The tweet that stung with the cold hatred of antisemitism

JANE CARO has received all manner of insults for her outspoken feminist views but a tweet that said she ‘is a Jew and behaves like one’ has cut deeper than the rest.

As an out-and-proud feminist, I am used to getting abused and insulted on social media. As they say, the comments on any article dealing with feminism prove the need for feminism. After more than a decade, I thought I had become immune, thanks to a bit of luck and good timing.

My age, even though it is also used as a form of abuse, helps me recognise that people who spew bile at a person they have never met reveal much more about themselves than anyone else. And, as you age, you run out of fucks to give, especially about what other people might think of you.

I also spent 35 years in advertising agency creative departments so I have been bullied by some of the wittiest men in Australia. Your average troll is piss-weak compared to them. Those witty bullies in ad agencies – and its highly competitive, so bullying is rife – also taught me how to give as good as I got. I had to learn that in order to survive.

But my sense of immunity is also because of my background. I am a white, straight, middle class, well-educated woman. This gives me a buffer of safety that many people don’t have.

Being old and battle-hardened has enabled me to brush off being called crazy, a drunk, a bitch, a misogynist, a misandrist, a man-hater, old and senile, bitter and twisted, stupid, irrational, ugly, double-, triple- and quadruple-chinned, a clown, a dupe, a liar, a hypocrite, bound for hell, a baby killer, a snowflake, a leftard, even a paedophile (everyone is now a paedophile to the right). Trolls have openly wished for me to be hurt, humiliated or killed. Of course, many more people have been kind, supportive, complimentary, encouraging and gone into battle on my behalf. That helps too.

However, it turns out I am not as impervious as I thought. And it only took two tweets to prove it. The first said, “Jane Caro is a Jew and behaves like one.” The second, on the following day, from a different Twitter handle, said, “Jane Caro is a Jew.”

My first instinct on receiving them was to correct the mistake. I do not identify as Jewish. DNA testing (I have written about it on this site previously) showed that my father’s family were Jewish way back when, but all signs of the religion and the culture have disappeared over the ensuing generations. So, my first, naive response was to say that’s just wrong.

I resisted that impulse and replied by taking it as a compliment, which, of course, it is. Nevertheless, I knew it was intended to be nasty and the two tweets, coming 24 hours apart, chilled me. They got to me more than all the other insults put together. Why? Why did those tweets have so much impact? And it’s not because I have any qualms about being called Jewish. “So what?” Is the obvious response and many lovely people replied with just that.

As I thought about why I was disturbed, I realised that this was the first time I had ever experienced any sort of racism, privileged white woman that I am. Unlike the usual insults, this felt like cold hatred. It felt like total dismissal. Racism is an impersonal hatred which denies individuality. There’s no witty comeback to someone who has put a line through your existence, personality, achievements, successes, failures, strengths and weaknesses, simply because of an accident of birth.

And antisemitism, of course, which is tragically surging back onto the world stage, has a particularly sinister undertone because of the Holocaust and the wholesale slaughter of millions for no other reason than their race.

Now, I am not claiming to understand a tenth of what daily racism and hatred must feel like for those who identify as Jews, or Muslims or for people of colour or Indigenous Australians.

But those two tweets gave me a taste of what it might feel like to face implacable, almost indifferent hatred, where nothing you may say, do or achieve has any impact. I am usually attacked because someone does not like my opinions and because they do not like a woman putting her views without apology.

But that sort of hatred is personal. I can see how I have caused it by being me. So, weirdly, it is also a compliment. It shows that my opinions have had an effect. They have made a difference, such a difference, in fact, that people feel moved to hate me and try to shut me up.

To be attacked because my last name indicates Jewish origins – diluted as they now are – is none of those. It creates the opposite of the pride that can accompany getting up the nose of climate deniers, misogynists, MAGA, anti-LGBTQI, right wingers, conspiracy theorists and, yes, racists. A racist attack strips away someone’s personality entirely. You become one of “them”, able to be dismissed and dehumanised.

I realise that I am writing about a very minor disturbing moment. No doubt many readers will know such abuse and worse only too well. I am bitterly sorry about that and even more sorry that all forms of racism appear to be growing. But it was a wake-up call for me. A recognition that there is hot hate and cold hate. Personal hate and impersonal hate. All hate is bad, but the cold and the impersonal feels so much more annihilating.

Photo: Jane Caro (Courtesy Pan MacMillan)