As one of my former colleagues is wont to say, “antisemitism is the one remaining bipartisan issue.” Sadly, folks from across the political spectrum use most of these antisemitic tropes, and the upcoming election will likely only exacerbate the issue. “Both sides” aren’t equal, of course—different types and volumes of hate come from different sides of the spectrum—but both worry me.
Although we are hardly in a moment of calm, this is still the “calm” before the storm. So, what’s to come? Of the above, what might we most expect during election season? Probably three tropes in particular: greed, power, and anti-Zionism.
Let’s look at greed.
There is very good reason to believe that the absurd amount of money in American politics is bad for our democracy and that the Citizens United SCOTUS decision (whether right on the law or not) had a negative impact on our electoral system. Nevertheless, Jewish observers of politics have grown accustomed to seeing Jewish uses of money in politics face heightened scrutiny.
Take, for instance, George Soros and AIPAC. Soros, a Jewish, Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor, is not the only megadonor to political causes—far from it. However, to many on the right in America, he represents all things evil. Far too often, his name means something more in politics than just “megadonor”…it means “Jewish money.”
On the other side of the political spectrum, AIPAC—which has upped its political spending considerably in recent years but is still just one of multitudes of big political spenders—has long been used as a boogeyman for all things about bad money in politics. AIPAC’s critics would say it is merely coincidental that the subject of so much ire just happens to be the best-known Jewish lobbying organization in the US; we needn’t be so gullible. This is the same ideology that drove Rep. Ilhan Omar to quip “it’s all about the Benjamins[,] baby”—a relatively obvious antisemitic dog whistle.
As the campaign heats up and politicians search their environs for anything they can use to bludgeon their adversaries, we can be sure that Jews will be found and used. Sadly, we can expect allegations that link Jews to money to show up more and more in the coming months. Whether it’s about AIPAC, Soros, or anything else, we should be ready.
And power?
Power and greed obviously intersect; all tropes about money are also about power, but not all tropes about power necessarily involve money. For example, take the issues of immigration or Senator JD Vance’s selection as the Republican VP candidate.
It is a reality of contemporary conservative politics that those on the right of our political spectrum look generally less favorably on immigration than their liberal peers. (The recent xenophobia surrounding Haitians Springfield, Ohio demonstrates this horrifyingly well.) Seeking to explain why immigration to the United States has increased in recent years, some on the fringes of the right blame Jews. “The great replacement” theory suggests that there are puppet masters secretly manipulating migration into Western countries, attempting to replace Westerners with “less desirable” people of other cultures and ethnicities. The puppet masters, of course, are usually framed as Jews.
Meanwhile, somehow Jews have been “blamed” for the 2024 Republican ticket’s VP choice, JD Vance. David Icke, an antisemitic conspiracy theorist who is apparently upset about this decision, even shared a video of Vance with Jewish supporters, subtweeting: “Guess who will run the White House (again) under Trump and Vance? The same people who run it under Biden.”
Finally, let’s touch upon anti-Zionism.
There’s hardly been any lack of anti-Zionist antisemitism in the last year, but we can anticipate an even greater uptick as we reach November.
Members of each party are likely to make supporting or opposing Israel parts of their political identities in the coming weeks, giving them something to differentiate themselves as candidates and upon which to campaign. Those who blindly support Israel can be harmful to Jews; but those who espouse extreme opposition to Israel are whom I am more worried about right now.
When Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in Washington, DC on July 24, there was hardly any shortage of anti-Zionist antisemitism on display by protesters in the city. Phrases like “Bibi, Bibi, We’re not done! The intifada has just begun!”, graffitied monuments with the words “Hamas is coming,” or a protestor bearing a sign emblazoned with the words “Allah is gathering all the Zionists for the ‘final solution’” draw direct through-lines between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. In the event of more protests or civil unrest, we can expect to see more of this. And, in political ads, we should anticipate seeing support for Israel demonized in many parts of the country, especially by far-left progressive politicians.
With the election only three weeks away, we’re already seeing antisemitic tropes about greed, power, and Israel flying left and right (no pun intended).
It remains to be seen how long post-election this damage will linger around and if the hate ever fully can be put back into the proverbial bottle. That’s why it’s so important for us now to think in concrete, strategic terms about what we can do to maximize our impact in combating anti-jewish hate. I’ll be back for that and more next week.
