David D. Haynes

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The text message was vile and hateful:

“Burn in hell, you (expletive) Jew! You will be arrested for your crimes.”

Other messages mocked rich Jews or accused them of controlling Hollywood.

An avowed white supremacist, incarcerated in a state prison, vowed to kill Jews.

Those are but a few of the anti-Semitic incidents reported to the Jewish Community Relations Council in Milwaukee in 2018. The council’s annual audit, released earlier this month, includes the photo taken during prom of Baraboo students giving the Nazi salute and Paul Nehlen’s self-described “pro-White Christian American” campaign for former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s seat in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District.

Anti-Semitic incidents were up 21 percent, the council found.

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At the same time, other groups, especially Muslims, have increasingly been targeted in the United States. New America, a think tank in Washington, D.C., cataloged 763 anti-Muslim incidents from 2012 through the end of 2018.

"We've seen a tremendous spike in anti-Muslim rhetoric and incidents since the rise of Donald Trump, quite frankly," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights and advocacy group.

"I think our society is meaner," said Elana Kahn, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council. "I think the discourse among our elected officials is meaner, and I think there is much more tolerance for hateful acts.”

So what is the best way to combat the rise of hate?

Here are some of the ways Jewish groups and others are responding:

Call it out

That was No. 1 on Kahn's list.

"We have an entire field of Jewish community relations devoted to fighting anti-Semitism, to protecting the Jewish community by building relationships," Kahn said. "This is a direct result of World War II."

Bring people together and educate them

The Milwaukee Jewish Federation's Hours Against Hate program, which began as a joint Jewish-Muslim effort in 2011, aims to expose people to those who are different than they are. It has focused on educating kids.

Hours Against Hate offers programming and grants to bring children of different faiths and backgrounds together. That has included programs at summer camps and at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, said coordinator Andrea Bernstein.

"Fundamentally, it breaks down biases," she said. "When you talk to an individual from another group, most people are surprised by something that they learn. People find unexpected connections."

But it takes work. Our natural reaction is to recoil. In fact, when meeting people from an "out-group," neural activity spikes in the parts of the brain linked to fear and disgust, Jason Marsh and Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton wrote in a 2016 article for Greater Good magazine, which is published by the University of California, Berkeley.

That response can be overcome, of course, but it takes the right conditions. Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport found in the 1950s that increased exposure to an "out-group" — people who don't talk, worship or act like us — can help improve attitudes toward that group and reduce prejudice.

In his own work, Mendoza-Denton has encouraged students of different ethnic groups to become friends, which led to less anxiety about meeting other people from the opposing group and a greater willingness to reach across group boundaries.

"It's about stepping over our lines of difference," Kahn said.

In Baraboo, Bernstein conducted Hours Against Hate breakout sessions during "Day of Peace" assemblies for high school students after the Nazi salute incident.

"One of the things I talked to them about was that nobody is asking people to stop hanging out with people who are similar to them, that they have a lot in common with. There's a lot of good that comes from that," she said. "But that can't be the only thing that we do."

What about cyberhate?

In its audit, the Jewish Community Relations Council found that 45 percent of all incidents occurred online, where they often get turbocharged. Social media is a special challenge because of anonymity and the speed with which hateful comments can zip around the world.

Gunther Jikeli, a research fellow at Indiana University, is the author of a 2017 report for the State Department on best practices to combat anti-Semitism on social media.

"There are two approaches necessary that complement each other," he wrote in an email. "Both signal to users that certain speech is not acceptable."

First, social media companies should enforce their terms of service and make it clear to users "that it is not OK to disseminate hate." Second, users should not simply accept hateful speech as a natural consequence of the internet. They should counter such speech, Jikeli says, and social media companies should help make that happen.

The Anti-Defamation League also has a rich list of best practices for countering cyberhate including a focus both on providers of internet space and users. Providers should offer "user-friendly mechanisms and procedures for reporting hateful content," as one example. And collectively, users should encourage "effective strategies of counter-speech." The league has a wealth of resources at its website under the "education" tab, including lesson plans for teachers and tips on how families can start conversations.

More things you can do to fight hate

No. 1: Act. That's according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which published its "Ten Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Resource Guide," in 2017. "Do something. In the face of hatred, apathy will be interpreted as acceptance by perpetrators, the public and — worse — the victims."

Other tips include: Develop a coalition of like-minded people to counter hate, speak up, get educated about the difference between hate and bias, teach acceptance at home and pressure leaders to take a stand.

Strong leadership can make a difference

In their article for Greater Good — written before Donald Trump became president — Marsh and Mendoza-Denton argue that leadership matters — that strong leadership can steer people away from the shoals of hate.

"Research also strongly suggests that authority figures can encourage positive behaviors, not just negative ones," they write.

But Hooper of CAIR says the current "toxic environment" has put many groups at risk.

"What we've seen is it just not American Muslims who are targeted," he said. "It's minorities of all kinds. ... We've issued so many condemnations of anti-Semitic incidents, anti-African-American, anti-immigrant, anti-Sikh, you name it. That's a real change since the rise of Donald Trump, where all minorities are in the same boat."

David D. Haynes is editor of the Ideas Lab. He reports on innovation in business and government and on government transparency. Email: david.haynes@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DavidDHaynes or Facebook.

How I reported this story

After the Jewish Community Relations Council released its annual audit of anti-Semitism in Wisconsin earlier this month, I wondered what steps were being taken (or could be taken) to ensure there were fewer of these hateful incidents. I interviewed Elana Kahn, JCRC director; Andrea Bernstein, coordinator of the Jewish Federation's Hours Against Hate program; Gunther Jikeli, a professor at Indiana University who has studied anti-Semitism; and Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council for American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. I touched base with the Anti-Defamation League office in Chicago, where a spokeswoman recommended several resources on the ADL's website. I also reviewed Jikeli's 2017 report to the State Department on best practices to combat anti-Semitism on social media; Gordon Allport's "contact hypothesis"; and a 2016 article co-written by Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton of the University of California, Berkeley.