excused it.
I still cringe when I watch Irving win, as he’s been doing throughout the playoffs and did again against the Minnesota Timberwolves Wednesday night. But I'm not suggesting he should have been kicked out of the league for sharing a film that concludes Jews are to blame for Black suffering. He mostly seems like an eccentric guy who doesn’t believe in vaccines and isn’t sure whether the earth is flat or round.
“There are a lot of young fans who see Kyrie Irving as an iconoclastic figure whose vulnerability to conspiracy theories is just part of that,” Louis explained to me. “He’s very charitable — even by the standards of professional athletes — and he’s very outspoken on social issues, so they just see him as a genuinely and deeply good person who is a little bit unusual.”
The Kyrie Irving saga highlights the selective nature of the organized Jewish community in addressing antisemitism. The American Jewish Committee and other prominent groups quickly abandoned their campaign to persuade Amazon to remove the antisemitic film from its Prime Video service after the company's chief executive, Andy Jassy, refused.
Currently, the focus is on left-wing students on elite college campuses. However, suppose Irving had been playing basketball thirty years ago when Jewish groups were concerned about so-called "Black antisemitism" threatening American Jews. In that case, reporters might not have stopped asking him about “Hebrews to Negroes” so quickly. His social media post referring to Israelis as "murderous oppressors" would likely have received more attention.
Additionally, Irving plays for a basketball team that Mark Cuban, whom Louis described as a "Jewish community legend," is in the process of selling to Miriam Adelson, the wife of the late Jewish casino mogul and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson.
Irving's celebrity status also complicates the issue. Jewish leaders wield considerable influence on campuses and in Congress, but it's challenging to hold superstars accountable for intemperate comments. "They recognized their power is kind of limited," Louis said.
No comments:
Post a Comment