Antisemitism, as a shape-shifting behavior, is finding its home also on the right.
There is no question, hands down, that the challenges that Jews are facing in the US are mostly driven by those on the Biden left. Those screaming for the destruction of Israel, and the ones threatening Jews in kosher restaurants, and the thugs who spray graffiti on Jewish institutions are leftists joined at the hip with Islamists imported into the US. The media and Department of Justice wish Americans to believe that the biggest threat to Jews comes from the right, while the reality is that blacks, Muslims and leftist students are the driving force for the antisemitism and hatred felt at such intensity for the first time in the US. So-called students have returned to Columbia and other former institutions of higher education and have taken up their keffiyeh-driven protests after a few months to tan in the Caribbean.
If a person goes to his doctor and the latter tells him that he has an aggressive cancer in his lungs, the patient would also like the doctor to inform him that there is also a small growth in the stomach. That most of the antisemitism that is threatening Jews and Jewish communities as never before comes from the left does not mean that one has to ignore an inborn antisemitic behavior that is still found on the right. William Buckley in his day fought the Birchers and did his part to drive antisemitism out of the Republican Party. The problem is that it has come back with people who have millions of followers on social media.
I was scrolling through X and I saw a discussion between twins who are well-known and respected on the right. They were sitting around and talking with a third individual. Then one of the twins casually said, “Fauci’s a Jew”. In reality, Tony Fauci is of Catholic extraction. But the idea was that someone who did enormous damage to the US during the Covid pandemic must be a Jew. They immediately said that “Walensky at CDC was a Jew.” On this one they were correct: Rochelle Walensky, who was at the CDC during a portion of the failed Covid response, is Jewish. The obvious point was to tie bad policies to her being Jewish, not to her being a left-leaning college-trained member of the permanent bureaucracy. This is in line with the Germans who blamed the loss in World War I to a Jewish stab-in-the-back. They also blamed the economic and social upheavals of Weimer on the Jews.
The twins in question are not the only ones who trade in antisemitic tropes and stereotypes. There are well-known individuals on the right with millions of followers over various social networks who routinely make anti-Jewish comments or treat Israel in a manner that gives the veneer of anti-Zionism as opposed to antisemitism. These people must be confronted. One of the major reasons why Jews have traditionally voted 70%+ for Democrats over the decades is due to a sense of Jew dislike on the right. They still recall a country club Republican Party that was not a big friend of Israel or the Jews. And while today there are Jewish office holders from the GOP and Jews—especially pro-Israel and orthodox—are staunch supporters of Donald Trump and the party, the actions and statements of certain individuals heavily associated with the right make it harder to bring skeptical Jews aboard. I am waiting for my cousins in Brooklyn to send me the video of a “historian” explaining to a quite agreeable, well-known right-leaning personality that the Germans only killed the Jews because they did not have enough food and felt it was more humane to gas them than to let them die from starvation. Has he not read the Wannsee Protocol? Or what about the transcript of Himmler’s speech to his SS henchman of the glorious work they were doing in getting rid of the Jews of Europe?
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I doubt that there is anyone of significant stature who could call out the antisemites on the right. It would take someone who is respected by all and whose word is law. There is no one today who fits that bill. How are Jews to feel when President Trump had a 2022 dinner with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, two people who use antisemitic tropes frequently? No one who is not a Democrat would accuse Donald Trump of being an antisemite. He has been a staunch friend of Jews and Israel, his daughter converted to Judaism, and his Jewish son-in-law was a key advisor in his first administration. But there are those around him who allow themselves to make antisemitic statements because they know that there will be no blowback. When a conservative personality twists the words of a famous rabbi and accuses him of things that he never said, where are the Jews going to go? Vote for Kamala and her jihadi friends? They know that right-leaning Jews are in the bag, so they allow themselves to make Jew-hating and Jew-baiting statements because right-leaning Jews have nowhere else to go than to remain in the Republican Party.
When we were growing up, we did not have enough money to fly for summer vacations. Instead, wherever my father had a chemistry meeting, we would drive there and make our vacation around the venue site. We drove everywhere, from Utah to Florida and up to Ontario. One vacation had us in Philadelphia. When we came to our hotel room, the cleaning woman was just finishing up her work. She asked us where was home. “Chicago.” “Oh, that’s where they have all of those gangsters!” as she made motions with her hands as if she was firing a machine gun. This was in the early 1980s, long past the days of Al Capone and drive-by shootings of other mobsters. If Republicans want to expand their appeal—as they are doing by adding Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard—then leaders of the party must not condone antisemitism that was one of the features of the Republican Party of old. Leaders must upbraid those who do business in antisemitic or anti-Israel tropes. One should always be encouraged to speak the truth; one should never be allowed to spew antisemitic rhetoric. Being on the right should not give anyone a free pass on this subject.
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