For weeks now, we here at The CJN have been reporting on a wave of antisemitic incidents being reported at public schools across Toronto. Mostly they involve Nazi salutes and swastikas, and the targets have been both students and teachers.

Three new incidents happened late last week—all on the same night. Earlier this year, students made Nazi salutes at two separate schools in Toronto; at a third school, a teacher was suspended for comparing vaccine passports to Nazi-era yellow stars.

It’s gotten to the point that even mainstream media outlets are paying attention, while many parents, teachers and school board officials are wondering what is going on. Is it ignorance? Or something more sinister? Professor Barbara Perry, an expert in right-wing extremism who teaches at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, calls what’s happening a “contagion” circulating in the ether. She joins The CJN Daily podcast to explain. Listen and subscribe above.

What we talked about:

• Read “A suspect is being sought after antisemitic graffiti was found at three Toronto high schools; the latest in a string of hateful incidents” at thecjn.ca
• Read the TDSB report, “Combatting Hate and Racism: Student Learning Strategy”, at tdsb.on.ca
• See the full list of the Order of British Columbia at news.gov.bc.ca

Episode transcript:

News reader CP24:

Another Toronto middle school now investigating an alleged antisemitic incident in which students reportedly performed the Nazi salute in front of class.

Ellin Bessner:

For weeks now, we’ve been reporting here at The CJN on a wave of antisemitic incidents at public schools across Toronto. Mostly, they involve Nazi salutes and swastikas and graffiti, and the targets have been both students and teachers. Three new incidents happened late last week, all on the same night, and police have video of a suspect. Earlier this year, students made Nazi salutes at two separate schools in Toronto, and at a third school, a teacher was suspended for comparing vaccine passports to Nazi yellow stars. Now even the mainstream media has been paying attention, and students, parents, Jewish groups and school board officials are wondering what is going on? Is it ignorance or something more sinister? Professor Barbara Perry is at Ontario Tech in Oshawa, where she studies right wing extremism. She calls what’s happening now a contagion that’s circulating in the either, and she does believe it is part of a wider emergency.

Barbara Perry:

The antisemitic acts are occurring more frequently as are anti-Black incidents, as are anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant. So it’s part of a package of hate that it really is, I think, becoming much more visible and much more, I won’t say acceptable, but it seems like kids think it’s acceptable and it’s legitimate to express themselves.

Ellin Bessner:

I’m Ellin Bessner. And this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Monday, March 7, 2022. Welcome to the CJN Daily, sponsored by Metropia.

As more and more of these cases of either mischief or possibly hate crimes are surfacing, they’re coming even as the Toronto District School Board is actually throwing resources at the problem as we speak. They’re bringing in Jewish experts to train teachers on what Jewish culture is and what antisemitism is. They’re calling in Holocaust educators to schools that have been involved with these recent incidents. And by the way, the board has just released a new report on hatred and racism incidents, so far this school year. Students and staff are the ones who’ve been reporting these cases. And so far, there were over 1000 incidents reported, and that is mostly against Black students and staff, 54% of them were against Black students and staff. Next were LGBTQ complaints, 21%. And when it came to incidents involving Jews, that was only 6% of the complaints. So 60 incidents out of 1000. Coming up, Professor Barbara Perry will be here to explain why we should be worried about the 300 right wing extremist groups operating in Canada that she tracks. She says they’re making Nazi memes and hate symbols commonplace and enticing young people into their social networks. But first, here’s what’s making news elsewhere in Canada right now.

Talia Freedhoff:

I’m Talia Freedhoff in Ottawa, Ontario. And this is what Jewish Canada sounds like.

Ellin Bessner:

The province of British Columbia awarded its highest honour to two prominent Jewish residents in an in-person ceremony at the provincial legislature in Victoria. Frances Belzberg and Dr. Mel Krajden received their Order of BC medals from the Premier and BC’s Lieutenant Governor, on Thursday. Belzburg founded the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation to advance research and awareness and support patients affected by the disease. Dr. Krajden is an infectious disease expert. He runs the BC Centre for Disease Control’s Public Health Lab. Thanks to his research team, BC was able to develop rapid tests for COVID weeks before anywhere else in Canada, allowing the province to start testing people back in January of 2020. By the way, he is my brother-in-law and we are super proud of him.

Professor Barbara Perry joins me now from Oshawa.

Is this a challenge that some students are doing, like on the TikTok, like they used to do with the Harlem Shake or what have you or what is happening as far as you can tell?

Barbara Perry:

Yeah. I mean, I don’t think it’s anything necessarily orchestrated like that, but I think it’s sort of emerging organically and it’s almost a contagion. And it’s not just kids passing it back and forth amongst themselves from school to school, but it’s something that is circulating in the ether. It’s all around them. The kids, especially during COVID they’ve been online so much and no doubt exposed to this sort of imagery, whether it’s on TikTok or Instagram or whatever. We’re just seeing more of that sort of very explicit antisemitism across the board online. So this is what they’re being exposed to. And they think that this is, and it’s hard to say. I mean, some of them think this is a great joke. It’s funny. It’s going to get a rise. It’s going to get people’s attention. And some really don’t understand the significance of it, and others do and are acting out of malice, with intention, to hurt, to harm, to send a message to other students. So I don’t think we can generalize that it’s all coming from the same place, emotionally or cognitively. But I think we can generalize and say that it is coming from a broader exposure in the environment on social media. But also this week, as we’ve seen with the convoy this week, this month, let’s say that this Swastika is very much in evidence there. So they’re also seeing it in the mainstream, in the mainstream media as well as this is being posted. And it’s a way to stand up for yourself and stand up for your rights is the message I think that they’re getting from that, right?

