"Hitler Did Some Good Things"

“Hitler did some good things.” - Donald J. Trump, according to 1st term Chief of Staff John Kelly

This is the man leading an oppressive administration trying to invade colleges, schools corporations to root out antisemitism. Or better said, trying to cripple resistance to Israeli genocide in Gaza and get rid of some “undesirable” people in the process.

The irony of an antisemite using antisemitism as a blunt instrument to engage in unconstitutional profiling and deportation is rich.

I encourage you to read this Atlantic article: Trump Is Building the Most Anti-Semitic Cabinet in Decades. Even the abjectly cruel, supposedly Jewish, Stephen Miller (not a cabinet member), seems to have a broadly generalized tendency toward self-loathing.

Neither Steve Bannon nor Elon Musk suffered any Truth Social scorn after flashing a Nazi salute to a crowd of adoring Maggats, few of whom are members of the JCC.

And who can forget the dulcet tones of marchers in Charlottesville chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” I think they were among “the very fine people on both sides.”

And twisting the issue completely is the right wing’s nearly obsessive insistence that George Soros is the head of a worldwide Jewish brotherhood controlling - well - everything. Soros has joked that he came from an antisemitic Jewish family. Go figure. The leader of the Jews is not really very Jewish.

Palestinian activists, like any other loosely identified group, are of varied ilk. Some, like good activists of any era, are loud, provocative and confrontational. I suppose occupying a building is against “the rules,” but pales in comparison to occupying and systematically destroying an already beleaguered territory. But even those “extremists,” whose ranks I might have joined at a more spry time, are few in number despite their justified anger.

Those being disappeared by the Trump Reich are guilty of unthinkable crimes like writing a critical opinion piece in the school paper.

A smidgeon of objectivity requires acknowledging the existence of antisemitism in colleges and everywhere else. But that comes in more insidious ways, as it always has. This campaign of anti-Palestinian cruelty is aimed at anyone who calls Israel’s actions what they are. To call a Jewish murderer a murderer is not antisemitism and has little to do with religion and everything to do with humanity - or its absence.

The heat generated by Israel’s slaughter of some 60,000 humans has doubtless seared Jewish students, who bear no more responsibility for the slaughter than the Palestinian activists bear responsibility for the vile Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. But that heat is not antisemitic heat. It is a boiling over of justifiable empathy for the breathtakingly disproportionate destruction of Gaza.

It is hard to award the “most egregious” trophy to any particular aspect of this idiocy. But I’ll offer a nominee.

If antisemitism is a chronic virus in our society, racism is the black plague. Frat boys dance badly in blackface. Nooses are hung from tall oak trees and racist threats are magic-markered in bathroom stalls. The vast majority of hate crimes on campuses are violence based on race and sexual identity. The percentage attributed to religion is comprised mostly of anti-Muslim bigotry. Among all the bias problems on campuses, antisemitism looms small.

So if the Trumpies actually gave a damn about any “isms” on college campuses, how about tackling racism or transphobia? Perhaps threaten to withhold federal funding for any institution that fails to provide the government with an anti-racist plan. Or threaten to take away the tax-exempt status of schools that discriminate against transgender students. Or tax the endowment of any institution that doesn’t show progress in diversity in hiring and enrollment.

But instead we get the opposite. Extreme penalties for trying to be inclusive. Forcing organizations to be “color blind” and sneering at small kindnesses like honoring pronouns and folks’ harmless bathroom requirements.

So I encourage my Jewish friends to be very, very wary of the right wing’s use of antisemitism as a cudgel against Palestinians and their supporters. That cudgel is likely coming your way too. If you think the Christian nationalists surrounding Trump are supporters of Jews, I’ve got a Tesla Cybertruck to sell you.