The Man Behind the Curtain

I recently made the mistake of getting involved in an argument on YouTube. If I've learned anything on the internet, it's that YouTube commenters are almost always either trolls or professional morons. I should have abstained, but something about this commenter intrigued me. His name is OneApostate, and his particular kink was denying that it is possible to be Jewish by decent. He asserted that only those who practice Judaism are actually Jews, and that there is no such thing as Jewish DNA. That rumor, he believes, was authored by anti-Semites during the long persecution of the Jews by the Nazis.

The debate began innocently enough, though I admit it was meddling in the affairs of others that got me involved. In the comments section of a YouTube video of a talk involving atheist authors Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, OneApostate was arguing that Harris cannot be a Jew because he is an atheist. He was arguing with someone else, but I felt the need to offer that Sam Harris was raised in a secular Jewish household and self-identifies as Jewish. He replied with the opinion that there are no such things as secular Jews, and the argument snowballed until we were exchanging personal messages. I offered him proof in the form of links to articles about Jewish ethnicity published by the New York Times and the National Academy of the Sciences, articles about genetic diseases that disproportionately affect those with Jewish ancestry published on Jewish websites and on WebMD, and a link to an article by Hitchens on SamHarris.org in which Hitchens describes Sam Harris as Jewish. At this point, I didn't hold out much hope that he would read any of this, but I hoped he would at least pay attention to such article titles as NAS's "Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes" and the NY Times's "Studies Show Jews' Genetic Similarity," but I was bitterly disappointed when he wrote back immediately to state, "There is no such thing as Jewish DNA period."
He had not read my message. He hadn't even glanced at it. That was how it seemed. How can one look at the web address "jewishgeneticscenter.org" and then say that there is no such thing as Jewish genetics? Things went downhill from there. He offered strawman arguments and challenged me to produce evidence for absurd claims. He constantly asked if I considered myself Jewish, hinting at a hypersensitivity to anti-Semitic prejudice. OneApostate was clearly trying to turn what he interpreted as an anti-Semitic claim back on me when he said, "Since you are related to every Jew on the planet [through Evolution], and you believe in Jewish DNA, I'm going to call you Jewish."
Eventually, I withdrew myself from the debate, telling him that I had a more educational discussion with a brick to participate in, but the argument still disturbs me. I have met people who denied mountains of incontrovertible proof and who clung to absurd beliefs before, but OneApostate's assertion was so utterly ridiculous and his rejection of the clear truth was so complete that I found myself fascinated. I knew that I couldn't get through to him, but I kept on trying. I kept presenting evidence even though he would just circle back to his initial assertion whenever I presented evidence he could not refute. I know he saw me as an anti-Semite, but I have suspicions that he sees just about everyone that way. He is likely someone who has been on the receiving end of anti-Semitic abuse - he actually claims to have been on his channel - and refused to engage with me rationally because he heard my claims as an indictment of Jewish people. But why engage me at all if he thought I was just a bigot? Why did I bother continuing the discussion with him?

I am left with naught but questions. This isn't a private belief of his; this is a personal crusade, and OneApostate probably surrounds himself with people who think just like he does. These delusional people are amassing somewhere, spreading their insipid lies even in the face of irrefutable proof of their insanity. When they are shouting from street corners or raging on the internet, we encourage one another to ignore them. What do we do when they are patrolling our cities in police cruisers, when they are drafting legislation as politicians, or when they are voting for Presidential candidates? When do we decide that rage-blind, anti-social head cases are not only obnoxious but dangerous, and how do we act when we do?