Ellin Bessner:

And I have interviewed a student who this happened to a couple of weeks ago on our show, one of the students at the centre of one of these incidents. And the response at first was they’re just doing Tomfoolery or they’re just being stupid when it comes to building a Swastika out of like geometry blocks. But then the Heil Hitler and the actual salute is a different sort of kettle of fish.

Barbara Perry:

I don’t know that there is a distinction. And again, I think it varies from case to case. We’re also seeing that Hitler salute amongst the folks like the Proud Boys, not just before they were designated as a terrorist entity. I mean, they’re still active under a different name. So we’re seeing this. We’ve seen it at a lot of campuses in the US, I think sort of less so in the Canadian context. But we’ve seen a lot of that sort of, in this case, very purposeful use of the Hitler salute to actually rally individuals. I mean, it’s both a recruitment tool, right, to bring people into the “us” crowd, but also intended to be a signal to the Jewish students on campus, for example, and faculty and staff for that matter, as well. And I think it’s connected to the broader antisemitism that is sort of, again, in the air. It’s connected, I think, very much to the narratives around The Great Replacement. And so because it’s been used so visibly on social media, but also, again, amplified through traditional media, this is something that other youths are picking up on as a means of intimidation, I think, and a means of instilling fear and superiority. I mean, that’s what it’s about, right? is religious or racial superiority.

Ellin Bessner:

How does this, if at all, lead to further radicalization? I mean, when they share a meme that has the frog or whatever, one of these flags?

Barbara Perry:

Yeah. I mean, it doesn’t necessarily lead them further down the rabbit hole. And we should say right off at the get go that there is no one trajectory for people being radicalized. And it depends on how they’ve come to these signs as well and how engaged they are in that social media platform. Is it actually interactive? So one of the places that we’re seeing this happen is in the gaming environment, for example. Some of the games themselves are just absolutely horrific. They’re antisemitic and they’re Islamophobic and they’re misogynistic and they’re violent. But then it’s sort of the conversations or the chat rooms that are associated with the games where the problems really emerge because then they’re sort of lured into those. “Oh, well, I see that you are really aiming for all of the Black people in that game. Let’s have a conversation about that.” So there’s this grooming process, especially for youth that goes on in those sorts of locations. Now, some kids have resiliency to that and recognize it for what it is. But I think a lot don’t. And it’s not until they’re quite far down that rabbit hole that they realize what’s happening, what they’re being introduced to. But that’s one of the places where we let kids down. We haven’t really educated youth either about what that process looks like and what those narratives are that they need to be watching for, what the code words are, that sort of thing. So I think there’s a real need for that sort of. We’re actually working with John Howard Society of Ottawa right now and Boys and Girls Club and Yorktown Family Services in Toronto and a couple of police services to build a safe gaming curriculum, as well as a sort of anti-Fascist gaming platform as well. So I think these are the sorts of skills that we need to help our kids to develop in that capacity.

Ellin Bessner:

In some of your writings, you’ve said that in your book as well with Ryan Scrivens, that we need a multifaceted approach is needed to educate people about the right wing threats. And it’s not just suspend them and kick them out of school. It seems that everything is being done. There’s Holocaust Education Week, there’s anti-racism training, literally. Today we’re talking and it’s Pink Shirt Day. Right. Or coming up to, anti-bullying. It’s all there. So why in Toronto specifically, but also why across Canada and other schools, are we still seeing this stuff?

Barbara Perry:

Well, I guess I mean, some of it is probably backlash and some of it especially with kids, right? This attempt to look like a rebel by pushing back against that sort of thing. But I think some of it is also we’re teaching them the facts. Right. We’re teaching them history, we’re teaching them about different communities and what their beliefs or practices or culture is. But are we teaching those, I think the sort of emotional the EQ rather than the IQ. Right? Are we teaching them the emotional responses, the empathy and that sort of piece together? I think that there’s often, there’s courses or not courses maybe, but sessions or modules, on sort of different emotional skills. Sometimes not. Right? Sometimes it’s just assumed that we all have those capacities and then we’re teaching the history of the Holocaust, for example. But are we necessarily putting those together? I think some are, but I think for the most part not. These are very distinct. So what is that about? And I think in terms of this particular issue of radicalization into broader far right ideologies, I don’t think we’re doing a good job on that at all. And I think, again, put that in the broader context, this denial that we have at the public level about the risk associated with the far right, the denial that the convoy, for example, had anything to do with the far right, that I think sends a message to youth that, well, this is all legitimate. All of the expressions, all of those flags that we saw there, all of those signs, they’re legitimate. They’re okay. And so I think our public leaders and our politicians have a lot to answer to for that as well.

Ellin Bessner:

And that’s what Jewish Canada sounds like for this episode of The CJN Daily, sponsored by Metropia. Integrity, Community. Quality and Customer Care. Today’s listener shout out goes to Dan Brotman of Windsor, Ontario, where he’s executive director of the Jewish Federation.

And we’ll end the episode with this clip from Sunday’s protest rally outside the Russian consulate in Toronto where Jewish groups came to show their solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Here is Michael Levitt, the President of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Canadian office.

Michael Levitt:

As the head of an organization that fights for human rights, every day I’ve been shaken to the core by Putin’s atrocities over the past two weeks, I’m outraged. He has perversely tried to justify the unjustifiable, saying he was “denazifying” unquote Ukraine. His claims of deNazifying a Ukrainian led and inspired by a Jewish president who lost families to the Nazis during the Holocaust, are deranged and absurd.

Credits

The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Victoria Redden is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We’re a member of The CJN Podcast Network; find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.