Let’s face it: the spate of unrest and violence inspired by antisemitism is not exactly casting the left in a favorable light. Since the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip began on October 7, left-wing activists have been staging protests and rallies on college campuses and in the streets, railing against Israel and spreading Hamas talking points.
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Many of these demonstrations have resulted in violence against Jewish people – especially in universities. Anti-Israel activists have issued threats and engaged in vandalism as a way of expressing their hatred of the Jewish state, which has placed high-profile leftists in a tricky position.
While many on the left have condemned the antisemitic demonstrations, there are still some who seek to defend those participating in these activities. Since their actions are indefensible, some have taken to playing the whataboutism game, trying to pretend that anti-Jewish bigotry on the right is comparable to what we are seeing on college campuses.
This is where a team from The New York Times steps in. Four authors collaborated to publish a piece claiming that Republicans are mainstreaming “antisemitic tropes” even though they are vocal supporters of Israel.
The report claims that the newspaper “identified antisemitic rhetoric throughout years of Trump campaign emails and lawmakers’ press releases, tweets and newsletters.”
Before going into their absurd findings, the authors first give the obligatory acknowledgment that the “largely peaceful” protests “have been loud and disruptive and have at times taken on a sharpened edge.”
Jewish students have been shouted at to return to Poland, where Nazis killed three million Jews during the Holocaust. There are chants and signs in support of Hamas, whose attack on Israel sparked the current war. A leader of the Columbia protests declared in a video that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
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Of course, there was no mention of the violence perpetrated by the anti-Israel crowd since the start of the war in Gaza. Instead, they assert that “far less attention has been paid” to the supposed reality that “through the Trump era many Republicans have helped inject into the mainstream thinly veiled anti-Jewish messages with deep historical roots.”
This statement should already clue you in to the tactic the authors plan to use to prove their point. It suggests that they are going to take certain statements or remarks and pretend they’re somehow indicative of anti-Jewish sentiment even if they are not, doesn’t it?
The writers claim that references to “the populist loathing of an elite ‘ruling class,’ ‘Globalists’ or ‘globalist elites’ are blamed for everything from Black Lives Matter to the influx of migrants across the southern border” are somehow directed at Jewish folks.
The favored personification of the globalist enemy is George Soros, the 93-year-old Hungarian American Jewish financier and Holocaust survivor who has spent billions in support of liberal causes and democratic institutions.
This language is hardly new — Mr. Soros became a boogeyman of the American far right long before the ascendancy of Mr. Trump. And the elected officials now invoking him or the globalists rarely, if ever, directly mention Jews or blame them outright. Some of them may not immediately understand the antisemitic resonance of the meme, and in some cases its use may simply be reflexive political rhetoric. But its rising ubiquity reflects the breaking down of old guardrails on all types of degrading speech, and the cross-pollination with the raw, sometimes hate-filled speech of the extreme right, in a party under the sway of the norm-defying former, and perhaps future, president.
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The leftist publication then delves into emails from the Trump campaign, one of which depicts Soros as a puppeteer controlling President Joe Biden and notes that The Times’ review “found that last year at least 790 emails from Mr. Trump to his supporters invoked Mr. Soros or globalists conspiratorially” and that Republicans in Congress “increasingly used ‘Soros’ and ‘globalist’ in ways that evoked the historical tropes.”
The authors then criticize Trump for referring to Soros as “shadowy” and “the man behind the curtain who’s destroying our country.”
These are the typical talking points leftist members of the chattering class employ when they want to convince their audience that antisemitism is a hallmark of conservatism. These are obvious falsehoods. Sure, there could be some who make these references as a way of attacking Jews. But the notion that a significant portion of those who use this rhetoric are antisemitic is foolish.
It is also interesting that folks on the left often claim that any criticism of Soros is somehow a jab at the Jewish people as if he somehow represents all of global Jewry. Indeed, suggesting that one man can somehow represent the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs of all Jews sounds, well, antisemitic, does it not?
The reality is that Americans of all political affiliations have expressed consternation at the fact that elites and members of the ruling class often use the government to advance their agenda at our expense. It’s a sentiment that goes back at least as far as the Roman Republic with the rise of the Populares, politicians who claimed to fight on behalf of the people. It has nothing to do with Jews, as the elites come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.
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But, again, The NYT peddles these lies because they are unable to defend the leftists engaging in wanton violence and violence in the streets, so they have to concoct a way to say, “But they do it too!”
What is even more interesting about this is that, despite what the authors suggested, the unrest has not just involved people saying mean things to Jews. At UCLA, pro-Hamas protesters physically attacked pro-Israel students who were trying to dismantle barricades surrounding an illegal encampment the anti-Israel activists had created. At Yale University, a Jewish student journalist was stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag. Even some Democratic leaders have expressed approval of the actions of the pro-Hamas lobby. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), known for making antisemitic comments, visited pro-Hamas agitators who had set up an encampment at Columbia University.
The reality is that there are bigots in every political party and every movement. It is unavoidable. However, they tend to make up a small percentage of these parties and movements. The writers’ decision to downplay the violence meted out by anti-Israel protesters while trying to trick their audience into believing there is a moral equivalence between the left and right in this regard is an abhorrent way to play partisan games with a serious issue that needs solutions, not more politicking.
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