Both left and right to blame
Democrats, Trump both feeding fire
Yesterday’s killing spree ... is part of a metastasizing anti-Semitism problem for which those on the far left, and those who indulge them, bear their own share of responsibility.
The week that began with pipe bombs mailed to President Trump’s political adversaries by a Trump acolyte who had over-consumed the hate-filled Kool-Aid distributed by the president on a daily basis ended with the murder of at least 11 people by a gun-toting anti-Semite during Sabbath services at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The president’s most ardent supporters twisted this way and that, attempting to deny that the Trump rallies at which he exhorts supporters to take aim at his opponents and which so painfully evoke the tone and tenor of pro-fascist rallies in pre-war Europe had nothing to do with the pipe bombs. Many were not buying it, and the disclosure that the Pittsburgh gunman, who shouted, “All Jews must die,” as he entered the synagogue, actively posted on a website of the kind utilized by the president’s most fervent backers deserved to be noted, and was. But the truth is that yesterday’s killing spree visited upon those gathered for a Jewish baby-naming ceremony is just part of a metastasizing anti-Semitism problem for which those on the far left, and those who indulge them, bear their own share of responsibility. On campuses all across America, chapters of the cleverly named Students for Justice in Palestine routinely step well over the line, intimidating and bullying Jewish students and faculty, urged on and defended by a friendly professoriat that for all intents and purposes does not regard the vilification of Jews as problematic. At George Washington University Law School last week, the president of a major student organization reportedly declined to apologize for referring to Jewish law students with a derogatory, hurtful term. The Black Lives Matter and Women’s March movements are riddled with anti-Semitic leaders and spew anti-Semitic garbage, and Democratic leaders have not only shied away from calling them out, but have run away from doing so. Women’s March co-organizer Linda Sarsour, the darling of some on the left, has been described by Anti-Defamation League head Jonathan Greenblatt as “encourag(ing) and spread(ing) anti-Semitism,” but Democrats have stayed silent about her, afraid to antagonize her supporters, who are part of their base. Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison, who once defended notorious and lifelong anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, came within a whisker of being elected chairman of the national Democratic Party two years ago. The hard fact is that the vicious anti-Semitism that took its most recent form in yesterday’s killings is part of a social disease for which the far left, no less than the hard right, should be held accountable. Some of those who properly blame Trumpism for spreading hate of a different kind ought to reflect on their role in this one. It is hubris to assume that the downward spiral we appear to be in will magically right itself, that the country we love is somehow assured of greatness rather than decline. And it is senseless to believe that there is anyone or any thing capable of curing the sickness that has taken hold here.
It is Americans who are responsible for our national illness, and if there is to be a rebound it will have to be Americans, individual by individual, community by community, who bring it about.