In a moment of crisis for American liberalism, antisemitism has become a point of ideological obsession. Where does free speech end and hateful discrimination begin? Can law check antisemitism without dangerous political censorship? Does history offer an urgent warning about where unbridled hatred can lead society — or a trapdoor into moral panic?
Nearly a decade in the making, Exceptional Hatred offers a fundamentally new way of thinking about these questions through a revelatory set of courtroom dramas and eloquent reflections on law and history. Beginning and ending in our moment of post-2023 campus conflict, James Loeffler travels back to other key moments that have shaped our free speech culture: the forgotten anti-Jewish riots of the 1940s that sparked a pair of landmark Supreme Court First Amendment cases on hate speech; the 1970s attempted neo-Nazi effort to march through American’s largest community of Holocaust survivors; and the violent events and court battles resulting from the Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville in 2017. Drawing on diverse experiences as a Jewish Studies professor at the University of Virginia, a journalist for The Atlantic covering the 2021 civil lawsuit against white supremacists by Charlottesville’s victims, and an expert witness in a 2024 hate crimes trial, James Loeffler provides a sweeping account of how the lines between free speech and hate speech have been drawn and redrawn across generations of American life.
In reckoning more honestly with antisemitism and its relation to other racisms, he argues, we can move past the fear and polarization that has turned antisemitism into a politicized weapon against democracy. In doing so, we can also re-invest law with the moral power to secure justice for all in a pluralist democracy.
“Exceptional Hatred is the platonic ideal of history―technicolor storytelling and level-headed analysis brought to bear on the question that tends to make hypocrites of us all. Loeffler has written the book America’s broken public square desperately needs.”
―Franklin Foer, author of The Last Politician
“A revelatory exploration of law’s confrontation with antisemitism and the tensions between efforts to curb it and commitments to freedom of expression. Probing, learned, and engrossing, Exceptional Hatred brilliantly illuminates what Loeffler aptly terms ‘a fundamental question before us: how to balance free speech with equal protection when democracy itself stands imperiled.'”
―Randall Kennedy, author of Say It Loud! On Race, Law, History and Culture
“With this brilliant book, James Loeffler launches himself at the heart of legal and constitutional questions about free speech―probing whether and how law has provided protection against hatred; how partisan actors have treated Jews as means rather than ends; and why myths of American exceptionalism have skewed the conversation. Noting that ‘we must historicize rather than pathologize this debate,’ Loeffler imagines a path toward a more just and inclusive future for all.”
―Dahlia Lithwick, author of Lady Justice
“Original and timely, Exceptional Hatred shows that the histories of free speech and antisemitism in America turn out to be profoundly intertwined. Deeply researched and powerfully argued, it should be required reading for anyone who cares about the current challenge of antisemitism―and what works and doesn’t work to fight it.”
―Noah Feldman, author of The Broken Constitution
“James Loeffler cuts through the noise. Deft, judicious, and lucid, he navigates the treacherous intersection of antisemitism and free speech with a scholar’s rigor and a storyteller’s grace. The result is a book that demolishes the lazy, one-dimensional takes that pass for discourse. Required reading for anyone genuinely interested in the American Jewish experience―and the future of American democracy.”
―Shaul Magid, author of The Necessity of Exile
“From the crucible of his encounter with the 2017 antisemitic Charlottesville march, the leading historian of Jews in his generation recounts how pivotal the Jewish experience has been to America’s commitment to free speech and struggle with hate speech. No other book shows both the power and limits of law’s confrontation with hatred and the contradictions it exposes at liberalism’s core. A masterpiece.”
―Samuel Moyn, author of Liberalism Against Itself
“A consummate stylist, Loeffler is able to combine sympathy and subtle irony in the same sentence… The narrative skill with which he handles legal minutiae as if they were plots twists in a novel makes the book, notwithstanding its somber subject, a pleasure to read. Brilliantly argues that antisemitic hatred needs to be better addressed.”
―Kirkus Reviews
“Bold and thought-provoking… a good starting point for an informed discussion on this fraught topic.”
―Times of Israel
“[A] remarkable book… The depth of Loeffler’s research and the elegance of his prose makes his book engrossing as well as pertinent.”
―Stephen Whitfield, Jewish Book Council
Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight over Free Speech in Modern America
Praise
Buy it now:
