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American Anti-Semitism Breaks My Heart
I was born in California, and I grew up in Manhattan and Seattle. In Manhattan, I was surrounded by other Jewish kids. I went to a Jewish preschool and kindergarten, and to Jewish summer camps. In Seattle, I was the only Jewish kid in our neighborhood. There were maybe two or three other Jews in my elementary school. My family was a member of the Jewish Community Club, where I learned to swim. I never heard an anti-Semitic comment as a child or a teenager. Not one.
When my grandparents described growing up in Weimar and Nazi Germany, they were describing another universe. America had defeated the Nazis and had everything the Third Reich stood for.
The first time I heard an American express a hostile attitude toward Jews, I was in my late twenties. I don’t believe I experienced such a charmed childhood because people were afraid of expressing their real feelings about Jews. I believe it was because America was not an anti-Semitic country.
Even recently, I thought American anti-Semitism was a phenomenon confined to the far-left. But there’s been an eruption of anti-Semitism in America lately, and it isn’t coming from the left at all.
James Kirchick has written about it at Commentary:
When the journalist Julia Ioffe published a profile of Melania Trump for GQ, she had reason to expect that supporters of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee would be disappointed by its portrayal of Donald Trump’s third wife. “Her journey to marrying The Donald is like a fairy tale, or a too-crazy-to-believe rom-com,” Ioffe revealed. “It’s a story full of naked ambition, stunning beauty, a shockingly Trump-like dad, and even some family secrets.” What Ioffe, who is Jewish, did not expect was a torrent of anti-Semitic abuse and death threats.
On Twitter, the candidate’s anonymous backers superimposed images of Ioffe’s face over those of concentration camp inmates. On her voicemail, they left recordings of Hitler speeches. “This is not a heavily critical article. There is nothing in it that is untrue,” Ioffe told the Guardian. “If this is how Trump supporters swing into action, what happens when the press looks into corrupt dealings, for example, or is critical of his policies?”
Ioffe received calls from people telling her she “should be burned in an oven,” and “be shot in the head.”
“The irony of this,” wrote Ioffe,
“is that today, when I was getting all of this horrible antisemitic [redacted] that I’ve only ever seen in Russia, I was reminded that 26 years ago today my family came to the US from Russia. We left Russia because we were fleeing antisemitism. It’s been a rude shock for everyone.”
Melania Trump, when asked about this, said Ioffe had “provoked” her fans.
But this is the sort of thing everyone on the Internet with a “Jewish name” now sees regularly:
It “has been clear for some time,”wrote Eric Wemple at The Washington Post, “that criticizing Trump while being Jewish is a hazardous online activity.”
As Shapiro wrote in The Daily Wire,
It’s not just me, of course. Jake Tapper of CNN now says he’s received anti-Semitic tweets “all day.” My friend Bethany Mandel, another orthodox Jew who opposes Trump, just bought herself a gun out of fear of unhinged Trump supporters. John Podhoretz of Commentary says he receives tweets consistently from “literally neo-Nazi White supremacists, all anonymous … I don’t think I can attribute being a supporter of Trump to being a validator or an expresser of these opinions, but something was let loose by him.” Noah Rothman of Commentary tweets, “It never ends. Blocking doesn’t help either. They have lists, on which I seem to find myself.”
He described it this way in National Review:
I was wrong.
I’ve spent most of my career arguing that anti-Semitism in the United States is almost entirely a product of the political Left. I’ve traveled across the country from Iowa to Texas; I’ve rarely seen an iota of true anti-Semitism. I’ve sensed far more anti-Jewish animus from leftist college students at the University of California, Los Angeles, than from churches in Valencia. As an observer of President Obama’s thoroughgoing anti-Israel administration, I could easily link the anti-Semitism of the Left to its disdain for both Biblical morality and Israeli success over its primary Islamist adversaries. The anti-Semitism I’d heard about from my grandparents — the country-club anti-Semitism, the alleged white-supremacist leanings of rednecks from the backwoods — was a figment of the imagination, I figured.
