Post by hannah gais / Redsky

hannah gais • Feed

Things got weird on my end too. When I reached out for comment to Betar, they concocted a bizarre conspiracy seemingly involving George Soros, my partially Jewish dad (???), and @thebaffler.com. Anyway, this is the group that wants to fight "antisemitism."

Betar’s proclivity for harassment extends to journalists as well. When I reached out for comment, someone tweeted a screenshot of my email and called me a “jihadi.” Over the course of the next few hours, Betar and its followers dug through The Baffler’s tax records and identified a grant that Open Society Foundations, a group that George Soros founded, gave the magazine in 2023. A spokesperson from Betar, who declined to sign their name on any emails to me, asked me if I wanted to comment. While I worked for The Baffler full time from 2015 to 2017, I declined to respond to their bizarre implication of a possibly antisemitic conspiracy. In response, they sent me a follow up email asking about my father—a recently retired political scientist and researcher—and one of his prior employers. When I asked my dad about how he wanted to respond, he found the whole situation perplexing. The group continued its line of inquiry the next week. Betar seemed unaware that he, and I, are partially Jewish. And they declined to respond to any of my questions.

aug 26, 2025, 2:06 pm • 95 26

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An interesting fact I learned about Betar, who has told Jews to leave New York City due to antisemitism, is that they used to wear literal brownshirts. thebaffler.com/latest/for-b...

To that end, its members embraced “fascist streetgang aesthetics,” Roth-Rowland said. Among other ties to pre-war fascism, she pointed to the group’s early uniform—a brown shirt and tie, similar to the Nazi’s Sturmabteilung, known as “Storm Troopers.” The group’s game of footsie with fascist aesthetics had some limits, and in May 1933, roughly two-and-a-half months after Adolf Hitler came to power, Betar abandoned the outfit. In a letter, the group’s leadership decreed that wearing brown shirts was “strictly forbidden.” The author didn’t explain why.

aug 26, 2025, 2:06 pm • 69 13 • view