The two Mark Oppenheimers
I talk antisemitism with Mark Oppenheimer, the South African barrister
Fun fact: there is another Jewish, short-ish, contrarian, brown-haired, fast-talking, podcast-hosting Mark Oppenheimer—and he is the one who got the gmail account I wanted. He is a South African barrister of some repute, and he recently invited me on his podcast to talk about American antisemitism. His podcast cohost, Jason, is a philosopher who believes that all groups are fictive; the group we call “Jews” in fact don’t have enough in common to rightly be called “Jews,” same for “Unitarians” or “welders” (I may be getting this slightly wrong). Since there are no Jews, he is dubious there can be such a thing as Jew-hatred or antisemitism.
You’d think this would all get weird, but it’s actually fun. If you have an hour to kill, watch this. If you have only ten minutes to kill, watch ten minutes of it. (Also, you get to see the top half of my tee shirt, which says I SUPPORT, but not the half that tells you what I support. Can you guess what I support?)
Enjoy.
By the way, people say I sound like my brother Dan. I usually think I don’t, but in this podcast I just shared, the one with the other Mark Oppenheimer, I think I really do. For more of Dan, check out his new newsletter.