Dealing with the Devil

Donald Trump has made it no secret that he believes that the immigration issue will be his winning ticket to reelection. It should also be no secret that he is counting on anti-Hispanic racism, because every other demographic has something they “hate” about Hispanics, and there are few in the media willing to counter this. Even Puerto Ricans who are U.S. citizens and have seen their homeland devastated far more extensively  than those on the mainland are only worthy of Trump’s hate. His repeated falsehoods about the amount of aid that Puerto Rico has or will receive shows his contempt for its non-white inhabitants—as did his infamous paper towel-throwing incident; I suspect that he intended to throw toilet paper, but aids probably advised him many people wouldn’t find it quite as funny as he and his supporters would. The insistence on “merit”-based immigration also has racist undertones, since the suggestion is that only “tech” jobs have “merit.” But this also can be seen as a slap in the face to the vast majority of workers in this country—and demonstrates Trump’s true contempt for working people who were not born with a silver spoon planted firmly down their gullet. 

Anti-Hispanic bigotry has always been downplayed in this country, as we saw in the Thornton, Colorado shooting in 2017. Scott Ostrem, who had been threatening his Hispanic neighbors, walked into the local Walmart and according to police “randomly” shot and killed three “random” victims. But there was nothing “random” about who he shot: all three were Hispanic. This was clearly a hate crime, yet the national media merely noted it and went on with its business. Other hate-motivated shootings would get weeks of coverage and “analysis,” yet this clear hate crime went by almost unnoticed and entirely uncommented upon by the mainstream media. The media, in fact, is more “moved” if a crime is committed by an illegal alien. 

Crimes against blacks, Jews and Muslims on the other hand are sure to bring headlines. But in the case of Jews there are some problematic issues that the Jewish community seems reticent to confront. It is unfortunate that two Muslim members of the House of Representatives have made a spectacle of themselves by making anti-Israel comments, although more in the tone than in the reality on the ground. Rep.  Rashida Tlaib made a self-serving, half-assed “confession” that her anger over the Palestinian problem is “calmed” whenever she remembers that all the terrible “sacrifices” Palestinians have made have been in response to the Holocaust, while Rep. Ilhan Omar continues to explain away the total absence of statesmanship and pragmatism in the Islamic world (particularly by the Palestinians) after the original partition in 1948 by advancing the same tired anti-Jewish  tropes that are bound to be “misinterpreted.” 

But Tlaib and Omar are not the people responsible for the 37 percent increase in anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2018, and the rise in shootings at synagogues, as the right likes to claim every time these two open their mouths; the people who commit these crimes probably hate Muslims just as much as they hate Jews. I recently had a conversation with a white male who I judged to be fairly intelligent until he eagerly enunciated some really stoner-brand Jewish world domination conspiracy theories; I tried to talk him out of that as well some other disquieting, way-out-there theories about Hispanics,  but he just shut down the conversation, noting people have “different opinions.” One also cannot disassociate Trump’s hate for Hispanic immigrants from his supporters hate of other “others,” such as Jews, who anti-Semites believe are the “wizards” hiding behind the curtains creating malicious mischief for their own benefit. Although Jews might be “offended” by any comparisons, Trump has repeatedly used the same kind of dehumanizing and demonizing terms to describe Hispanic immigrants as the Nazis used to describe Jews, and his racist core of supporters certainly recognize the “connection.” 

Yet there is another great irony in play in here: that many Jews in this country have made a deal with the Devil by supporting the white nationalist agenda of Trump and the far-right in the expectation of “safety.” Stephen Miller is only the most obvious example, and his most animating motivation is his racism against Hispanics, something which was obvious to all who knew him as a high school student. Eric Levitz reported in New York Magazine last month that Miller is certainly a white nationalist, and that Trump—likely with the prodding of Miller—continued supplying supporters with red meat like billionaire Jewish businessman George Soros “financing” an “invasion” of Hispanic immigrants, to use them as “shock troops” to “rig” the 2020 election. The claim may be brushed off as absurd to most people, but as I just pointed out there are people out there who take this kind of thing as “fact.” That Miller is Jewish hasn’t stopped him from supporting such absurdities, even only days after 11 people were killed at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a neo-Nazi, motivated by that baseless “threat.”

