Anti-Semitism Remains Powerful in the Republican World of Trump
Former president Trump has surrounded himself and made alliances for years with anti-Semites and white supremacists but I don’t believe that trump is anti-Semitic or a white supremacist because he is amoral with no values beyond himself. Every comment that comes from trump is calculated for personal gain.
But even assuming that he is not an anti-Semite or white supremacist, as he claims, that does not minimize the damage he continues to wreak with his violent words and anti-Semitic tropes and his associations with the likes of rapper Kanye West, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Arizona, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La. and Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
Most recently, Trump had the audacity to warn Jewish people in America that if they didn’t support trump they were somehow lesser Jews and that they should “get their act together…before it is too late.” The meaning was typically vague for trump but rhetoric like this is so inflammatory because many Americans are willing to attack any group or individual, whether metaphorically or with real violence, that trump claims is his political enemy.
The latest comments came on Sunday as Trump exaggerated about his support for Israel on “Truth Social,” his absurdly named struggling social network site that he created last year after Twitter and other social nework sites kicked him off for lying and promoting violence.
“No President has done more for Israel than I have. Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.,” Trump wrote. “Those living in Israel, though, are a different story — Highest approval rating in the World, could easily be P.M.! U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel — Before it is too late!”
Trump was using a ploy that he has used before, as in 2019, when he suggested that Jewish people who vote for Democrats are either ignorant or disloyal. His comments came when he told Republican National Committee donors, “The Democrats hate Jewish people.”
In 2017, trump claimed that there were “very fine people on both sides” of a deadly, white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., where marchers carried Nazi banners and chanted anti-Semitic slogans.
In 2018, Jewish groups called on trump to more forcefully condemn white nationalism after a gunman killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. And during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump tweeted an image of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton with the phrase “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever” inside a Star of David on top of piles of cash. In another anti-Semitic dog whistle during the 2016 campaign, Trump falsely claimed that Clinton met “in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers.”
In 2019 trump spoke at the Israeli American Council’s national summit and suggested that he would win Jewish support for reelection because Jewish people are primarily focused on wealth.
And during an interview with an Israeli newspaper, trump took aim at the N.Y. Times when he said, “The New York Times hates Israel. Hates ’em. And they’re Jewish people that run The New York Times, I mean the Sulzberger family.” Of course trump never lets facts get in the way because Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the former publisher of the Times, is not Jewish.
Coincidentally, Kanye West, a longtime supporter and pal of trump, also was temporarily blocked from Twitter and Instagram after he made anti-Semitic comments. Rather than apologize, West, who has changed his name legally to “Ye,” announced he would buy Parlor, the far right website, so he could air his bigoted views unchallenged.
Ye drew the ire of Twitter and Instagram when he fanned the flames of bigotry and the often, strained history between African Americans and Jews and tweeted that he planned to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” Only Ye knows what he meant but whatever his intent, it certainly was meant as an assault on Jews. Since then Ye announced his plans to buy Parlor.
“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial, we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” Ye said in a statement.
The Parler app was identified as one of the platforms used by white supremacists and far-right extremists to coordinate the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection by trump supporters and spread content that glorified the violence. The Trump organization had negotiated for a stake in Parler but when the deal fell through, trump launched Truth Social.
Ye apparently learned a few things from trump, who was banned from various social network platforms for his violent, untruthful rhetoric and rather than changing his tune, he created Truth Social, so he could air his lies unchallenged.
Hateful comments like those made by trump and Ye are indicative of a rise in anti-Semitism. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that anti-Semitic incidents of assault, vandalism and harassment were up by 34 percent in 2021 over 2020. In total, the ADL recorded 2,717 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2021, the most since the organization began tracking in 1979.
Some of trump’s staunchest allies have made anti-Semitic comments like House Leader McCarthy who tweeted in October 2018 that three Jewish billionaires — George Soros, Tom Steyer, and Michael Bloomberg — were trying to “buy” the midterms. He posted his tweet just a day after Soros received a pipe bomb at his home in New York. Soros is a Jewish billionaire philanthropist who, like the Rothschild banking family, is frequently targeted by anti-Semitic and white supremacist groups.
Rep. Greene claimed a space laser funded by the Rothschilds had caused California’s 2018 wildfires. She has been a supporter of QAnon, a set of conspiracy theories often referred to by trump and others on the far right. Greene once wrote that a Satanic, pedophile, Democratic cabal that QAnon claims to exist, was funded by Soros and the Rothschilds.
She also has frequently referred to the “deep state” that allegedly runs the government and is affiliated with Democrats and Soros. The Deep State is a conspiracy theory based on the anti-Semitic trope of a secret cabal, which uses terms like “globalism” and “open borders” as dog whistles for a white nationalist theory that Jews and other minorities are attempting to destroy white society.
Ku Klux Klan leader Charles Dole has claimed she and Greene are “friends” and they were both seen posing for a picture.
Rep. Steve Scalise, the House Minority Whip, was previously a Louisiana state representative and in 2002, Scalise attended and spoke at a convention of the white supremacist European American Unity and Rights Organization, a group founded by David Duke, the Holocaust-denier and former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
In an interview on Fox television, Gohmert went after Soros.
“George Soros is supposed to be Jewish, but you wouldn’t know it from the damage he’s inflicted on Israel,” Gohmert said. “And the fact that he turned on fellow Jews and helped take the property that they owned. It’s the same kind of thing.”
Gohmert was repeating an insidious claim that has consistently been debunked that Soros helped “take the property” of fellow Jews during World War II. Soros was 14 years old at the end of the war.
Gaetz invited the Holocaust denier Chuck Johnson to be his guest at trump’s State of the Union address. Johnson is founder of GotNews, an Alt-Right news and opinion website with extreme right wing bias in reporting. Gaetz later said that Johnson was “not a Holocaust denier; he’s not a white supremacist. Those are unfortunate characterizations of him.”
On Alex Jones’s “Infowars” show, Gaetz suggested the caravan of migrants that set out from Central America in October 2018 was funded by Soros, who might be “giving cash 2 women & children 2 join the caravan & storm the US border.”
Trump has called Gaetz “one of the finest and most talented people in Congress.”
Gosar showed his anti-Semitism when he claimed that the Charlottesville, Va., white power rally in 2017, where marchers chanted, “Jews will not replace us” was “created by the left” and led by an “Obama sympathizer.” He has also suggested that Soros funded the event.
Many on the right wing have repeated concerns over the so-called “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that Jews are attempting to replace white people in the U.S. with immigrants of color. Jewish global domination is a conspiracy theory that goes back for decades.