I figured wrong. Donald Trump’s nomination has drawn anti-Semites from the woodwork. I’ve experienced more pure, unadulterated anti-Semitism since coming out against Trump’s candidacy than at any other time in my political career. Trump supporters have threatened me and other Jews who hold my viewpoint. They’ve blown up my e-mail inbox with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. They greeted the birth of my second child by calling for me, my wife, and two children to be thrown into a gas chamber. Yes, seriously. This isn’t a majority of Trump supporters, obviously. It’s not even a large minority. But there is a significant core of Trump support that not only traffics in anti-Semitism but celebrates it — and god-worships Trump as the leader of an anti-Jewish movement.
Yesterday, Jonathan Weisman, The New York Times’ deputy editor, spent eight hours re-tweeting the anti-Semitic abuse he’s been receiving:
I know Seth Mandel, who writes for Commentary. His wife, Bethany, writes for the Federalist. She and I are longtime Facebook friends. Her response:
Bethany has filed police reports in response to the death threats. So has Julia Ioffe. Last October, Bethany asked in The Forward why Trump wouldn’t stand up to his anti-Semitic fans. She thereafter received so many threats that she purchased a firearm.
As my friend Jason said a few hours ago,
So am I, boychick. In fact, I’m old enough to remember when neither side was.
Bethany’s column for Ha’aretz yesterday carried a headline I never in my life imagined I’d see: Jews Face a Precarious Future in a Trump America:
[William] Kristol was deemed by Breitbart as a “renegade Jew” for opposing Trump. What Kristol and other Jewish conservatives (myself included) are doing by taking on Trump, even if it means a GOP loss in November, is to try to protect the very fabric of the American experiment. And as is increasingly clear, our loss would mean the ascendency of hate, and an America as unpalatable for Jews as much of Europe already is.
To judge from what I’m seeing, America is already there. And it didn’t take much, either, which really breaks my heart.
Published in General
Anti-semitism has historically been strongly associated with fear of the Financial industry…in the popular archetype, the Banker seems to be a Jew. (I am sure that many people think Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan is Jewish) To a lot of people, the whole world of finance is black magic.
There is plenty to criticize in the American finance industry today…its excessive size, for one thing…but the unhinged attacks on ‘Banksters’ are probably also encouraging anti-Semitism.
Well we do love our buzzwords.
Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go consult my Comprehensive Fiduciary Prospectus for After-Earning Markers to project future earnings on the life of the project space.
Which is totally different from creating a horoscope as it involves the relative positions of numbers and not stars.
The stuff being put out there on social media is vile and racist. I’m not implying this anti-Semite stuff isn’t genuine or dangerous. A cursory look at almost any topic though will net some disgusting comments.
Anonymous online kooks have been around for quite some time now, only one candidate seems to attract this particular type of kook. It is no coincidence. Trump and his surrogates wink and nod to the alt-right and send mixed signals in the half-hearted “disavowals” that occasionally come. Trump has deliberately courted this crowd and has done really nothing to distance himself from them. They are an untapped pool of voters as far as he’s concerned.
Garbage. You think the DNC was trying to make Trump look bad during the whole primary campaign? This crap has been going on for months and months. What’s more it surrounds one candidate and one candidate only. Lastly, Trump could put an end to all of this if he wanted. He could loudly, clearly, and persistently denounce this activity and make gestures to show his bona fides. Instead he nods at winks at these people, sends dog whistles like naming his policy positions “America First” and acts coy and hedges when called to disavow this bilious nastiness.
Don’t make excuses for this crap.
Three thoughts.
First, it’s not clear how much of this activity on Twitter and Facebook is the work of actual Americans and how much is done my spotty Russian accounts.
Second, that said –
I see Trump as a candidate of simplistic shortcuts, so it doesn’t surprise me that among his supporters he would attract many people who believe in the most simplistic shortcut of all — anti-Semitism.
