Why Jews Should Reject Trump
Why Jews Should Reject Trump
The left’s antisemitism problem doesn’t compare to his Nazi-adjacent new right.
PEOPLE HAVE ALL SORTS OF REASONS for casting ballots, but to the degree that your decision in this election rests on specifically Jewish concerns, I beg you to consider the consequences of a Trump victory.
In the aftermath of October 7th, many Jews are feeling the age-old (but new to us) sensation of gnawing insecurity. The sadistic attacks themselves were soul-crushing, but what frightened and demoralized us more was the reaction. Left-wing activists on campuses and elsewhere not only failed to condemn the attacks—they reveled in them. They adorned their posters with images of hang gliders, delighting, one must assume, in the acts committed when those gliders touched down. They ripped down posters of hostages. They refused for months to acknowledge the brutal rapes of Israeli women and girls (so much for “believe all women”). They harassed and chased Jewish students. They defaced Jewish institutions and synagogues. They declared Zionism itself—the belief in a right to a Jewish homeland—to be anathema.
While the plight of the Palestinians has been a progressive cause for decades, leftists never before gleefully embraced Hamas slogans and even Hamas flags.
It marks an ugly new chapter in left-wing antisemitism, and horrified some Democrats right into Trump’s arms. He stood ready to receive them, with promises to deport “any student that protests,” and to withdraw accreditation of universities that permit “antisemitic propaganda.”
And yet, even if your principal concern this election year is the welfare of the Jewish people, Trump is the wrong choice.
Trump recently warned that if he loses in November, “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.” Apologists will say he has a legitimate grievance because despite all he’s done for Israel, he still garners only 34 percent support among American Jews. And besides, “He has Jewish grandchildren!” they protest. Nothing to fear here.
There is a great deal to fear. In fact, the threat Trump poses to Jews is greater than the threat from the Students for Justice in Palestine or Rashida Tlaib and all their fellow travelers.
Let’s pause on that prediction that Jews would have “a lot” to do with his electoral loss. As a sheer matter of math, it’s absurd. Jews represent about 1 percent of the population. In a close contest, as this promises to be, any group could be said to “have a lot to do” with a win or loss. But Trump didn’t say that Catholics or Hindus or atheists (who support Harris by 85 to 13) would be responsible for his loss, nor Asians nor Hispanics. He said it about the group that has more than two thousand years of scapegoating behind it. Was he preparing the ground for a “stabbed-in-the-back” narrative post-election? Perhaps, but it was probably simpler. He was attempting to frighten Jewish voters; to instill fear that if they failed to support him, he might encourage his disappointed and enraged followers to direct their fury at the nearest Jew. It’s an old story, and even a historical ignoramus like Trump knows that it retains the power to intimidate.
FROM THE MOMENT HE ENTERED NATIONAL POLITICS, Trump has lifted the manhole cover and permitted the sewer rats to emerge into the sunlight. While it’s true that antisemitism flourishes on both ends of the spectrum, Trump has elevated the right-wing/fascist version to the very centers of power.
First, because Trump himself is so indecent, his primacy made it impossible for the Republican party to enforce standards. To insist upon honesty, integrity, or even basic competence in any Republican would no longer be tolerated. Hadn’t Trump’s example proved that all ethical objections were merely disguised partisanship? And if the party reproved Marjorie Taylor Greene, how could it justify its resolute defense of Trump? Thus, all standards were obliterated. An institution that cannot enforce standards is helpless in the face of bigots.
Second, Trump trafficked in conspiracy theories—about vaccines, immigrants, Obama’s birthplace, the death of Antonin Scalia, the “deep state,” etc. He normalized disordered, paranoid thinking. Malign, shadowy forces drive events in his mind. Among his very first lies as a candidate—that foreign nations were not “sending their best”—was a species of conspiracy, as if Mexico’s leaders sat down with legal pads and checked off names to send across the Rio Grande. Here’s an iron law: Conspiracy thinking everywhere and always devolves into antisemitism. It’s the oldest and most durable of conspiracies. Every 2016 Jewish Trump supporter should have seen it coming. (To be clear, they should have shunned him on general principles, but as a matter of Jewish interest, they should have been on notice.)
Third, Trump winked at fascists. While he didn’t campaign on antisemitism, he didn’t stiff-arm it, either. Asked whether he condemned the KKK, he declined. When his opponents and critics were flooded with antisemitic hate online, Melania justified it. When the tiki-toting neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, he equivocated. That’s all they needed. A signal. A nod.
When it comes to hatred, particularly hatred of vulnerable minorities, the appetite of a portion of the electorate is so strong that it can only be suppressed by continuous, conscientious effort across years and generations. Leaders at every level of society from teachers to mayors to presidents must push back hard on the eternal temptation to demonize the other. Every honorable person must keep the evil at bay. As the old Jewish wisdom has it, “You are not obliged to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
Trump failed that most crucial of leadership tasks. It was not an oversight. He knew what he was unleashing and he thought he could use it. Asked at the 2020 debate to renounce the Proud Boys, he said, “Stand back and stand by.” They did. They were ready on January 6th.
The conspiracist-in-chief trafficked in QAnon idiocy (a thinly veiled update of the ancient blood libel) when it served his purposes. With Trump leading the party, the right blossomed with corpse flowers like Candace Owens, who spouts antisemitic tropes including Holocaust denial; Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi who dined at Mar-a-Lago and dreams of a “total Aryan victory”; Elon Musk, who has opened X to the fever swamps and retweets “Great Replacement” posts; and Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, who said that “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”
But the most ominous voice is that of Tucker Carlson, the fascist with the knitted brow and millions of followers. He’s just asking questions, like why he shouldn’t be mad at a group whom he accuses of teaching “white genocide” at Harvard. “I find myself really hating those people,” he told Owens. He then played host to Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper, whom he introduced as “the most important popular historian working in the United States today.” Cooper explained that the real villain of World War II wasn’t Hitler but Churchill, and that the Holocaust didn’t happen the way you’ve been taught—it’s just that Germany couldn’t handle so many prisoners of war, you see.
Carlson may think like a denizen of the fever swamps, but he is not a fringe figure. He was a main speaker at the Republican convention and was a prime mover in getting JD Vance on the ticket. He’s a close confidante of the man who could be vice president and a possible future contender for president himself.
That’s the point. Trump opened the door to the haters, and now they are the thought leaders of the GOP. It has happened with lightning speed. Here’s Fuentes himself marveling at their progress:
Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, Elon Musk are all regularly now talking about white genocide, anti-white hatred, and the role of Jewish elites, whether they’re ADL or they’re Zionists, and some even talking about this religious division as well between Christians and Jews.
As for Israel, the GOP’s support is robust . . . for now. But it’s foolish to imagine that it will last. With growing Republican hostility to alliances and America First as the party’s dominant mode of thinking on foreign policy, Israel cannot remain the asterisk for long. Besides, Trump’s unshakable attachment to Putin puts him two degrees of separation from Putin’s pals, which include Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. Who knows how that would play out in a second Trump term?
The progressive descent into open antisemitism since October 7th is grievously disturbing. But most Democrats are not progressives, and even most progressives don’t endorse the kind of extremism on display at American campuses. That remains the purview of the left-most fringe. They are not allies of Vice President Harris or Tim Walz. They don’t bid fair to become leaders of the Democratic party in the foreseeable future.
On the right, by contrast, the haters have been mainstreamed. As our grandparents would have warned, “That’s not good for the Jews.”