Anti-Semitic incidents have been rising steadily in the past few years, Three of the past 5 years have broken records for the highest incidents of anti-Semitic cases of assault, vandalism, and harassment. From 2021 to 2022 there were 3,697 incidents, a rise of 36%, according to the Anti-Defamation League. In the past several years we saw the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and Klansmen shouting “Jews will not replace us,” with one of them driving into a crowd and killing a counter-protester named Heather Heyer. We saw a president who said there were “good people on both sides” of that event. We have also seen Ye, formerly Kanye West, go “death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.”
And yet the response from most politicians on the right has been…wait a minute…we’re still awaiting responses from most politicians on the right. If you’re looking for a sound, you’re hearing a lot of crickets.
Some of this silence can be traced to Donald Trump. Since his rise to power, the GOP has barely taken a brave stand to fight anything he has to say, because he has created a new constituency of hate within the party. He normalized hate, racism, and bigotry and said, “It’s okay—come out of the shadows. And now the fringe right is a growing part of the right, and the party doesn’t want to lose them. Trump uses anti-Semitic tropes such as saying Jews control the media and Congress, while he says he’s done more for the Jewish people than anyone else. Since leaving office, he hosted white nationalist Nick Fuentes and Ye (after the “death con 3” outburst) in Mar-a-Lago.
If Trump had a Native American name, it would be Dances with Nazis.
To be fair, the left has its share of anti-Semites and people who stoke anti-Israel sentiments that border on anti-Semitism. Just this past week Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington called Israel a “racist state,” and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota has said Jewish support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins.” These Democrats and others are big supporters of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement, which appears to ignore that there are far greater violators of human rights around the world, that Israel has given up land for peace and gotten none, that Palestinians push gay people off buildings and march their kids around with automatic (not semi-automatic) weapons and teach them to shout “death to Israel” and “death to America,” and that Palestinians don’t even recognize Israel’s right to exist. None of this is to say that we automatically need to support Israeli policies, but the Palestinians are far from victims in this battle.
But when these anti-Semitic statements arise from the left, Democratic leadership and politicians are quick to point them out and condemn them loudly. Admittedly, so does Republican leadership…when the statements come from the left. When Trump says it, very few politicians criticize it. (Props to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky for doing so, which is a rare moment for me to give him props for much of anything.) When Marjorie Taylor Greene said California wildfires were created by “Jewish space lasers” 🤦🏻♂️, Kevin McCarthy condemned her but allowed her to keep her committee appointments, while he later kicked Omar off her committees when he rose to Speaker of the House. Double-standard much, Kevin? And as for Trump, criticizing him about anything is off-limits for a wuss like Kevin McCarthy.
The anti-Semitic outbursts also come with another trend, which we might call the “I didn’t say that” trend. Marjorie Taylor Space Laser used this excuse, and Trump used it about Charlottesville, despite both statements being caught on tape. The cousin of this trend is “they didn’t say that,” which I’ve heard even from the few Trump-supporting friends that I have left.
These issues are personally troubling to me, not just because I’m Jewish. When I was 13, neo-Nazis threatened to march in my hometown of Skokie, Illinois, before canceling just a few days before. (In my mind they chickened out because communities across the Chicago area came together to join the fight. I wonder if the same would happen today.) I also went to graduate school in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I never experienced an anti-Semitic word my whole time there. Are these Nazis following me around?
I should also say that I will never understand the Jewish replacement theory, voiced by the marchers in Charlottesville when they shouted, “Jews will not replace us.” (Tucker Carlson has pushed this theory too.) Jews make up only 16 million of the world’s population. (We’re still catching up to our pre-Holocaust numbers.) So replacing the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville and others like them would be way too much work for us. If I wanted a burger, I’d have to drive up to the drive-thru, go inside, take my own order, grill the burgers, fry the fries, package it up, toss it into an empty car, and then go out to my car and drive away. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
Seriously, this type of hate needs to be condemned by ALL good Americans, and when it’s not universally condemned by both sides, it becomes normalized. Both sides have to reign in their haters, but let’s be clear: if you’re a white supremacist or a neo-Nazi, you’re not voting for the Democrats. You have a safe space in today’s Republican Party. That’s not at all saying that all Republican voters fit these descriptions, but many seem to be looking the other way when their leaders spew hate. The rise of anti-Semitic acts can be traced directly to the increase of anti-Semitic comments by prominent political leaders, Fox talking heads, and celebrities with mental health issues. All people, not just Jews, need to call out this hate as loudly as possible, particularly from leaders and celebrities with massive platforms and followings. If not, hatred of Jews will continue to rise, and Jews are typically a bellwether of all types of hate that just keep on coming.
