‘We Should Just Call It Jew-Hating!’ CNN’s John Berman Alarmed That a THIRD of Americans Don’t Know What ‘Antisemitism’ Means

CNN anchor John Berman expressed alarm that a third of Americans don’t know what the word “antisemitism” means, and offered a stark suggestion to remedy that.

On Tuesday morning’s edition of CNN’s New Day, Berman hosted Holly Huffnagle — the American Jewish Committee’s U.S. Director for Combating Antisemitism — to talk about the Nazi demonstrations in Florida over the weekend, and the growing tide of antisemitism and White Supremacy it illustrates.

“You’ve been tracking what’s going on for the last few weeks and you say this is basically now just a daily occurrence,” Berman told Huffnagle.

Huffnagle agreed, noting that “there were neo-Nazis waving flags and in Florida, there were synagogues defaced an in Chicago, right here in Washington, D.C., where I am based, there are Nazi swastikas on Union Station. There have been Jewish children spat on in New York, and of course, just a couple of weeks ago, the horrific hostage situation in Collierville, Texas. But this is part of a larger picture over the last few years here in America.”

Berman then asked about some disturbing results from AJC’s most recent polling.

Ms. Huffnagle told Berman that “our polling has found that American Jews are very concerned about anti-Semitism. Nine in 10 think it’s a problem in the United States. Eight in 10 believe that it has increased in the last five years, and one in four have actually been the personal target of anti-Semitism in the last year alone.”

“And yet one-third of Americans don’t even know the word anti-Semitism, or aren’t familiar with it, couldn’t define it. And only 44 percent of Americans believe that it’s increasing,” Huffnagle said.

Berman said he spoke to a professor recently who told him that the term antisemitism “does a disservice.”

“We should just call it Jew-hating, and people would have a better understanding of what we’re talking about,” Berman said.

That AJC poll found that 34 percent of Americans have either “Heard the term [antisemitism], but unsure what it means” (18%) or “Have never heard of the term” (16%).

Watch above via CNN.