It Could Happen Here
Why America Is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable—And How We Can Stop It
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3.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
"Refreshingly candid . . . Get off Instagram and read this book."—Sacha Baron Cohen
From the dynamic head of ADL, an impassioned argument about the terrifying path that America finds itself on today—and how we can save ourselves
It’s almost impossible to imagine that unbridled hate and systematic violence could come for us or our families. But it has happened in our lifetimes in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. And it could happen here.
Today, as CEO of the storied ADL (the Anti-Defamation League), Jonathan Greenblatt has made it his personal mission to demonstrate how antisemitism, racism, and other insidious forms of intolerance can destroy a society, taking root as quiet prejudices but mutating over time into horrific acts of brutality. In this urgent book, Greenblatt sounds an alarm, warning that this age-old trend is gathering momentum in the United States—and that violence on an even larger, more catastrophic scale could be just around the corner.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Drawing on ADL’s decades of experience in fighting hate through investigative research, education programs, and legislative victories as well as his own personal story and his background in business and government, Greenblatt offers a bracing primer on how we—as individuals, as organizations, and as a society—can strike back against hate. Just because it could happen here, he shows, does not mean that the unthinkable is inevitable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this impassioned yet uneven account, Anti-Defamation League CEO Greenblatt delivers a troubling compendium of recent incidents of hate and intolerance and offers practical advice on how to counteract such dangers. Contending that the normalization of racial slurs, negative stereotypes, and cruel teasing can foster violence by dehumanizing victims, Greenblatt urges readers to call out problematic speech and behavior even when it seems innocuous. He offers suggestions for how to counter hate and promote tolerance and humanitarian values in various contexts, including family, work, schools, and faith groups, though his suggestion that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are inseparable goes too far. He also has a tendency to argue against straw men, as when he claims that "commentators on the left soften their calls to destroy the Jewish state by... advocating for justice for the Palestinian people," and that some proponents of critical race theory are intent on "denying individuals any degree of agency and negating the nuances that shape communities over time." Though Greenblatt's warnings about the dangers of normalizing bigotry are sound, he lets his political agenda get in the way of his message. Progressives, in particular, will be unconvinced.
