A Tale of Two Anti-Semitisms
And why we should stop talking about white supremacy except when we're actually talking about white supremacy.
I
On Tuesday, Kaleb Cole was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for conspiring to threaten Jewish leaders and journalists as part of a network of Atomwaffen Division neo-Nazis. The 25-year-old, who grew up just north of Seattle in Everett, was a leader in the hate group that’s behind several acts of violence and intimidation.
Last year, Cole and three others were charged with conspiracy to mail threatening communications and commit cyberstalking. Locally, their targets were ADL PNW director Miri Cypers, former ADL PNW director Hilary Bernstein, and King5 journalist Chris Ingalls, who was targeted for reporting on Atomwaffen.
Cole had been on law enforcement radar for some time; in 2018, he was flagged by US Customs after returning from Europe with photos of himself and fellow Atomwaffen member Aiden Bruce-Umbaugh posing in front of Auschwitz, and in 2019 his guns were seized as part of Washington’s red flag law after Seattle police obtained an extreme risk warrant.
The group had been tailed by the FBI in Phoenix while delivering threatening posters to Phoenix’s Association of Black Journalists and the home of a Jewish magazine editor. Cole was arrested in Texas in 2020 and charged with illegal possession of a firearm when he was pulled over with Bruce-Umbaugh and found to be in possession of four guns and tactical gear. He was also known to have participated in training camps where Atomwaffen members were preparing for a race war. Another Atomwaffen member, Sam Woodward, is currently serving a life sentence for murdering Blaze Bernstein in 2018 in California, an alleged hate crime.
“I saw a terrifying image of a skeleton throwing a Molotov cocktail inside my home with the intent to burn it to the ground,” Cypers recounted in a statement for the ADL of the flier she received. “The letter said my first and last name and said the sender’s ‘patience had its limits’ and I had been visited by my local neo-Nazis. This felt deeply personal. As a Jewish leader with family members who survived the Holocaust, I know what it meant to be visited by your local Nazis.”
“As a Jewish leader with family members who survived the Holocaust, I know what it meant to be visited by your local Nazis.”
Ingalls, of King5, received threatening fliers after he went to Cole’s family’s home in Arlington to interview them about their son’s involvement with Atomwaffen in 2019. He notes that Cole’s seven-year sentence, which is longer than the others’, is due to his lack of remorse.
“It was hurtful and disappointing that Cole did not offer any explanations or apologies for his vile conduct,” Ingalls shared in an email statement. “He showed, once again, what kind of person he is and that he has no intention of changing his ways. I’m thankful for victims like Miri [Cypers], Dave [Rosenbaum, Cypers’s husband and the deputy mayor of Mercer Island] and Hilary [Bernstein] who stood up to the guy. The court said Cole’s lack of remorse earned him a longer prison sentence. It’s good to know that Cole is paying that price.”
***
When we talk about white supremacy invading our institutions and supposedly benefiting a ruling class, we dull our senses to the seriousness of groups like Atomwaffen, who shout “gas the kikes” before pulling the trigger at target practice. After Cole’s guns were seized in 2019, former Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes said he “firmly believed” the police helped prevent a massacre.
In a personal article and in an email to me, Ingalls articulated his own remorse for not covering the connection of Atomwaffen to anti-Judaism clearly in his original reporting, which was pointed out to him by a reader who claimed that, “By erasing Jews you are inadvertently part of the problem in the media that is allowing the violence and hatred of Jews to be swept under the table. You are saying Jews don’t matter.”
I don’t think Ingalls necessarily needed to apologize. A violent racist was put away, the laws work, and the people he targeted can sleep a little easier. But it’s worth dwelling on this point for a minute: Nazis have become part of the American imagination, evildoers who are invoked for everything from superhero movies to liberal talking points (Trump) to conservative talking points (vaccine mandates). I think this universalism, this dulling of the senses, contributes to what Dara Horn has described as Jews being erased from their own stories. And we often erase ourselves, too, not even recognizing anti-Semitic tropes when they crop up.
II
Last week, a 32-year-old New Yorker named Alex Gindin received a package in the mail. It was an IDF sweatshirt he had ordered off Amazon. An immigrant from Soviet Belarus and a Zionist, Gindin wanted to show solidarity with Israelis and Jews, especially in the wake of two Jewish New Yorkers who were attacked for wearing the same shirt.
“It also shows we’re not afraid,” Gindin explained to me by phone from Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife and works for a healthcare company. “There should be literally nothing wrong with supporting the State of Israel. The idea of Zionism should not be in any way considered negative. It’s the protection of our people. It’s the protection of the only democratic nation in the Middle East.”
