Dem
51
GOP
49
The United States has an antisemitism problem. One would hope and expect that the debacle of the 1940s would have put people off that way of thinking forever, but not so much. Indeed, while the country as a whole is better on this front than it was, say, in 1939, there's a pretty good argument to be made that it's still worse than it was in, say, 1789. There aren't too many ways in which denizens of the eighteenth century were more tolerant than denizens of the twenty-first century, but this might be one of them.
Part of the reason that antisemitism is currently rearing its ugly head is, to be very blunt, the Republican Party. Not all Republicans, of course. But there are many people in the Trumpist wing of the party who may be pro-Israel, yet who are pretty clearly anti-Jew. On top of that, there is the well-established propensity of the Trumpists to traffic in antisemitic tropes. Consider, for example, this tweet that we noted Sean Spicer re-tweeting last week:
George Soros – the biggest Democrat donor – uses his network of 253 media organizations worldwide to push his radical views to the public. https://t.co/9KDXSMomvL
— NewsBusters (@newsbusters) December 6, 2022
In other words, "Jewish guy uses shadowy underground network to control the media." When Spicer gloms onto this, does he not realize he's perpetuating antisemitic stereotypes? We assume that he's clever enough to grasp the subtext here. On the other hand, as we noted in our item about him last week, he's never exactly seemed to be the sharpest tool in the shed. So, maybe not? What it amounts to is that he's either a bigot or a useful idiot. That tweet isn't even a little bit subtle.
Anyhow, in view of this ongoing national disease, the White House announced yesterday that it is going to form an anti-antisemitism task force. The group will be led by members of the Domestic Policy Council and the National Security Council, and will meet with leaders across the nation to formulate strategies for combating antisemitism.
On one hand, it is good to see a presidential administration trying to tackle this problem. On the other hand, blue-ribbon panels, task forces, listening tours and their ilk rarely seem to produce much in the way of substance. And that's true even with fairly mundane problems, like the best way to spend $1 billion to improve the nation's bridges. Antisemitism is an unusually pernicious problem, one that's been around for something like 10 times as long as the United States has. So, we'll see if the Biden initiative can make a dent, but we're not exactly holding our breath.
Meanwhile, as long as we're on this subject, the organization StopAntisemitism yesterday announced the winner of the oh-so-coveted title of 2022 Antisemite of the Year:
Yep, it's presidential dinner companion and all-around swell fellow Ye (nee Kanye West).
We have many questions about this "honor." How long has it been awarded? Does the winner get a trophy? If so, what does the trophy look like? Can a person win multiple times, or is more of a lifetime achievement award? Is Ye really the worst antisemite in the land? Worse than, say, David Duke or Nick Fuentes? And, most importantly, does holding Ye (or last year's winner, Anuradha Mittal) up to ridicule actually accomplish something? That's an honest question, and we haven't the faintest idea what the answer is. (Z)