Finally, the more disturbing phenomenon to me is the apologia and excuses offered by those on the right. Milo Yiannopoulos says these are just stupid teens and on balance it’s good because they challenge the left’s idea of what can’t be said in polite company. People here on Ricochet have dismissed them as anti-PC trolls that you just have to expect on the Internet. Not only Melania but Donald himself dismissed the death threats against Ioffe by saying she wrote terrible things.
These people aren’t part of Putin’s information warfare. They are ostensible friends and allies. Intentionally or not, they are helping to mainstream anti-Semitic expression.
Remember that “300” parody video? It was produced by an Aryan group. It deliberately placed conservative Jews Bill Kristol and Ben Shapiro on the “un-American” side with Obama and Soros (complete with pile of gold). I’m guessing that the video was posted multiple times here on Ricochet because anti-Semitism was so far from the posters’ thoughts that those facts didn’t register. Still, after I pointed them out, I still saw positive comments about the vids. Know what you are contributing to when you share these things. They become acceptable when good people acquiesce.
Trump trades in scapegoating to explain failure or lack of success.” The Chinese are stealing our jobs, the Mexican government is sending their criminals to the US” . This blame shifting seems to be at the heart of the anti Semite appeal. It’s dam ugly. It leads to greater failures.
Liberal elites in academia (e.g. Samantha Powers at the UN (ever read her thesis equating Israel’s self preservation with murderous thugs ?) have been overtly anti Semitic for , um, well, since the Jewish State was created at the end of WWII. I’m not shocked that it exists, but neither do I believe it’s as pervasive as social media can sometimes make it appear.
It’s quintessentially un-American to harbor such bigotries. We are not Europe. We do not behave as these old world orders have behaved. So it’s hard to fathom how some people deign to use those tactics to intimidate opposition views. Again, dissenting opinion is becoming a precious commodity and wholly unprotected by elites in our new millennial America, but it is as result of pervasive liberalism, not conservatism.
To deconstruct how this can happen we may have to acknowledge it as result of intellectual elites systematically eroding and condemning American cultural values for decades. We make ourselves susceptible to old world plagues by decrying American exceptional-ism. To continually portray America as somehow predatory on the world stage has devastating national effect on the body politic. It is terrifying to see such grotesque old world vestiges of pagan cultists used as effective weapons, albeit in cartoon form, or as a bludgeon against dissenting opinions. But it is not new, or surprising. Our barbarous world requires realpolitik in clear eyed diplomats rather than the fantasy diplomacy Obama’s Democrat WH has promoted.
I’m sorry, but when I contemplate the “face” of American Anti-Semitism, this is what comes to my mind ……
Dershowitz: Hamas ‘Cheerleader’ Jimmy Carter Has ‘Blood on Hands’ For Mideast Meddling
I’ve wondered this as well, especially after reading this NYT article.
I wouldn’t call it “deliberately courted.” This campaign has been waged differently than any other in our history.
Consider how the Trump people got flatfooted with the Cruz ground game. Often they wouldn’t even enter a state with paid campaign people until one week before the primary or caucus voting. That’s how they ended up with an avowed racist as a delegate in California. (And the state Dems were happy to do what they could to keep him there.) This is the where the political naïveté comes back to haunt you.
The left is eager to paint every blunder like that as deliberate bigotry instead of bumbling amateurism. And because there’s such a rush to define oneself in the purity of #NeverTrump we don’t realize that we’re getting a lot of that paint on us, too. Hell, we’re walking through a car wash of the stuff.
Don’t just sit there and play the game the left wants you play.
I hadn’t seen that post, at least that I can recall, but I mostly roll my eyes at internet memes anyway. They’re annoying even when I create them for posts here on Ricochet.
I like Milo a lot but I think he sees too much mischievously deviant humor (a reflection of his outward persona) and not enough of the ugliness of spirit I see in online behavior. Decorum matters.
