How anti-Semitism re-entered U.S. mainstream under Trump
Anti-Semitism didn’t arrive in America with the massacre in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Jewish refugees were denied entry to America during the Holocaust, and Jews were refused entry to clubs, hotels and top universities until the 1960s.
I thought overt anti-Semitism was passe in this country.
I was wrong.
Donald Trump has made it kosher for anti-Semitism to re-enter the mainstream.
There has been a 57 percent increase in anti-Semitic acts in the United States in 2017 over 2016, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The Pittsburgh shooting was the deadliest crime against Jews in American history.
Abe Foxman, the former Anti-Defamation League chief, explains it, in an interview with the Times of Israel: Since the Holocaust, America gradually made it unacceptable to act on such ugly prejudice. Trump’s rants against Mexicans, immigrants, Muslims, the media and liberal opponents “broke down all the taboos” against attacking ethnicity, race or religion.
Trump’s encouragement of mayhem at his rallies, his attacks on media are an incitement to violence. Alleged pipe bomber and Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc chose targets that were all denounced by Trump. Repeatedly.
Trump has helped anti-Semitic tropes re-enter the national conversation, magnified by Fox commentators and alt-right websites. The mainstream media feeds the process when we report on his inflammatory tweets.
Trump embraces dog whistles — buzzwords that make anti-Semites happy. He slams “globalists” and “the eastern elite” and Jewish financial leaders he dislikes, such as George Soros, and former Fed head Janet Yellen, while extolling “nationalists.” To bigots, nationalist means white, and globalist means nefarious Jewish plotters.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump refused to criticize David Duke, the infamous Ku Klux Klan leader.
After Charlottesville, Trump claimed there were “good people on both sides.” Among them were neoNazis who marched with torches and chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”
“He didn’t give them the brownshirts,” says Foxman. “But he emboldened them. … I consider that a greater sin.”
The online postings of Robert Bowers, the man charged in the Pittsburgh killings, show a hatred of Jews. He wasn’t pro-Trump, but he glommed on to Trump’s false claims that a “caravan” of Central Americans was “invading” our country aided by Soros’ funding. Somehow Bowers linked all this to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Service (HIAS), which does noble work helping refugees but has nothing to do with the so-called caravan.
Of course, Trump insists he can’t be an anti-Semite since his daughter and son-in-law are Jewish. That only makes what he is doing even more disgusting — fueling anti-Semitism just for votes.
Trump made that clear after the massacre. After first blaming the Jews (they should have had armed guards at the synagogue, he said), he briefly denounced the “anti-Semitic” murders and visited Pittsburgh. But he quickly reverted to campaign mode, lamenting that news coverage of the pipe bombs and massacre had slowed the GOP’s campaign momentum.
Trump blew the chance to halt the rise of the new anti-Semitism. Ronald Reagan showed zero tolerance when anti-Semitism began to infect the GOP in the mid-1980s. He pushed through a GOP platform resolution that disassociated the Republican Party “from all people and groups who practice bigotry in any form.”
But this president shows no interest in denouncing the white supremacist groups. That might hinder his vote tallies.
With Trump’s help (and the enabling of Jared, Ivanka and GOP leaders) the anti-Semitism of my parents’ era is clawing its way back. We will have to fight hard to stop it.