Why we need to ‘politicise’ discussion of the Pittsburgh massacre

I hope I don’t need to tell you that the last few days have been filled with darkness for the Jewish community in the United States and around the world. On Saturday morning, my husband woke me up with the terrible news that, as congregants gathered at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA, to celebrate both the Sabbath – the day of rest and peace – and a baby naming ceremony, an anti-Semitic terrorist had opened fire. In the hours and days following, Jews and allies in our current hometown of Kansas City, painfully reminded of the anti-Semitic shootings carried out here four years ago, have been coming together to process Saturday’s events and mourn the deaths of 11 innocent people – parents, grandparents and siblings, doctors and Holocaust survivors – slaughtered simply because they were Jewish. The American Jewish community has been shaken to its core, as we acknowledge that this could just as easily have happened in our cities, our synagogues, to our families. On a fundamental level, we are no longer safe here, if we ever truly were before.

Online, too, Jews and non-Jews have been coming together to comment on and try to come to terms with Saturday’s massacre. My social media feeds have been filled with words of condolence, names and stories of those murdered, and calls for unity and solidarity in the face of terror. But despite these calls for unity, two distinct and contradictory voices have emerged from this outpouring of grief. The first belongs to those calling for action – not just against the terrorist, Robert Bowers, but against political figures and social factors perceived as contributing to an atmosphere in which bigotry is encouraged and those seeking to harm others whose differences they cannot tolerate are empowered. The second belongs to those who say that now is not the time for such confrontational rhetoric, that they are disturbed and even disgusted by the ‘politicisation’ of such tragic events, that to point the finger of blame at anyone other than the perpetrator himself is to detract from the suffering of the Pittsburgh community and increase discord and division where togetherness is needed.

I can sympathise with those who espouse the latter view. In today’s increasingly polarised political climate, any discussion which touches on the actions of a particular party or ideology can rapidly devolve into anger and recrimination. However, it is precisely this polarisation which threatens to silence meaningful, necessary discussion on the factors contributing to the Pittsburgh shooting. Insisting that Jews and others refuse to engage with the ‘politics’ surrounding Saturday’s attack runs the risk of encouraging inaction in place of steps toward tolerance and safety.

To examine this danger in more depth, let’s look at some of the rhetoric surrounding other mass shootings in the United States. In February of this year, following the fatal shooting of 17 students and members of staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the NRA, condemned calls for increased gun control from members of the Democratic party as ‘the shameful politicization of tragedy’, claiming that for such advocates, gun control is ‘not a safety issue, it’s a political issue’. When, in response to the attack at a Las Vegas country music festival in October 2017, Hilary Clinton tweeted, ‘We must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA’, Fox Business host Kennedy responded angrily, ‘Don’t politicize this, you heartless hack’. Back in December 2012, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, conservative activist and board member of the NRA, Grover Norquist, stated in a news appearance, ‘We have got to calm down and not take tragedies like this…and use them for political purposes’.

My purpose in sharing these examples is not to criticise those on the political right specifically, nor to debate gun control in the context of the Pittsburgh shooting. Rather, it is to point out a disturbing contradiction in certain calls to avoid ‘politicising’ moments of tragedy. On the one hand, ‘politics’ is placed in direct opposition to concerns such as safety, suggesting that those who advocate for policy changes do so out of the desire to push a particular ideology for its own sake rather than out of any actual desire for positive change. On the other hand, it is worth noting that all of those quoted above are condemning the stating of political positions to which they are themselves opposed. They dismiss ‘politics’ as detracting from the gravity of tragic events, but this dismissal of views with which they disagree can itself be seen as politically motivated. It is therefore possible to see how condemning calls to action as ‘political’ can in fact serve as a convenient way to silence uncomfortable points of view.

The rhetoric surrounding the Pittsburgh shooting has been no different. A cursory glance at Twitter shows that many of those railing against the tragedy’s ‘politicisation’, namely suggesting that President Trump’s rhetoric and policies might share the blame for creating an incubator for such acts of hatred, are themselves vocal supporters of the Trump administration, including Trump campaign advisor Jeff Ballabon and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. Others condemn the Democratic party and left-leaning media directly for having disrespectfully ‘politicised’ the attack, going on to advocate for voting the Democrats out of power. This is not to say that there have not been legitimate concerns surrounding the political misuse of the tragedy across the political spectrum. In the UK, infamous formerly-Lib Dem peer Baroness Jenny Tonge has been the subject of heavy criticism for blaming the Pittsburgh shooting, and by implication other anti-Semitic attacks, on Israel’s ‘actions against Palestinians’, a despicable act of victim-blaming that showcases Tonge’s own anti-Semitism. In the US, presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway has drawn ire after suggesting that ‘anti-religiosity’, rather than anti-Semitism, was primarily to blame for Saturday’s massacre. Both of these instances are clear evidence of individuals willfully misinterpreting the events in Pittsburgh in order to advance their own, unrelated political agendas. But there is a difference between calling out such blatant disrespect and effectively telling someone to ‘sit down and shut up’ if they make any attempt at a ‘political’ discussion that seeks to determine the roots of the problem.

President Trump did not pull the trigger during Saturday’s attack. Neither is anti-Semitism confined to a single party or ideology (just look at the current crisis within the UK Labour party). However, when the President is slow to condemn violent white supremacy, when white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys embrace the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’, when the names of wealthy left-leaning Jews are used as anti-Semitic dog whistles by supporters of the Trump administration, and when racist, xenophobic conspiracy theories espoused by an anti-Semitic terrorist are a normative part of Republican rhetoric in the US, that is indicative of a wide-reaching political problem, one that can only be challenged through political conversations. Supporting the ideology of a particular party does not mean refusing to hold that party accountable for its failings. The fact that calling political leaders out for contributing to and empowering anti-Semitic attitudes could be viewed as divisive points to just how polarised the American political system has become.

I don’t know how those slaughtered in Pittsburgh voted, and I don’t care. They were all my Jewish brothers and sisters, and our people are so much bigger than divisions between left and right, Republican and Democrat. But it is precisely because we are all one people, responsible for one another’s safety and wellbeing, that we must not be afraid to point out anti-Semitism in all its forms, even when it is uncomfortable for us to do so, even if it is coming from someone we might otherwise admire. To my fellow Jews, I say, take as long as you need to mourn, to process, to comfort one another. There is no single ‘right’ way to grieve. But, in the words of a Christian minister who spoke at Monday night’s vigil in Kansas City, another moving display of strength and unity, ‘According to Ecclesiastes, there is a time for silence, and my friends, this ain’t it’.

May the memories of those murdered in Pittsburgh be for a blessing.