Still, some Jewish groups like HAARETZ have denied the connection between Trump and Miller to the record-setting increase in hate-fueled acts or even the evidence of Trump’s use of Nazi-style demagoguery, if only targeting Hispanics—or perhaps because this is so. Meanwhile, there are so many conservative Jewish commentators whose “mainstream” profiles are so prominent that it makes it appear that they outnumber Jewish commentators on the left. You might be “shocked” to learn that disseminators of far-right conspiracy theories and general hate-mongering like Michael Savage, Mark Levin and Andrew Brietbart are Jewish; these people seem to be comfortable in despised minorities reaping the hate they sow. Others include frequent Fox News “contributors” Alan Dershowitz and David Horowitz. Anti-Semitic hate may be unacceptable to them, but racist fearmongering when other groups are the target is “fair game” to these people. They may represent a minority of Jews in this country, but their outsized profile makes them more “influential”—and no one (save Trump himself) is more “influential” on the dissemination of race hate at the present time than Stephen Miller. No doubt Trump’s pitiful efforts at denouncing hate in the face of his own words and actions is in deference to Miller and those who he “prefers” to count his money in ways he prefers the public not to know. 

Meanwhile, the “liberal” Jewish community, outside of allowing people like Tlaib and Omar to be whipped by hypocritical Republicans like Lynn Cheney who have done far more to advance the cause of hate, has been largely silent publically.  In a New Republic story by Stephen Lurie after the tragedy of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, it was noted that one activist could not persuade Jewish organizations like the ADL to actually do something other than mere talk. “When it came to showing up to confront protesters, however, no one was sufficiently prepared to offer support or to refer (the activist) to those who could. ‘We do not have a Jewish organizational home for the fight against fascism,’ she told me. ‘We don’t have a confrontational strategy; we don’t have a community support strategy; we don’t have a coping strategy; we don’t have a Jewish organizational strategy. That’s what I’ve found.’” Lurie went on to write that “Despite the assumption that America’s Jewish community would be united in the face of rising anti-Semitism and white supremacy, Charlottesville and the ascendance of Donald Trump have accentuated the opposite: There is a deep divergence, over tactics, ideology, and more.” History also reminds us of the consequences of this very same failure to act in the face  of Nazi aggression. 

And Sasha Abramsky wrote this in The Nation:

And yet, two years into his violent, nationalist presidency, a number of high-profile Jewish political and business figures continue to support and enable his presidency. Despite the fact that Trump has repeatedly dallied with the far right of US politics; despite the fact that the KKK supports him and that fascist websites such as The Daily Stormer routinely cheer him on; despite the fact that he found it impossible to unequivocally condemn neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville last summer; despite the fact he retweets tweets from virulent, conspiracy-minded organizations and individuals; despite the fact that several of his speeches over the past two years eerily echo language from speeches given by Mussolini and Hitler—despite all this, Jewish advisers to, and backers of, Trump such as Sheldon Adelson, Jared Kushner, and Stephen Miller have utterly abnegated their responsibility to call him to account.

Except that they became his aiders and abettors. Kushner is working on an immigration bill that will almost certainly codify the almost nonexistent ability of Hispanic migrants to immigrate legally into this country because of race hatred against them. It reportedly does not even address DACA, a program Miller certainly wants to kill, and the bill thus is likely DOA in the House and probably in the Senate as well, only to be used as a Trump campaign prop. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too “shocked” by any of this. Today, white identity is a more defining characteristic for the Jewish community than religion is, but this may be like many Hispanics who foolishly choose to define themselves as “white” when the outside world sees something entirely different.