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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
4chan-types is definitely a larger cohort: there’s more of them, and they come from every country (the only requirement is to write passable English, which is a rather low bar on twitter). However, the paid Putin shills definitely fire them up, and they have a definite influence on /pol/. I’ve personally seen obvious propaganda trolls there, and they’ve just been getting more subtle with experience. They also tend to hide behind foreign proxies to be a bit less overt (Germany is rather popular).
Jewish woman forced to hide from mob at UC-Irvine
I have been following and posting about anti-Israel and anti-Semitic thuggery, along with other forms of Leftist attacks on free expression–especially on university campuses–for years now. I see people on my FB page who are now very upset about the danger of ‘Fascism’ from Trump who never typed a character or spoke a word about this totalitarian behavior from the Left.
Based on that article from Ms. Orlova (thank you for that), there’s a good chance Vladimir doesn’t know his paid Alt-Right minions (if any) come off as demented kooks.
I don’t know – how long would it take if someone trolled under their own name?
What is /pol/? Is that reddit?
EDIT: Ah – it’s a 4chan channel. Emily Litella told me to tell you … Nevermind.
I have been reading and following stories of both antisemitism and attacks on Christians and it has been going on for some time, conditions that the false concept of political correctness have fueled. It was more prevalent n Europe, but has become an issue in the states. The rise of Islamic extremism as well as old forms of hatred have risen – these were way before Trump, but these extreme views have been fed over the last 8 years. The conditions are disturbing that they parallel the thinking of pre-WWII. where people’s ears are tickled by certain kinds of speech.
The decency that George W. Bush portrayed, including strong support of Israel, refusing to do business with the axis of evil, or Arafat – kept Putin’s pushing into Eastern Europe at bay, these policies held back evil for a time. Europe has been in a downward socialistic slope for awhile and it is not surprising when the traditional Judaeo-Christian values have been replaced with so much secularism, that this would happen. There is something larger in the Judaeo-Christian model for life that creates a decent society for all, including other faiths and beliefs, and those of no faith, that is removed when we silence it. We see what is replacing it.
I still smell troll.
Surely everyone on this site is aware of the false flag operations directed at the tea party. Why wouldn’t you expect the same to be directed at a big, juicy target like Trump? Does anyone doubt that this aligns with the Clinton M.O.?
Claire, can you point to any evidence that these are real people, let alone representative of of a movement?
David Foster (p.3) has already posted evidence that Republicans are a poor place to look for such anti-jewish sentiment. Claire, herself, can point to an intellectual milieu on the left that would nurture anti-semitism: What is there on the right?
I am supposed to believe that Republicans, with so many other things to be angry about, no (significant) history of anti-semitism, many prominent and accepted Jews, no intellectual basis for anti-semitism and no evidence of accepted moderate anti-semitism suddenly sprouts the most outrageous form?
This is how I see it too, and there are plenty of ways to object to Trump without dredging up so much pain.
Why don’t you check my Twitter feed after I put up a link to this post? You can ask the people who responded for yourself who they are, and come to your own conclusions. I mean that seriously: I don’t feel like engaging with them, whoever they really are, but maybe you have the stomach for it.
The only two threads I am following right now is this one and Rachel Lu’s: it’s one thing if you vote for Trump but for God’s sake hold your nose while you do it. (paraphrase)
And it dawns on me that there’s similarities between the two posts. Apparently anti-semites go ballistic when a Jew criticizes Trump and tweet horrible anti-semitic threats and vitriol and cartoons. (making Trump supporters/voters look like anti-semites). I showed the post and cartoons to everyone in my house today (17 people, aged 57 years to 9 months) and no one has ever seen such vitriol and wouldn’t even know where to look for it.
While over on Rachel’s post apparently Trump is going to destroy the conservative brand and no decent human being in their right mind could ever vote for him. He’ll be the face of the Republican party, etc etc. Despite Trump having a lot of support and votes from the left side of the aisle (that would be Democrats), he’s ours to own.
We’re getting played, people.
Back before Ricochet, in places such as the WSJ and NR comment sections, and less savory places, I thought I was pretty good at ferreting out false flag racists. I had enough familiarity with real right-wing bigots, as well as with leftwingers who had stereotypical views of the right, that I could usually tell when people were pretending to be racist bigots in order to draw others in. Then I’d call them on it and usually that was the end. I made some mistakes — some of those I thought were fake were real rw-bigots, but my suspicions were usually confirmed.
I must admit that I have no such skills for this new phenomenon. It’s not that I never encountered anti-Semites as a little tyke. But I never could understand why they were that way, and I still can’t, even though many explanations have been offered. I was surprised when anti-Semitism started to appear among the university left, and now that it’s coming out from some of the darker corners of the right, I feel somewhat lacking. I’m not equipped to deal with it and am not even sure why. I’m trying to figure it out, though.