Trump's tweets about 'disloyal' Jews are laced with centuries of antisemitism
It was January in Paris – cold, gray – when a ceremony held on the Champ-de-Mars roiled the city’s elite. Military officials and civilians gathered to watch as a young Jewish artillery officer was punished for his alleged treason. Days earlier Alfred Dreyfus had been convicted of passing secrets to the Germans in a rushed court-martial. A French army officer stripped his insignia medals, took his sword and broke it over his knee. Dreyfus was marched around the courtyard of the École Militaire as crowds jeered and spat. Cries of “Jew!” and “Judas!” drowned out his muffled professions of loyalty to the French state.
The scene was striking – in the shadow of the newly built Eiffel Tower, a symbol of modernity, an almost primal witch-hunt unfolded. A once decorated army servant pleaded for pity as his neighbors called out “death to the Jew”. Dreyfus was exonerated two years later. The message of his trial was clear: even in a cosmopolitan city, in a country whose revolutionary myth called for liberty and equality, leaders could baselessly point their people’s animus toward the other in their midst.
There’s a sordid history to charges of Jewish dual loyalty in the US In the early years of the second world war, isolationists opposed to American involvement dismissed the war as little more than a “Jewish cause”. Charles Lindbergh berated Jewish leaders for “agitating for war”. Decades later, when the US senator Joe Lieberman ran on the Democratic ticket for vice-president, pundits questioned whether he was more loyal to Israel than to the
US. During the democratic primaries in 2015, the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders was challenged on his “dual citizenship” with Israel.
The larger question animating these statements is clear: when push comes to shove, will you disavow your differences? As many writers and thinkers have shown, white American political leaders have spent much of the country’s history – from slavery, to Jim Crow, to the disenfranchised carceral state – attempting to construct an American patriotism whose core tenet is whiteness. That is a project white Jews can fit into, so long as they show their ethnic roots don’t run too deep.
Which is all to say that this week Donald Trump finds himself in broad, though unfortunate, company. On Tuesday, the president said that any Jewish person who votes for a Democrat is guilty of “great disloyalty”. Then Trump repeated his smears against the congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, following his impassioned demand last week that the Israeli government block their entry to the country due to their support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
“Where has the Democratic Party gone?” Trump said. “Where have they gone where they are defending these two people over the state of Israel? And I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”
Trump’s latest statement, laced with centuries of antisemitic tropes, is no surprise for a president who has fraternized with avowed white nationalists and blamed white supremacist violence on “mental health”. Still, Trump’s rhetorical gymnastics would be impressive if it weren’t so threatening – he manages to weaponize Zionism, dogwhistle antisemitism and land on his feet, calling himself “the king of Israel”. He’d haul home all the medals if bigotry were an Olympic sport.
American Jewish communal leaders should condemn the president’s “disloyalty” charges in no uncertain terms, regardless of their partisan leanings. Already Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, tweeted his reproach and Logan Bayroff, communications director for J Street, called Trump’s statement “dangerous and shameful”. “It is no surprise that the president’s racist, disingenuous attacks on progressive women of color in Congress have now transitioned into smears against Jews,” Bayroff said.
In condemning the president’s most recent remarks, Jewish leaders need to recognize how this moment fits into the president’s larger prejudiced agenda. Combatting antisemitism when it appears isn’t just an act of defense for the Jews; it is an essential part of the larger struggle to end white nationalism in all its forms. This is the argument that Eric K Ward, director of the Western States Center, makes skillfully in his essaySkin in the Game. Ward writes that his personal commitment to fighting antisemitism stems less from a particular tie to the Jews and more from the understanding that tolerating any form of bigotry is a boon for all white nationalists.
“To refuse to deal with any ideology of domination, moreover, is to abet it,” Ward writes. “Contemporary social justice movements are quite clear that to refuse antiracism is an act of racism; to refuse feminism is an act of sexism. To refuse opposition to antisemitism, likewise, is an act of antisemitism.”
Antisemitism, on it’s own, is an ugly force – but it is most potent when used to grease the engines of white supremacy writ large. Jewish leaders of all ideological backgrounds should spare no words in rebuking it, particularly when it comes to the Oval Office. If there’s any loyalty to be pledged, it’s to the work of collective liberation.