Law & Disorder

Antisemitic and Racist Roots of Christian Supremacy; Plus Resistance in Residence Artist Brontez Purnell

Over the past handful of years, white supremacy in the US has reared its head, with vitriolic images like the tiki torch march in Charlottesville in 2017 or the January 6th, 2021, conservative attack on the US capitol. In this episode, we’re in conversation with a professor and n author whose new book places modern white supremacy and American racialization, in a long-term historical context of Christian values and morals. We’re going to go back more than a thousand years to explore how European Christianity, defined itself, for centuries, through anti-semitism. That logic eventually became secularized but maintained a Christian compass, a north star that led the colonization of the Americas, and the social creation of race – and anti-Black racism – as we know it. This exchange between anti-semitic and anti-Black logics, continue to interplay through – of course – American slavery, jumping forward to the Jewish holocaust in Europe, then the US Civil Rights act, and finally back to the present, where we are terribly aware of white supremacist gatherings that chant things like – and these are quotes – “the Jews will not replace us” and “the South will rise again”. 

We’re joined in this episode by Magda Teter, a Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, as well as President of the American Academy of Jewish Research. Today we’ll be talking about her book, Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism.

This week’s Resistance in Residence Artist is longtime Oakland writer, punk musician, dancer, director and underground legend Brontez Purnell who released a new book of poetry in February called, “The Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt.”

Check out his new book here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374612702/tenbridgesiveburnt

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