You may be right. When you have a rather jaundiced view of humanity, and I do, it’s hard to be surprised when people get ugly and I might be taking it too lightly.
To what extent should we assume this is trolling? Racially/ethnically loaded language is the most provocative and disturbing thing these days, so people whose purpose is to be as provocative and disturbing as possible will go there, particularly if it’s anonymous.
So, if someone is trying to say the most hateful thing they can to you, and you’re Jewish, they go for the Holocaust. If you’re black, they use the n-word. If they can’t come up with something racial/ethnic, they threaten to kill your kids or do something similarly horrifying.
I don’t want to minimize how horrible it is, it just occurs to me that being as disturbing as possible may be the primary driver for a lot of this, rather than actual anti-Semitism.
I have no idea what proportion that is. But it wouldn’t surprise me if it were quite a lot of it.
Second question for which I have no good answer: How much better should it make us feel if it is trolling rather than a real increase in anti-Semitism? Hooray, the country’s not full of anti-Semites, just people who are as horrible as they can be to people they disagree with.
Oh Claire, I’m so sorry this is happening. This kind of thing makes home feel unsafe, and even makes one question childhood memories of safety and belonging – it robs one of memory. It’s just awful.
Antisemitism on the Left lurks within the criticism of Israal – what, on the Right, do you think maintains a space for it?
Not in America, I always thought. But everything I always thought is being upturned by this election cycle.
I just finished two books: Wealth, Poverty and Politics by our beloved Sowell. World on Fire by Amy Chua. Sowell talks of “middleman minorities,” Chua of “market-dominant minorities.” These groups have a remarkably similar array of cultural attributes that leads them to remarkable success, and depressingly often leads them to be hated and then into unspeakable tragedy. We all know the story of Jews in Europe and elsewhere. It might be helpful to know it’s not a unique thing. It’s a worldwide pattern born, apparantly, of human nature. Here’s a small sampling of market-dominant minorities, whose stories can be added to that of the Jews, and who have likewise been made to pay horribly for their “sins,” even while they have been essential in improving their societies.
Chinese in SE Asia
Indians in E Africa
Lebanese in W Africa
Tutsis in Rwanda
Ibos in Nigeria
Armenians in Turkey
Tamils in Sri Lanka
Croats in Serbia
Yes — it’s not a feel-good story either way, is it. And it’s not a feel-good story if these are Putin’s trolls, either.
Some numbers: 20% of Democrats and Independents viewed Jews as ‘caring only about themselves’, whereas 12% of Republicans gave this answer. (2012 survey) 32% of Democrats blames ‘the Jews’ for the financial crisis, whereas only 18% of Republicans did so. 37% of Democrats believe ‘pro-Israel lobby groups have too much influence,’ about 2X the Republican percentage giving this answer. Obama, Israel, Democrats, and Jews
See also my post Mainstreaming anti-Israel Prejudice and Anti-Semitic Stereotypes
Aaron, I think that a lot of anti-Israel sentiment is simply a way of justifying the unjustifiable. At bottom it is anti-semitism. I had a friend who used to go into paroxysms against Israel for attacking an American ship during the 6 Day War. I knew him well enough to know where that anger originated, his background, and the hereditary feelings that made it easy to blame Israel for the event. It is a pretty simply equation to prove that those who hate Israel hated Jews first.
Oh, nonsense. This isn’t some bit of spin drummed up by the “left”. Trump has been sending dog whistles and overt messages from the beginning to this crowd. And when he is called on it, he hedges and makes coy remarks. He didn’t know who David Duke was?? That’s not naivete, that’s signaling. His lame and insincere, “I disavow.” was an effort to tell people that him lying about David Duke’s support was no big deal and to poo-poo and discredit any concern about this crap.