Gindin took the shirt out of the bag and hung it up, at which point he noticed a piece of paper inside the hoodie. “I thought it was a receipt or something. So I take out the hanger and I reach in.” What he found was not a receipt, but the backing of a shipping label with the words “Fuck ur white supremacy nation” in marker.
“Obviously I was shocked,” he says. He thought maybe it was coming from another country, and the note was referring to America. It started to dawn on Gindin what was going on: someone from the fulfillment center had put a note in his IDF sweatshirt to take a shot at Israel — and him.
Gindin contacted Amazon’s customer service. “At this point I was emotionally distressed by this. The more I thought about it, the more I started realizing the likelihood that this was fulfilled by somebody else and not by Amazon was very unlikely, so it seems pretty targeted at this point.”
Gindin’s initial interactions with customer service were positive, but he felt they didn’t go nearly far enough to address his concerns, and he grew increasingly upset. The representative was apologetic and confirmed that the package came from an Amazon center. But when the representative wrapped up the call by letting him know that he would “put in a ticket,” Gindin says he started to lose it. “That’s when the record started to scratch,” he says. “You’re putting in a ticket like I’m calling about internet problems.”
“You’re putting in a ticket like I’m calling about internet problems.”
The representative went so far as to give Gindin Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s contact information. (Jassy lives here in Seattle and has a Jewish background.) Corporate, Gindin says, couldn’t get him off the phone fast enough and referred him back to customer service. “I repeated back to her that issues of racism and anti-Semitism have nothing to do with Amazon corporate? And without a blink or a stop, she was like, you need to contact customer service.”
Frustrated and worried that nothing would come of it, Gindin reached out to the press, the ADL, and friends who worked at Jewish organizations. The Algemeiner was the first to report on this. Shortly after talking to the reporter, Gindin heard back from Amazon corporate. “He was very apologetic, very sorry, kept repeating that this is not Amazon’s policy, Amazon does not promote racism or anti-Semitism.” He let him know that they had located the fulfillment center and the employees, but for legal reasons they couldn’t share any of that information.
Amazon media relations representative Loni Monroe issued me the same statement as Algemeiner: “We work hard to provide customers with a great experience and deeply regret that this situation did not live up to our high standards. Amazon does not tolerate any behavior deemed hateful, racist, or discriminatory. This type of act is in conflict with our code of ethics and we will take immediate action once we complete our investigation of the situation.” Monroe declined to answer any follow-up questions. Emails from customer service shared by Gindin indicate that the matter is being looked into. Each email ends unironically with, “Please use the buttons below to vote about your experience today.”
“They refunded me the $30 for the hoodie,” Gindin says with a laugh. “And then they gave me an additional $30 credit to Amazon.”
Gindin is looking into legal options in the event that nothing comes of the internal investigation. The lingering fear in his mind is what will happen if he orders a book on Israeli history, for instance. “What are the chances of someone writing something pretty horrendous in there? Or worse? They have access to our address, our information…and we order from Amazon all the time.”
The first case is the traditional kind of anti-Semitism. It is real white supremacy — not the vague institutional oppression that’s the stuff of DEI trainings. It is what we will always be fighting for the sake of all persecuted and marginalized people. We can’t get inured to it, we can’t blow up our relationships with law enforcement, and we cannot forget who is out there, sometimes closer than we realize.
The second kind, though still under investigation, is a threat from the side that accuses Jews of being the white supremacists, the side that considers Israel a white, European, settler-colonial project that ethnically cleanses indigenous brown people. It insidiously invokes tropes of Jewish world domination and murder. It’s harder to see this kind of anti-Semitism. It’s easier to write this off by imagining it as an act of a thoughtless kid stuck in a tedious, low-skill job, someone who probably does not stockpile weapons and go to death camps on vacation. Maybe it was just a prank. Maybe it was bad judgment. Maybe we should convene lots of Jewish institutional leaders to discuss it in a public space. Maybe the only violence he condones is punching a guy in an IDF shirt. That’s ok. Jews are the new Nazis, aren’t they? And we all know it’s ok to punch Nazis.
These two forms of anti-Judaism may be different in their level of actual threat and violence, but they are two sides of the same coin. It’s on us to be able to see it.
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Let us not forget that, in 2017, the USPresident gave speech on Holocaust Rememberance Day without once mentioning Jews as victims.
And where is it written that some Jews aren't also white supremacists?