Jewish community leaders often equate criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism. In just one month, Donald Trump has turned this assertion on its head – or rather, he has pushed into the mainstream what has been a long-standing view on the right wing fringe: you can be pro-Israel and anti-Semitic at the same time.
Indeed, while Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu became one of the early visitors to the Trump White House, it has been impossible to ignore the anti-Semitism leaking out of the new US government: the pervasive influence of racists and white supremacists in the Administration exemplified by the presence of Steve Bannon, the omission of Jews from the official Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, the extreme reluctance to distance from the KKK or to condemn hate-driven harassment of Jewish journalists, bomb threats to Jewish organizations and attacks on Jewish cemeteries.
The movement which chose Trump as its flag-bearer represents a rebellion against the modern world with its diversity, multiculturalism, globalization and advanced science. It is nothing new: a similar revolt against modernity was seen in Europe in the 1930s and in the Soviet Union in the early 1950s. Invariably, such reactionary movements turn upon diaspora Jews because Jews are closely associated with the concept of modernity. While Trump might indeed be “the least anti-Semitic person you have ever seen,” as he claimed at his recent press conference, the movement he heads certainly hates diaspora Jews. The way things have gone in Trump’s first month, he may not be able to control the tiger he’s been so gleefully riding.
More generally, the right-wing movement gathering momentum around the world represents a clear and present danger to Jewish communities not only in the United States but in Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Germany, France, Britain and anywhere else Jews still live in substantial numbers. It may still seem far-fetched, but given the history of Jewish persecution, it’s better to be excessively careful than to go on repeating that “it can’t happen here”.
Modern societies have been largely shaped by the Jewish struggle for emancipation, acceptance and equality. For some two thousand years Jews were a subject people; they were granted few rights and considered outsiders in homogeneous societies everywhere they lived. But sometime around 1850 they started to demand their full citizens. Unprecedentedly, they insisted that they be accepted on their own terms, preserving their differences rather than assimilating completely. They wanted to retain their Jewish identity in ethnically and religiously homogeneous communities.
It was an uphill battle and it met with considerable resistance. Nevertheless, by the early decades of the 20th century Jews were playing an important role across Europe – in mainstream culture, the arts, science and the professions – and even in politics and the military.
Jews became the first major group preserving its separate identity: an integral part of modern nations, yet a distinct one, as well. Now, all modern societies consist of such diverse and overlapping groups, each with its own form of self-identification, rules and agendas.
Tolerance is a necessary condition for coexistence in the age of diversity. Jewish emancipation required that society be tolerant, and to this day, diaspora Jews are one of the most liberal groups in society. In fact, while a majority of whites voted for Trump in 2016, Jews remained Democratic by a wide margin.
Given the Jewish influence on modernity, it is not entirely surprising that modern societies prize many of the skills the Jews honed in the diaspora. Occupations such as the law, finance, trade, medicine and the arts are respected and well-rewarded, as are qualities such as business acumen, entrepreneurship and ability to feel at home in several cultures. In general, their respect for education and thirst for knowledge have made them major beneficiaries in the modern world.
When Hitler attacked the Jews, he was giving vent to an ancient prejudice whose roots reached back into the Dark Ages. But Hitler’s anti-Semitism had clear ideological underpinnings, as well. Fascism and its different varieties such as German national socialism grew out of a discontent with the modern world. Fascism yearned for a pre-modern social structure organized to resemble a family or a clan, where the citizenry were homogenous, didn’t need a complex system of checks and balances and acted for the good of the nation as it was defined by its patriarchal leader. Jews were not only seen as an alien presence in such nation but, worse, they were blamed for the virus of modernity, encompassing such terrible things as Jewish capitalism, Jewish modern art, Jewish science, etc.
After World War II Stalin also turned against modernity and toward Russian nationalism and leader-worship. He revived some features of the Russian Empire while suppressing all expressions of modernity – not just in art and culture, but in science, as well, as epitomized by genetics, computer science and nuclear physics. Those sciences were banned, prominent researchers with a worldwide reputation were killed or jailed and charlatans and morons took their place.
Whether Stalin always despised the Jews or, like Trump, was “the least anti-Semitic person you have ever seen” in his earlier years, when disliking Jews was taboo in socialist circles, is open to debate. But when he attacked the modern world he predictably turned on the Jews as well. Using his favorite policy of deporting entire nations and committing genocide in the process, Stalin concocted a plan to round up Jews all over the Soviet Union and to send them to the Far East. Fortunately for Soviet Jews, he died before he could put this plan into operation.
Stalin’s propaganda called Jews “rootless cosmopolitans” – a huge transgression against his insular state. Even before globalization became a major feature of the modern world, Stalin unerringly identified the Jews as the first globalized people. His Soviet successors attacked Jews as Zionists – a thinly disguised accusation of double loyalty of a group that not only refused to assimilate fully but revelled in its differences.
In the United States, still by some measures the most advanced nation on earth, the Trump government and the Republican Party have become the spearheads of a rebellion against modernity. Trump’s supporters – not just the openly fascist alt-right but many run-of-the-mill Americans who attend his rallies – fear diversity and complexity. They want simple answers and simple solutions, and they dream of returning to the neverland where everyone who mattered in America was white, spoke nothing but English and went to a Christian church. They have no use for modern art and culture. They don’t like science, as evidenced by the climate change denial as well as attacks on objective truth and commonly recognized facts.
Religious conservatives find themselves fitting in with Trump’s fascist movement because they too see modernity as the enemy. Moreover, evangelicals, for all their love of Israel, are no less anti-Semitic than white supremacists. Their Dark Ages belief in the impending Apocalypse calls for all the Jews to be gathered in Israel before perishing in the struggle against forces of evil.
Not long before the election, I attended Ivanka Trump’s rally at a South Florida Jewish temple. Several hundred congregants were on hand, enthusiastically assuring her that they had all taken advantage of the state’s early voting to cast their ballots for her father. When I asked the attendees whether they were at all nervous about the anti-Semitism that was riding Trump’s coattails, their rabbi responded that their main concern was the State of Israel, which they thought Trump would keep safe. In other words, the fate of Jews in their own country was of secondary importance to them.
History teaches us that Jew-hatred, like racism, can spread like wildfire. The deportation force that Trump is assembling may well limit itself to ferreting illegal immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean and deporting Muslims from those Middle Eastern countries where the Trump Organization is not making money. But don’t bet that it won’t turn on American-born American Jews if things go wrong and the charismatic leader of an anti-modern movement requires a scapegoat.