And as far as these white supremacist eruptions that keep happening simply being the result of bad organization, spare us. This crap keeps happening. Robo calls from white supremacists, retweeting obvious white supremacists, having white supremacist delegates, naming his policy platform after the philosophy of famed nazi-sympathizer Charles Lindbergh’s “America First” movement, the list goes on and on. One or two slips one could forgive. Repeated brushes with this ugliness is inexcusable. After the first such incident any decent campaign would have made sure the campaign was Caesar’s wife with regard to white supremacist connections. A decent campaign would also have loudly and persistently distanced itself from such connections. Trump just lets it all slide.
Stop making excuses for this crap.
Some data on anti-Semitism levels for different ethnicities
It grieves me, too – cause and impetus are immaterial. Arm yourself sure: but also know there are many, many, many of us to build a hedge of thorns, to stand in the gap and say to the monster, “You shall not pass!”
Some of this stuff has been so over the top that I’ve thought as EJHill did that it smacks of a plant from the DNC or even from some extreme clandestine group of #NeverTrumpers. Nothing else makes sense to me. I just don’t think this degree of anti-Semitism seems real. Even if some of it is from actual hate groups, which I acknowledge it is, the internet has a way of making tiny pockets of evil seem bigger than they actually are.
Great post!!
BTW, if Trump wanted to pander to anti-Semitism, why wouldn’t he just do it the way Prez Omega does–making his contempt for Netanyahu and Israel abundantly clear, while unequivocally expressing his uncritical preference for the parvenu of the 3 Abrahamic faiths?
Now, that might gain him some crossover Dem votes! Especially black votes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/03/curt-schilling-twitter-yankees_n_6792860.html
Everyone leaves breadcrumbs. Everyone. The journalists mentioned above who were targeted in this vile manner would be very wise to do what Trump supporter Curt Schilling has done when the Twitter thugs went for his daughter.
I don’t belive that Trump is an anti-semite at any level. When I knew him as a kid, I never heard him ever utter anything in that direction at all. It has been my experience in life that those kind of sentiments start very early. They hear them at home and speak them in public before they learn to keep their mouths shut.
On the other hand, Trump is a salesman. Like all salesmen his goal is to sell his wares. To do that, he doesn’t want to turn away anyone. His rhetoric against Muslims and illegals entering from south of the border appeals to a certain type of individual. That person is more likely to be a “general” hater who includes Jews and other minorities in his enemies list. The more subtle anti-semite likely doesn’t mind keeping company with this group so long as he isn’t seen as associating with them. Trump becomes the medium in which they mix.
For me, the one thing that will keep me from ever casting a vote for Trump is the association of these two groups with him, and his unwillingness to disavow them plainly and openly.
I have encountered a few conservative bloggers with anti-Semitic views: disturbingly, some of these people appear to be quite intelligent in general. Some common threads:
There is also often a puzzled sort of disappointment expressed by some bloggers who do *not* appear to be anti-Semitic: ‘why do so many Jews continue to support Leftists who obviously are not their friends, and make excuses for race-baiters like Sharpton, while being quick to denounce Christians, Southerners, etc’
It is naive to believe that anti-semitism had been eradicated in the U.S. until Trump became a candidate. Anti-semitism has been part of American life forever. Growing up in Brooklyn, we received anti-semitic rants from Black neighbors as we went to synagogue in Bedford-Stuyvesant. We also were on the receiving end of anti-semitic attacks on the public basketball courts. Gregory Peck’s, Gentleman’s Agreement exposed a white middle class anti-semitism in 1950s America. Jews were excluded from private clubs, jobs, and universities. Father Coughlin’s radio broadcasts included plenty of anti-semitic rants. etc. I think the internet makes it seem that anti-semitism has emerged from the primeval slime. It hasn’t. Its always been with us.
No, I acknowledge that there is anti-Semitism on the left, but these anti-Semites hold no power. They do not hold much power on the right either, with the possible exception of Pat Buchanan.
Kilov’s post in the Member Feed is related to this.
Good question. Not sure it makes much difference. I suspect it all leads to the same dark place.