Virulent Anti-Semitism: Alive & Kicking Inside Conservative Movements Including The Republican Party

And It's Not Just Señor Trumpanzee

Writing for the [Jewish Daily] Forward on Monday, Eric Alterman explored how the Republican Party has fallen into anti-Semitism, asserting that’s now “pervasive” in the GOP and that Trump— as bad as he is for the Jews— isn’t the only culprit. “Truth be told,” he wrote, “Trump’s consistent embrace of antisemitic tropes is one of the least weird, and most consistent, aspects of his politics. Unlike say, cat-eating immigrants or cancer-causing windmills, the antisemitic tropes on which he tends to lean— most recently by suggesting Jews would bear serious blame if he loses the November presidential election— have long been a staple of right-wing politics in America.”

The late Rep. John Rankin, who helped to found the infamous U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities, warned the nation of the “alien-minded communistic enemies of Christianity” who were “trying to take over the motion-picture industry.” Lest anyone remain confused about who he meant, Rankin— who was a Mississippi Democrat, before the party’s embrace of the Civil Rights Movement sent his ilk into the arms of Republicans— said the threat he identified had “hounded and persecuted our Savior during his earthly ministry, inspired his crucifixion, derided him in his dying agony, and then gambled for his garments at the foot of the cross.” Now, this same group of “long-nosed reprobates” was out “to undermine and destroy America,” one movie theater at a time. 

Decades later, as Evangelical Christians grew to become the Republican party’s base, antisemitic attitudes in that party grew more and more common. Speaking to a 1979 “I love America” rally in Richmond, Virginia, Pastor Jerry Falwell, a Republican stalwart, said, “I know a few of you here today don’t like Jews, and I know why,” adding that Jews, “can make more money accidentally than you can on purpose.” In his 1991 book, The New World Order, televangelist Pat Robertson— who would address the Republican National Convention the following year— spewed conspiracy theories that read like an update of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

More recently, John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel— the world’s largest pro-Israel organization— described Hitler as a “hunter” sent by God to convince “the Jewish people… to come back to Israel.”

Such sentiments in the Republican Party have metastasized in recent decades. In the case of the Christian nationalists, an increasingly powerful bloc within the GOP, they are part and parcel of the group’s hardline support for Israel. (All, alas, in the hopes of provoking the rapture, during which all believing Jews will go to Hell.) Yet right-wing Jews have tended to look the other way when it comes to their party peers’ nasty ideas about Jews. 

Regarding Falwell and Robertson, for instance, the neoconservative “godfather” Irving Kristol put the trade-off as follows: “It is their theology, but it is our Israel.” Commentary’s long-term editor Norman Podhoretz offered a pass to Robertson’s Jewish conspiracy theories on similar grounds, saying his pro-Israel politics “trumps the antisemitic pedigree of his ideas.” 

“Israel was, after all, the most important issue of Jewish concern,” Podhoretz insisted; on that issue, he said, Robertson was “on the side of the angels.” 

All of this is to say that, when Trump says something shocking about Jews— which he inevitably does, just as he inevitably says shocking things about immigrants, women, or Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity— it’s a distraction. We become so focused on his singular bigotry that we can forget that he is not an aberration within the Republican Party, but in many ways a representation of the values it has long perpetuated.

Yet under Trump, Republicans have grown even more brazen about appealing to the antisemites in their midst. We got a hint of what was coming, when, during the final days of the 2016 campaign, Trump ran a commercial attacking George Soros, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen— all of them Jews— claiming that they were seeking to control the world. Two years later, during the 2018 midterm elections, House majority leader Kevin McCarthy warned on Twitter that Soros and his fellow Jewish billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer were trying “to BUY this election!” 

Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs invited a guest to make the ridiculous argument that the (largely imaginary) migrant caravan supposedly about to “invade” the United States at its Mexican border was part of a plan hatched by the “Soros-occupied State Department.” This notion was picked up by his Fox colleague Maria Bartiromo, who asked, “Who do you think is behind these caravans? A lot of speculation that it was George Soros.” 

It was a short distance from these claims to Marjorie Taylor-Greene and her apparently sincere concerns about the effects of “Jewish space lasers.” Different issues, sure; but a blame game stemming from the same antisemitic rot.

And yet Trump’s latest comments on Jews are different from his previous ones in one notable way— not just for him, but also for the mainstream within his party. What was new in Trump’s tirade last week was the explicit menace of his promise. 

Trump did not say anything new, for him, when, speaking on Thursday, he insisted, “I’m the one that’s protecting you.” Nor was it new when he explained that Democrats “are the people that are going to destroy you.” We have long heard him claim, “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion.” Not only that, “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.” Trump’s Rosh Hashanah greetings last year announced that liberal Jews who did not support him—  which is most of us, by the way— had “voted to destroy America & Israel.”

But by saying that “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss” if Harris wins in November, he was clearly laying the groundwork for the same sorts of accusations against Jews that were prominent in Nazi Germany in the period leading up to World War II. Given the violence we witnessed from Trump’s die-hard supporters on Jan. 6, among many other instances, it’s not hard to imagine that such rhetoric might be understood by some of his minions as an invitation to an actual American pogrom. (Remember, recent protests on elite college campuses against Israel notwithstanding, extensive academic research clearly demonstrates that “the epicenter of antisemitic attitudes is young adults on the far right.”)

The reaction of the leaders of the professional American Jewish community was naturally critical— but nowhere near critical enough. Both the ADL and AJC put out tweets strongly criticizing Trump’s remarks, although neither apparently thought it appropriate to come out and directly deem them “antisemitic”— even though the ADL now automatically codes every single pro-Palestinian protest on America’s campuses as such. A reaction more appropriate to this perilous moment appeared in a tweet from Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism.

