With Friends Like These ... (MAGA bludgeons the libs with antisemitism)

Think one of these will save you from the neo-Nazis?

In August of 2017, during the first year of The Pestilence when we all thought his election was a horrible fluke brought about by the electoral college, Charlottesville, Virginia hosted the coming out cotillion of newly emboldened alt-right fringe groups which had formerly lurked in the shadows: neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and far-right militias.

Watching the news coverage, I was shocked and confused by the nighttime rally of fascist-leaning young men bearing tiki torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us!” With a population of 2.4%, American Jews might be able to replace the 7.5 million inhabitants of Washington State, but then our numbers are depleted. Even though I knew this was all right-wing lunacy, the math didn’t add up on any level.

Finally, a MAGA-head explained it to me. It was a protest against the evil cabal of Jews masterminding the massive influx of Black and Brown people to dilute and displace white Americans, the precious core of our country’s greatness. It’s a canard known as the Great Replacement, first argued delusionally but somewhat coherently by the French writer Renaud Camus (no relation but, alas, gay) in his 2011 book of the same name. The gist is that with the complicity or cooperation of "replacist" elites, the ethnic French and white European populations are being demographically and culturally supplanted by catastrophically fertile people of color through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the white birth rate.

This conspiracy theory transfers easily to American soil, and when you’re looking for evil perpetrators of tectonic population shifts requiring vast resources and coordination, who ya gonna call? The Jews, of course! The obvious masterminds!

This kind of conspiratorial thinking is endemic to right-wing and nativist movements the world over and down through the ages. It’s antisemitism, pure and simple (well, pure … not so simple). There’s a wealthy, genteel antisemitism in America as well – the discreet scorn and exclusionary practices of the WASP upper crust: elite country clubs, real estate covenants, unspoken quotas on how many Jews should be admitted to universities and white shoe law firms. And you certainly don’t want your children bringing them into the family!

Trump actually isn't an antisemite as his use of his Modern Orthodox son-in-law illustrates. True to his transactional modus vivendi of “is it good for me?”, Trump doesn’t stand on antisemitic principle (like Richard Nixon, for example), but he will use antisemitic dog whistles to rally his base.

However, Trump and the Republicans have discovered a whole new use for the antisemitism that most of them hold in their hearts. It has become a cudgel for whipping “woke” and pro-Palestinian organizations, notably elite universities, into line. As a Jew, watching attack dog Elise Stefanik outmaneuver Ivy League university presidents with crocodile tears shed for Jewish students (and then crowing about how she’d forced two of them to lose their positions) provided a revolting display of shameless hypocrisy! Like other Trump sycophants, she has no moral center. She would definitely be following orders in Birkenau in 1944. We know this. Her "defense" of us is disgusting!

And of course, last month, the Trump administration followed suit, canceling $400 million to Columbia University, pausing $175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania, and placing more than $9 billion in contracts and grants under review at Harvard University – all egregiously antisemitic institutions, don’t you know! And the right-wing war waged against our most prestigious (but “woke”!) universities barrels onwards … in our name.

Is it good for the Jews? Hell no! As a community, we should be screaming against this political equivalent of embedding ideological weaponry in civilian populations. But … antisemitism is on the rise. Do we want to make trouble for an administration whose support of Israel in the face of worldwide condemnation is more crucial than ever? It’s a ticklish subject at a ticklish time. We do not speak with one voice (two Jews, three opinions, as the joke goes), and American Jews in general have felt that working behind the scenes and within the system brings less trouble down upon our vulnerable heads.

Will the polite behavior of 1944 prove to be any less effective in these times? Can we not trust Jared Kushner and Sheldon Adelson (lay a stone upon his grave!) to cement our solidarity with the ruling class? Surely they wouldn’t turn against us!

Yitgadal v'yitkadash sh'mei raba!

--Dr. Robert Philipson

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