Another rioter wore a “6MWE” shirt, an acronym for “six million wasn’t enough.” The rioters included members of neo-Nazi groups and individuals giving Nazi salutes. The day before the riot, incoming member of the House of Representatives Republican Mary Miller told a rally at the Capitol that “Hitler was right on one thing.... ‘Whoever has the youth has the future.’” She has subsequently apologized. A Twitter account with more than 20,000 followers celebrated the assault by comparing it to the ransacking of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. “I love it when ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government] loses,” it stated.
For the past four years, Trump has vacillated between praising and declining to condemn White Supremacists. Having seen their president validate the behavior of such people, Americans witnessed, at Charlottesville, Virginia, and elsewhere, parades where the chant is “The Jews will not replace us.” This is a longstanding alleged grievance of White Supremacists: that they are at risk of being replaced by people of color controlled by Jews. The murderous assaults against synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego were part and parcel of this attitude.
While the majority of American Jews voted for Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, Trump had a cadre of Jewish supporters. They included people of great wealth who helped bankroll his campaigns. Some felt that as long as Trump lowered taxes for the wealthy, moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, gave the Netanyahu government a blank check, and redirected US policy toward Iran, all else was forgiven.
Trump’s remarks, behaviors, and policies which degraded and harmed women, minorities, the poor, the environment, and any semblance of honesty, civility and decency could be ignored. “He moved the embassy and that’s all that matters,” they said.
Since Trump’s inner policy circle included Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and self-proclaimed policy expert on a variety of subjects, the not-so-funny joke went “What’s the difference between Donald Trump and many American Jews? At least Trump is sure that his grandchildren will be raised Jewish.”
Throughout modern history, right-wing nationalists typically are allied with the forces of antisemitism. When the right-wing nationalist czar Alexander III came to the throne of Russia in 1881, the results were pogroms and an economic assault on the Jewish community. Right-wing forces in France framed Dreyfus. The right-wing governments of Germany and Italy dragged the world into World War II and exterminated the Jews of Europe. Antisemites are deeply embedded in Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.
When you make a bargain with a devil you ultimately face the consequences. The members of the Jewish community who aided and abetted the right-wing nationalism of Donald Trump and his hooligan mobs have endangered the safety of the Jewish community. Thanks, in part, to Trump’s wealthy Jewish financial supporters and apparatchiks among his advisers and Cabinet, America’s antisemitic vermin has crawled out from under the rocks en masse.
A Faustian bargain where you care more about the stock portfolio in your 401K retirement plan than your community’s safety requires you to sell your soul. For those Jews who sold their soul out of a misplaced desire to promote their views about taxes, Israel and Iran, they are making us all reap the consequences of their actions.
When they make penance for their actions let us all hope that their prayers of contrition are favorably answered on the Day of Atonement. Meanwhile, the rest of us need to go about our business seeking to repair the damage in between saying the weekly Sabbath prayer for the welfare of the government.
The writer, an MD and MA, teaches medical history at New York Medical College where he is also the college’s Chancellor/CEO. This essay represents his opinion and not that of the College.