by David Anderson
Columnist
The question headline above is a challenge to techies, Aussies, Zionists and the intellectually curious.
Why am I asking this? Cards on the table: I grew up in sunny Australia and there antisemitism in the 1980s was an abstraction, a monster of the past and a danger only in far away Jihadistans nobody cared about, almost a non-event. A rabbi of my acquaintance told me then: “After Israel, Australia and the USA are the least anti-Semitic countries.” Moving to New York City as a younger, hairier man, in 1994 I found he was right.
How to ask the question above and why: I was a proprietary trader where data and judgement (and random chance) are essential. Particularly data. In my second career I was a defense attorney for the luckless, dumbassed and sometimes evil. In both jobs, truth, data and admissible evidence matter. Or you lose a gazillion of your boss’ dollars, or your client goes to jail.
Here’s my case in chief:
After Oct. 7 I was appalled to see the huge pro-Palestine rallies in Times Square near my home, on October 8: the next day! They were tearing down hostage baby posters, the campus left’s virtue signaling “poo encampment” camps were set up, and riots.
Later of course, New Yorkers elected the most Jew hating communist we’ve ever seen. His ideas about the Middle East were contributive to his win. I wrote about him earlier in these pages. Moving right along…
Back in Australia: huge protests on campuses, especially at elite universities and the unforgettable “Gas the Jews” outdoor opera outside the Sydney Opera House. Didn’t see that one coming…
Another card: I came to the US thirty years ago specifically to study post-graduate Middle East politics at an American university. I write about Middle East politics in this publication, and while I’m no expert I’m a devoted reader of Islam and the Middle East. You can see the Venn diagram of my curiosities.
So here’s my challenge out there to more competent data scientists than I:
This is your mission, should you accept: Where is antisemitism worse – the USA or Australia? Suggested paths of enquiry: google engrams of headlines, twitter polls, Pew etc., media coverage and the like. Consider how a lot of the left’s new(er) antisemitism is the direct result of where “the kids” get their news: Palestine friendly communist Chinese TikTok. It is central to this horror. And of course, the Space Lasers might come in handy. 😉
Remember, “scale” always matters: Australia has a little less than a tenth the population of the US.
Government policy matters also as the US is a little more pro-Israel than Australia, particularly with the current Australian ALP government which seems to be, from a distance, 90% clowns.
There is a temporal aspect also: Oct 7 and Bondi Beach will affect the results but possibly stick to analysis of the two countries .. today.
Data scientists and serious quantitative analysts are way above me, tech wise this is above my paygrade which is why I put this call out here in my syndicated column readers and on “X”. https://x.com/DavidandersonJd
Antisemitism aside, to see how a phenomenon like these social manias, moral panics and TikTok consequences is interesting and relatively recent. We live in a social media era of exponential algorithmic storms of terrifying speed. I will amplify any reasonable attempts at an answer.
Graphic: Dreamstime