“President Trump, your words preemptively blaming Jews for your potential election loss is of a piece with millennia of antisemitic lies about Jewish power,” Jacobs wrote. “It puts a target on American Jews. And it makes you an ally not to our vulnerable community but to those who wish us harm. Stop.”

The really scary thing about Trump’s antisemitism— and that which ferments among his supporters— is that while it is consistent with historic beliefs held by American conservatives, it is now tied to a general removal of all guardrails when it comes to the political behavior of the Republican Party. Many safe and secure American Jews grew up with grandparents who lived through the Holocaust warning us that the next pogrom might be just around the corner. We laughed at their paranoia. We’re not laughing anymore.

90 years ago, when Hitler first rose to power, many Germany Jews were uncertain about how seriously to take the threats posed by the Nazis. My grandmother was an infant but luckily, her parents knew exactly how seriously to take Hitler and they moved to America. There are several reasons why many other Jews, however, didn’t flee immediately or underestimated the danger. First of all, early on, Nazi policies targeted Jews in ways that were alarming but not immediately life-threatening. The Nazis passed anti-Semitic laws like the Nuremberg Laws (1935), which stripped Jews of their citizenship and basic rights, but for many, these laws were seen as harsh discrimination rather than a prelude to genocide. The full extent of Nazi plans for mass extermination wasn’t clear to most of the public yet, Jews included.

Meanwhile, many German Jews felt deeply integrated into German society. They had fought in the World War, contributed to German culture and saw themselves as Germans first. It was difficult for them to imagine that their own country would turn against them to such an extreme degree. Besides, some believed that Hitler’s radical rhetoric was just that— rhetoric. Many thought that he would moderate his positions once in power, as extremist political figures often do when they have to deal with the complexities of governance. They were unable to foresee how thoroughly Hitler would implement his ideas, all laid out in Mein Kampf, of racial purity.

Leaving everything behind— home, business, property— was an enormous decision. Emigration was financially difficult and emotionally painful and many Jews believed that they could ride out the storm or that the situation would improve over time or not affect them personally. European Jews had experienced waves of anti-Semitism before, yet many survived and even thrived afterward. Some viewed the rise of Hitler as another temporary wave of anti-Semitic hostility that would eventually pass, rather than as a signal of a new, unprecedented danger.

Even for those who wanted to leave, many countries, including the attractive places to settle, like the U.S. and Britain, imposed strict immigration quotas and restrictions, making it difficult for Jews to find refuge. FDR’s Évian Conference (France, 1938), for example, revealed that of the 32 nations participating, only the Dominican Republic (100,000) and Costa Rica were unwilling to take in large numbers of Jewish refugees. (The U.S. agreed to 30,000 German and Austrian Jews per year. With the exception of my grandfather and one sibling, his entire family force forced to go to Cuba and then settled in Brazil.)

And, obvious in hindsight, by the time the full scale of the threat became apparent, for many Jews, it was too late to leave. And this takes us right to JD Vance and the TheoBros who believe that “America should belong to Christians, and, more specifically, white ones. The TheoBros, who seem to have found their “Christian Prince” in Vance, are “often bearded thirty- and fortysomethings [&] have suits that actually fit. They are extremely online, constantly posting on myriad platforms, broadcasting their YouTube shows from mancaves, and convening an endless stream of conferences for likeminded followers. For all their youthful modishness, this group is actually more conservative than their older counterparts. Many TheoBros, for example, don’t think women belong in the pulpit or the voting booth— and even want to repeal the 19th Amendment. For some, prison reform would involve replacing incarceration with public flogging. Unlike more mainstream Christian nationalists, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, who are obsessed with the US Constitution, many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments. In American Reformer, their unofficial magazine, hagiographies of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco appear alongside full-throated defenses of countries that execute gay people. On podcasts, the TheoBros unpack ‘the perils of multiculturalism,’ expose ‘Burning Man’s wicked agenda,’ and peel back the nefarious feminist plot of Taylor Swift.”

About 2 weeks ago, Beth Harpaz wrote about how Jewish voters may be decisive in the swing states. “[W]hile the percentage of Jewish voters is small compared to the overall electorate, the number of Jewish voters in many of these states exceeds the number of voters who determined the winner in the 2020 presidential race. Because Jewish voters are more likely to be Democrats, Republicans are making an extra effort to chip away at their impact and maximize Jewish GOP turnout. The Republican Jewish Coalition [Kapos] is spending $10 million to corral Jewish votes in swing states; the Jewish Democratic Council of America is spending $2 million on the election.”

Her stats are fascinating. For example, Arizona has 85,000 Jewish voters, and 55% of them are Democrats, compared to 44% of voters statewide. In 2020, Biden beat Trump here by fewer than 11,000 votes. Jewish voters could be a critical factor in the 2024 outcome. 

In George, Biden won by 12,000 votes and there’s a very big Jewish presence— 125,000 (a bit over 1% of the electorate)— 75% of them Democrats. Michigan has 100,000 Jews, over 60% Democrats. Nevada has 41,000 Jews— about 3% of the voters— and Biden won by 33,000 votes. “North Carolina’s 49,000 Jews make up just 0.5% of the electorate,” she wrote, “but Jewish concerns are making news in the state this year, thanks to the gubernatorial race between a Jewish Democrat, state Attorney General Josh Stein, and his Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson,” a vile anti-semite and Holocaust denier. 

The big prize is Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes and around 300,000 Jews live there, two-thirds of them Democrats.