Opinion
Trump and the Jews - here we go again
President Trump's parroting of a theory pushed by white supremacists is truly shocking
March 1, 2017 11:09
2 min read
President Trump's parroting of a theory pushed by white supremacists is truly shocking
March 1, 2017 11:09For what it’s worth, I don’t think President Trump is an antisemite. Some of his best friends – and family – are Jews, after all. And he’s told us that he is “the least anti-Semitic person you've ever seen”.
But, my word, it becomes increasingly difficult not to think there is something deeply disturbing – to put it no worse – about his view of Jews.
Last night, President Trump said exactly the right thing in his State of the Union speech: “Recent threats targeting Jewish community centres and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries as well as last week's shooting in Kansas City remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms.”
If that had been it, then perhaps we could have moved on from the astonishingly long time it took the president to issue his first condemnation of the wave of grave desecrations and bomb threats targeted at Jewish institutions. And perhaps we could have moved on from the way he turned on the orthodox Jew who dared to question him at his now infamous press conference about the attacks on Jews.
But that wasn’t it.
Because on the very same day, just before he spoke to Congress, President Trump also spoke to a gathering of state Attorneys General.
And in addressing them, he reportedly – a reliable report, one can be sure, since it comes from the Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro – revealed what he really thinks about the wave of bomb threats. Which is that the people making the threats are Jews themselves, doing it to make President Trump look bad.
As Shapiro wrote: “He just said ‘Sometimes it’s the reverse to make people — or to make others — look bad,” and he used the word ‘reverse’ two or three times in his comments”.
Now this would be astonishing itself if that was all. Think about it: a US president saying that Jews are making up bomb threats just to make him look bad.
But it’s not all.
Because that observation is precisely – in every respect, and surely, obviously, deliberately – the idea that has been floated by white supremacists since the wave of bomb threats began.
It is what David Duke has said, suggesting that the president’s Jewish enemies are making all this up to discredit him.
The President of the USA has floated an outlandish idea, so outlandish indeed it that has only previously come from one source. And that source is white supremacists – or neo-Nazis, if we want to be blunt.
So no, I don’t think President Trump is a Jew hater in the traditional sense of, say…well, let’s say David Duke.
But so what? Because what matters isn’t what goes on in his soul. It’s what he says and does, and what forces he unleashes and supports.
And here’s where we are now:
President Trump is parroting theories about the behaviour of Jews in the US today that have come direct from the lips of neo-Nazis – and only from the lips of neo-Nazis.
Is it any wonder they think their man is now president?
