Antisemitism is rampant in the anti-vaccine community, and it goes a long, long way back. In 1932, an antisemitic magazine published a drawing of a smug-looking Jewish doctor immunizing a baby in a cartoon labeled, "Die Impfung," or "The Vaccination," with a caption reading: "It seems to me that poison and Jews seldom do good things."
I've encountered it time and time again in my passion for vaccine advocacy. People who might otherwise take me seriously latch on to mentions of my cultural background as evidence that I'm being paid by Big Pharma. After I'd seen a post that said that fellow vaccine advocate Dorit Reiss and I were "buddies," I sent her a message for the first time, introducing myself. I mentioned in passing that her maiden name, Rubinstein, is similar to my stepfather's name, Rubenstein, and said we could be distant relatives. Of course, I couldn't help but quip that we were both part of the Jewish shadow government.
It was literally one day later that I received a message from someone telling me that "Everyone knows your Aunt Dorit is feeding you money to peddle her lies." The day after I encountered fellow Jewish vaccine advocate, she was suddenly my wealthy aunt who was funding my advocacy for vaccines.
This is just the painless surface of antisemitism in the anti-vaccine movement. I've seen how ugly-- and how ridiculous-- it gets. Anti-vaccine activists have told me, you see, that it's my fault that my daughter has autism, because my "Jewish genes" from my "tribe" are full of "mental, physical, etc disabilities due to the years/centuries of inbreeding." (Joke's on them, anyway, since autism rates in Israel are half that of the U.S., and my daughter is culturally but not ethnically Jewish.)
They say that our children get special vaccines. One man, based on kids he's seen staring at him in Walmart, as arrived at the brilliant conclusion that Jews get special vaccines and that all other children get poisonous vaccines.
If this were true, I'm a little upset that I missed the part of Hebrew school where I was supposed to learn the secret handshake to let my pediatrician know that I'm Jewish and that my kids should get the vaccines that don't cause them to stare when an antisemitic stranger is creeping on them in Walmart.
It's all part of a Zionist conspiracy, though-- so they say. These people envision a future dominated by militant Jews with Magen Davids and the words "Zionist" written on their uniforms. This Jew-dominated future police state apparently involves vaccine checkpoints where mothers scream and are restrained as their babies are helplessly injected with lethal chemicals.
And this panic over some future Zionist police state seems to bleed into every single discussion they have with Jewish vaccine activists. They tell us that we are just part of a plot.
...Something to do with the "Judaification of America." And they want us to go back to Russia and East Europe. You know, those places were we were slaughtered by the millions.
But they also want us to go back to Israel. They can't seem to make up their minds.
They call us "cockroach."
They call us communist, and in the same breath, call us fascist. They insult our appearance. They call us "mindless, money-driven, greedy heathens."
My, isn't that familiar.
The scary thing is that, the closer and closer anti-vaccine activists get to utter Nazism, the more they begin to claim that they themselves are victims of a modern Holocaust. They flippantly dismiss the actual horrors of the Holocaust-- the brutal deaths of 6 million innocent people by gas, disease, starvation, and labor-- by comparing their experience of refusing to immunize their kids to the experience of being a Jew in Nazi Germany.
"Their doing the same thing to us that they are they jews," one anti-vaxxer screamed, taking the time to edit her comment to eliminate one of her seventeen grammatical errors.
Meanwhile, one of the most popular articles cries, "First, They Came for The Anti-Vaxxers," a reference to a poignant poem about the Holocaust by Martin Niemoller. It implies that the anti-vaxxers are the "Jews" of today, the first victims in what will become a total Holocaust.
Although it was popular, it wasn't the first or only vaccine/Holocaust comparison to go viral. Amy Barajas, an insufferable schmuck of a mommy-blogger, posted an image of herself in Holocaust Chic, wearing a self-imposed anti-vaccine badge and comparing it to the badges my people wore to the gas chambers. The image spread like wildfire among anti-vaxxers with persecution complexes.
Although it was popular, it wasn't the first or only vaccine/Holocaust comparison to go viral. Amy Barajas, an insufferable schmuck of a mommy-blogger, posted an image of herself in Holocaust Chic, wearing a self-imposed anti-vaccine badge and comparing it to the badges my people wore to the gas chambers. The image spread like wildfire among anti-vaxxers with persecution complexes.
Another anti-vaccine activist compared his resistance to vaccines to August Landmesser's refusal to give a Nazi salute. August Landmesser was tortured for years in concentration camps because of his resistance to the Nazi party and his relationship with his Jewish wife. Anti-vaxxers, on the other hand, have yet to even be denied access to public health insurance and public school. Don't worry, though: he "don't mean to be insulting."
The anti-vaxxers know how much it stings when I, as a Jew, am told that they are victims of a modern Holocaust. They exploit this when speaking to me and my fellow Jewish vaccine advocates:
Anti-vaxxers aren't always hateful people. I know that because I used to be one of them. But I come from a culture that values reason. I was taught as a child that the highest mitzvah, or commandment, is to nurture human life-- that it goes above and beyond any other duty we have to ourselves and others. My background plays a role in my vaccine advocacy not because it's part of a global conspiracy, but because it's a culture that prizes science and human life.
All joking and stereotypes aside, it's not a coincidence that a disproportionate number of Jews are drawn to careers in medicine. It's not (despite what some may say) because it's a well-paid career, but rather, because we tend to value science and its role in improving and strengthening the bodies that we're given. We are commanded not to accept human life as short and brutal, but to use our minds, and the minds of those who came before us, to build a better future.
I'm not a "good" Jew. I've got tattoos on both of my forearms, I'm queer as a ten-cent nickel, and my son's still got his foreskin. I have a Christmas tree and I get my daughter a real birthday cake every year even though her birthday tends to fall during Passover. Plus, I can't stand Benjamin Netanyahu or gefilte fish. But I know I'm at least doing one thing right. I'm standing up for the use of science to prolong and protect the lives of my children and others.
Apparently, all other things aside, my vaccine advocacy combined with my Judaism mean that I am an ugly communist fascist money-grubbing Zionist cockroach shill. My reasons for advocating for vaccines are called into question, my children are labeled the defective products of incest, and my opinion is taken with a grain of antisemitic salt.
The anti-vaxxers are right when they say that today sometimes looks suspiciously like 1932. But I think they're wrong about who among us is actually the target of hate.