“Cosmopolitan elite” is the main phrase causing controversy in a speech Josh Hawley, U.S. senator for Missouri, gave July 16, but the ADL’s Karen Aroesty said it was only one part of a speech with several troubling references.
Hawley gave the speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C. The conference of nationalist thinkers was organized by Yoram Hazony, an American-Israeli professor. Aroesty is regional director of ADL Heartland, which serves Missouri, Eastern Kansas and Southern Illinois and is based in St. Louis.
Hawley used the phrase ‘cosmopolitan elite’ twice in his speech. It is being criticized because it has historically been associated with anti-Semitism. The first instance, with some context included: “And then there’s Martha Nussbaum, who wrote that it is wrong and morally dangerous to teach students that they are ‘above all, citizens of the United States.’ Instead, they should be educated for ‘world citizenship.’ I think you get the idea. The cosmopolitan elite look down on the common affections that once bound this nation together, things like patriotism, national feeling, place and religious faith. They regard our inherited traditions as oppressive and our shared institutions — like family and church and neighborhood — as backwards. What they offer instead is a progressive agenda of social liberation in tune with the priorities of their wealthy and well-educated counterparts around the world.”
Hawley’s second use of the phrase, also with some context: “At the same time, it has encouraged multinational corporations to move jobs and assets overseas to chase the cheapest wages and pay the lowest taxes. And it has rewarded those same corporations for then turning around and investing their profits not in American workers, not in American development, but in financial instruments that benefit the cosmopolitan elite. And where has this left middle America? Well, with flat wages, with lost jobs, with declining investment and declining opportunity.”
Aroesty said that she was concerned “with the speech in its entirety, not just the word (cosmopolitan).”
“He said a variety of things in the speech that, taken all together, left me scratching my head,” she said. “I don’t think he intended to be anti-Semitic. I don’t think he is an anti-Semite. I never said he was.”
Language, she said, “has become very messy” and “in politics, even messier.”
“And he was speaking to a particular group of people, … expressing a certain message to those folks,” she said. “And I don’t think he understood that there would be a whole lot of other people listening to that speech with a different ear. In today’s angry political arena, it is completely understandable that folks in the Jewish community would hear overtones of anti-Semitic tropes, and not just in his use of (cosmopolitan) but in a number of phrases.”
Those additional phrases that struck her that way, she said, included “money changing on Wall Street.”
“That to me sounds biblical,” Aroesty said. “I hear ‘Jews.’ ”
That quote of Hawley’s, with some context: “And that will require change. Because an economy driven by money changing on Wall Street ultimately benefits those who have the money to begin with, and that economy will not support a great nation. Because an economy driven by money changing on Wall Street ultimately benefits those who have the money to start with, and that economy will not support a great nation.”
Aroesty said people “could say I’m overreacting, but I represent a group of people worried about actual violence against Jews in the U.S. and beyond.”
Aroesty added that some in the Jewish community thought that the criticism of Hawley for using this language was unfair because he “is a friend to the Jewish community.” However, she believes “words matter and context matters.” Politicians represent a broad constituency and have “a platform of power, and they need to be sensitive to that power.”
Hazony on Twitter defended Hawley’s use of “cosmopolitan elite,” citing some academic books with the phrase in their titles to address globalization or multiculturalism and saying the phrase was not anti-Semitic.
“Sorry but ‘cosmopolitan’ is a normal term in political theory, history and other academic disciplines,” Hazony wrote in his tweet. “It means ‘citizen of the world’ and has no anti-Jewish valence. @HawleyMO used it correctly in his National Conservatism speech.”
Gavriela Geller, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Bureau|AJC, said in a written statement that the organization had spoken with Hawley’s staff and that they were “very receptive to our concerns.” The organization will seek to meet with Hawley.
“They assured us that it was absolutely not his intention (to express anti-Semitism in his speech), which we appreciate,” Geller said. “We discussed the importance of considering how others may interpret language, regardless of intention, particularly in a state that has known violent white supremacist activity.”
In the context of “a disturbing resurgence in white nationalism in this country, which less than one year ago led to the deadliest act of anti-Semitism ever seen on American soil, we encourage Senator Hawley to consider how his words could be perceived by those who seek to define America as a white and Christian nation,” she said.
The words “globalist” and “cosmopolitan” have historically been associated with anti-Semitic rhetoric, Geller said.
“References to a shadowy elite class destroying the country from within, loyal only to “the global community,” sound to many in the Jewish community eerily reminiscent of speeches from Germany in the 1930s,” she said.
The organization believes that American patriotism is compatible with “a global outlook and humanitarian concern.”
“This country has been strengthened by all of our forbearers, including our parents and grandparents who sought refuge from fascist Germany, as well as more recent immigrants from Central America fleeing untold violence and corruption,” she said. “That is America — a multiracial, multiethnic, multifaith tapestry. We are proud patriots of that America, a country which embraces diversity as our strength, and our future.”
The organization hopes that Hawley “did not at all intend his message in the way it was received,” Geller said.
“We met with the senator in Washington, D.C., just last month, and have a good relationship with his Kansas City staff, as well … and we look forward to engaging with him and strengthening his understanding of our community.”
According to JTA, Hawley denies that the speech is problematic. In response to a tweet criticizing the speech, he wrote that “The liberal language police have lost their minds.”
In another tweet he wrote that he’s using the term “cosmopolitan” as it was used by Martha Nussbaum, whom he quoted in the speech: “The cosmopolitan [is] the person whose primary allegiance is to the community of human beings in the entire world,” not to a “specifically American identity.”
Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, declined to provide a comment to JTA specifically on Hawley’s speech.
On Twitter, the Republican Jewish Coalition supported Hawley. In a Tweet posted July 19, the organization wished the Missouri senator a “special Shabbat Shalom @HawleyMO who has been an amazing advocate for Jews all around the world, especially the United States. It’s an outrage that anyone would attack you for being anti-Semitic. Not only are you a mensch, but you are an inspiring."