In response to the alarming rise of antisemitism on college campuses post-October 7, 2023, the Trump administration has begun to cut federal funding to universities such as Columbia that fail repeatedly to act in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students. Moreover, at a time when the Trump administration was all but ready to abandon Ukraine by halting urgently needed military assistance, it has approved nearly $12 billion in military aid to Israel since Trump took office.
At least on the surface, this is positive news for American Jews and Israel. It even seems to be vindication for those Jews who voted for Trump.
And yet, can we ignore the deeply troubling signs emanating from this zero-guardrails administration? Are some Jewish organizations letting Trump’s vow to support Israel and fight antisemitism on the far Left blind them to his brazen authoritarianism and appalling normalization of far-Right extremism?
Why Trump's assault on US democracy is dangerous for Jews
The president’s assault on American democracy should be setting off alarm bells within the Jewish community. Jews have flourished in America because the country’s core democratic tenets have provided us with equality, religious freedom, and protection. Any threat to democracy and our longstanding democratic norms, therefore, jeopardizes our own well-being.
If history has taught Jews anything, it’s that whenever we have lived under the rule of autocrats who accept no check on their authority, it usually turns out catastrophic for us. We now have a president who is rapidly consolidating power and filling his cabinet with people whose chief qualification to serve is their absolute loyalty to him. He is issuing executive orders that violate the US Constitution by circumventing the separation of powers and has authorized Elon Musk, a non-elected citizen, to recklessly dismantle federal agencies, in part as retribution against his political adversaries.
Notably, in a move resembling how regimes such as North Korea and Russia control the flow of information to their publics, the White House announced in February that the administration – not an independent group of journalists – will determine which media outlets have access to the president as part of a pool allowed into the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One. Even before making this decision, Trump had banned the Associated Press from the pool in retaliation for the news wire’s rejection of his demand to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
The message to media outlets seems unmistakable: Follow the White House line or risk getting kicked out. Consequently, we’re likely to see fewer challenges to Trump’s perpetual false claims, no matter how outrageous or Orwellian. As New York Times columnist Bret Stephens has said, “A nation that can bring itself to believe anything about anything, will, sooner or later, have little trouble believing the worst about Jews.”
As if the evisceration of our democracy weren’t sufficient cause for concern, there are also the far-Right extremists whom Trump and his sycophants have brought into the mainstream. In 2022, for example, Trump hosted Kanye West, the antisemitic rapper who has praised Hitler, and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
During the first day of his second term, Trump granted a blanket pardon to everyone convicted in the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol, including leaders and members of the neo-Nazi Proud Boys (whom he referred to as “hostages”). The pardons send another clear message: Political violence and views once relegated to the fringes of American society are no longer taboo.
While at the mid-February Munich Security Conference, Vice President JD Vance expressed support for Germany’s far-Right antisemitic AfD party and met with AfD leader Alice Weidel, who believes Germany’s Holocaust remembrance constitutes a “guilt cult.” Elon Musk has also embraced the AfD, which he described as “the last spark of hope for this country” in a German newspaper op-ed last December. The following month, he addressed an AfD rally and urged Germany to “move beyond” its guilt over the country’s Nazi past.
Also worth noting is Kingsley Wilson, another Trump appointee, serving as the Pentagon’s new deputy press secretary. Wilson is a prolific purveyor of antisemitic conspiracy theories, among them the “great replacement theory,” which asserts that the Jews are behind an effort to bring people of color into the US to “replace” white voters. I could go on, but you get the point.
We must not let Trump’s policy of cracking down on far-Left antisemitism lull us into silence while his administration normalizes far-Right extremism and imperils our democracy. If ever there was a moment requiring us, as Jews and Americans, to stand up and be counted, this surely is it.■
The writer is chief community relations and public affairs officer for the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland.