Why Jews Should Reject Trump

Dear Fellow Jewish American,

I beg you to consider the consequences of a Trump victory.

In the aftermath of Oct. 7, we've seen an ugly new chapter in left-wing antisemitism. Left-wing activists on campuses and elsewhere adorned their posters with images of hang gliders, delighting, one must assume, in the acts committed when those gliders touched down. They ripped down posters of hostages. They refused for months to acknowledge the brutal rapes of Israeli women and girls (so much for "believe all women").

While the plight of the Palestinians has been a progressive cause for decades, leftists never before gleefully embraced Hamas slogans and even Hamas flags.

It marks an ugly new chapter in left-wing antisemitism, and horrified some Democrats right into Trump's arms. And yet, even if your principal concern this election year is the welfare of the Jewish people, Trump is the wrong choice.

Trump recently warned that if he loses in November, "the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss." As a sheer matter of math, it's absurd. Jews represent about 1% of the population. In a close contest, as this promises to be, any group could be said to "have a lot to do" with a win or loss. He said it about the group that has more than 2,000 years of scapegoating behind it. Was he preparing the ground for a "stabbed-in-the-back" narrative post-election? Perhaps, but it was probably simpler. He was attempting to frighten Jewish voters -- to instill fear that if they failed to support him, he might encourage his disappointed and enraged followers to direct their fury at the nearest Jew. It's an old story, and even a historical ignoramus like Trump knows that it retains the power to intimidate.

Because Trump himself is so indecent, his primacy made it impossible for the Republican party to enforce standards. To insist upon honesty, integrity or even basic competence in any Republican would no longer be tolerated. Hadn't Trump's example proved that all ethical objections were merely disguised partisanship? And if the party reproved Marjorie Taylor Greene, how could it justify its resolute defense of Trump? Thus, all standards were obliterated. An institution that cannot enforce standards is helpless in the face of bigots.

Also, Trump trafficked in conspiracy theories -- about vaccines, immigrants, Obama's birthplace, the death of Antonin Scalia, the "deep state," etc. He normalized disordered, paranoid thinking. Here's an iron law: Conspiracy thinking everywhere and always devolves into antisemitism. It's the oldest and most durable of conspiracies.

Trump winked at fascists. While he didn't campaign on antisemitism, he didn't stiff-arm it either. Asked whether he condemned the KKK, he declined. When his opponents and critics were flooded with antisemitic hate online, Melania justified it. When the tiki-toting neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, he equivocated. That's all they needed. A signal. A nod.

When it comes to hatred, particularly hatred of vulnerable minorities, the appetite of a portion of the electorate is so strong that it can only be suppressed by continuous, conscientious effort across years and generations. Trump failed that most crucial of leadership tasks. He knew what he was unleashing, and he thought he could use it.

With Trump leading the party, the right blossomed with corpse flowers like Candace Owens who spouts antisemitic tropes including Holocaust denial; Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi who dined at Mar-a-Lago and dreams of a "total Aryan victory"; Elon Musk, who has opened X to the fever swamps and retweets "Great Replacement" posts; and Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, who said that "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them."

But the most ominous voice is that of Tucker Carlson, the fascist with the knitted brow and millions of followers. He's just asking questions, like why he shouldn't be mad at a group whom he accuses of teaching "white genocide" at Harvard. He then played host to Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper, whom he introduced as "the most important popular historian working in the United States today." Cooper explained that the real villain of World War II wasn't Hitler but Churchill, and that the Holocaust didn't happen the way you've been taught; it's just that Germany couldn't handle so many prisoners of war, you see.

Carlson is not a fringe figure. He was a main speaker at the Republican convention and was a prime mover in getting JD Vance on the ticket. He's a close confidante of the man who could be vice president and a possible future contender for president himself.

As for Israel, the GOP's support is robust ... for now. But it's foolish to imagine that it will last. With hostility to alliances and America First as the dominant mode of thinking on foreign policy, Israel cannot remain the asterisk for long.

The progressive descent into open antisemitism since Oct. 7 is grievously disturbing. But most Democrats are not progressives, and even most progressives don't endorse the kind of extremism on display at American campuses. They remain the left-most fringe. They are not allies of Vice President Kamala Harris or Tim Walz. They don't bid fair to become leaders of the Democratic Party in the foreseeable future.

On the right, by contrast, the haters have been mainstreamed. As our grandparents would have warned, "That's not good for the Jews."

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Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, "Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism," is available now.