What really happened to hatred in America after World War II?

Most of us were taught that defeating Hitler marked a turning point — that America emerged from the war more tolerant, more unified, more committed to its democratic ideals. Historian Steven J. Ross is here to tell us that story is a myth. And he has the documents to prove it.

In this episode, Rabbi Yoshi sits down with one of America's most compelling Jewish historians to discuss Ross's new book, The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy — a USA Today bestseller that uncovers a hidden chapter of postwar American history. When the war ended, antisemitism and racism didn't recede. They surged. Organized hate groups more than doubled between 1940 and 1946, and a network of domestic terrorists set about — in their own words — finishing the job Hitler had begun.

But that's only half the story. The other half is about the people who fought back: the citizen-spies recruited by the ADL, the American Jewish Committee, and the Anti-Nazi League, who infiltrated these groups at great personal risk and brought their dangerous work to light. Their names have been largely forgotten. Ross gives them back to us.

Rabbi Yoshi and Steve talk about the history, what it illuminates about this moment in American Jewish life, and — in true Search for Meaning fashion — where a man who has spent his career in some of the darkest chapters of human experience still finds hope and meaning.

About Steven J. Ross

Steven J. Ross is Dean's Professor of History at the University of Southern California and the Myron and Marian Casden Director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life. The first person in his family to go to college, he holds degrees from Columbia, Oxford, and Princeton.

His books include Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Los Angeles Times bestseller; Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics, winner of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Film Scholars Award; and Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America, nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

His latest book is The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy (Bloomsbury, 2026).

More at his USC Dornsife faculty page: https://dornsife.usc.edu/profile/steve-ross/

Learn about the book at https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/secret-war-against-hate-9781635578003/