Trumpism's powerful weapon against Western democracies is antisemitism

Given the events of the last two weeks, Donald Trump’s plans to become America’s first dictator are now much closer to being realized. This is not a fantasy or hyperbole. These are just the facts.

In a decision that left the mainstream news media and political class stunned and slack-jawed, the United States Supreme Court gave Donald Trump and his Republican-fascist successors the de facto power(s) of a king where he is above the law and literally has the power to do such things as order the military (or other forces under his command such as his personal militias or enforcers) to kill his political and personal enemies without consequence. This illegitimate United States Supreme Court, nakedly partisan and controlled by right-wing extremists, would not permit a Democrat to have such power. The Supreme Court’s corrupt ruling in Trump’s favor will, as a practical matter, mean that the four criminal cases (which includes a felony conviction in New York for paying hush money as part of an election interference plot) against him are likely going to be voided.

In truly historic fashion, President Biden self-destructed during his first debate against Donald Trump. The Democrats are in disarray as they are publicly and privately struggling with how (or if) to move forward with President Biden as the party’s presumptive nominee. Public opinion polls and other data show that Trump’s clobbering of President Biden during the debate has caused a shift in public support where if the 2024 Election were held today, Biden would likely be defeated (and perhaps in a landslide). American democracy would then succumb to neofascism and Dictator Trump.

As extensively detailed in such plans as Project 2025, Agenda 47, the Red Caesar scenario and elsewhere, Dictator Trump and the Republican fascist regime is the end of multiracial pluralistic democracy. Beyond that technical and abstract language, as a day-to-day lived experience Trump’s regime will mean tyranny of the minority, and a form of government that will be a 21st-century apartheid state, a White Christian theocracy (an American version of the Taliban) and a plutocracy. Ultimately, Trumpism is a reactionary and revolutionary authoritarian project to restore uncontested (rich) white male power, authority, and control over all areas of public and private life.

The increase in antisemitism and white supremacy during the Age of Trump and the global democracy crisis are not coincidental. The relationship is central and causal. Democracy in its best and most enduring form is inclusive; by comparison, racial authoritarianism and fake democracy in the form of Trumpism and forms of neofascism as seen in Europe and other parts of the world is exclusionary where its fake populist appeal is fueled by xenophobia, nativism, bigotry, and other forms of social dominance behavior (including violence) by the in-group against those deemed to be the Other.

Because fascism and other forms of authoritarianism and political personality cults such as Trumpism must always find new enemies to legitimate themselves and “the movement”, these boundaries between the in-group and the out-group are contingent and shifting. The friend of today can and usually becomes the enemy of tomorrow. Members of the MAGA movement and other Trump loyalists, including the elites and other members of the aspiring dictator’s inner circle, would be wise to learn that lesson.

In an attempt to better understand the role of antisemitism and other forms of racism and white supremacy in the Age of Trump and the global democracy crisis, I recently spoke with Sharon Nazarian. She is a distinguished leader in the fight against antisemitism and hate worldwide. Nazarian previously served as the Senior Vice President of International Affairs at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), where she directed global efforts to combat antisemitism and promote social justice and human rights. She continues to sit on the board of the ADL. Nazarian's extensive academic and philanthropic background includes a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Southern California and the founding of the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at UCLA, which is dedicated to exploring Israeli history, culture, and society.

This is the first of a two-part conversation.

Given the state of this country and world how are you feeling? How are you making sense of the democracy crisis and rise of neofascism and other forms of right-wing populist authoritarianism both here in the United States and around the world?

We are in a moment of crisis for democratic institutions across the world. Trump, much like Italy’s Georgia Meloni, Marine La Pen’s in France, the fact that Germany’s AfD (Alternative for Germany) is polling at record high numbers are all symptoms of the same problem – the systemic dissociation and feelings of dislocation that many people are feeling from democracy.

For the past several months I’ve been on the road first in Australia and then in Europe. In that time, I’ve had the opportunity to meet with elected officials, union leaders, heads of universities and others and it’s striking to me how I’m hearing the same challenges and the same alarm bells everywhere. This is a crisis that is bigger than any one country and we all need to start thinking bigger in order to address it.

I see this as a battle between liberal and illiberal forces, democratic and anti-democratic governments, extremist ideologies penetrating our political landscape and capturing our national narratives. The anti-Israel campaigns showing up globally from US campuses, to Europe, Latin America, Africa and even Asia is a telling sign.

Too many people in the United States, both among the elites and everyday Americans, naively believed that racism and white supremacism and antisemitism – which are part of the same political formation and ideology – were mostly vanquished and marginalized. The Age of Trump has exposed how wrong such people were and the damning implications of their error(s) for American society and the world.

Antisemitism functions similarly to a virus. It’s not always seen, its symptoms are not always felt, but can lay dormant in the body. When the immune system is weakened and the body is under stress, it flares up. In times of relative peace and prosperity, when there is trust in government institutions and trust that the state can solve the problems its citizens face, antisemitism in Western culture tends to stay marginalized and live in the fringes and dark corners of our society.

When the body politic is unstable, under stress or weakened, one of the very first symptoms of societal decline, upheaval or collapse tends to be a movement toward the “conspiracy of the Jew.” That is the situation we find ourselves in today, and unfortunately, we are seeing that despite our best attempts to address systemic antisemitism in the West since the end of the Holocaust, it’s just so deeply embedded in our society’s DNA that we find ourselves in the exact same position as other generations at a turning point have found themselves at.

This is due to the malleable nature of antisemitism, unlike other forms of hatred. It acts as a defining principle of the cause of all societal problems being faced at the time, with the perfect scapegoat. Jews serve as the perfect scapegoat precisely due to the millennia of hatred targeting them. That said, we have an opportunity to see these latest increases in antisemitism as the alarm bell they are to everyone who cares about the democratic order, and we have an opportunity to work together to stop things from further spiraling out of control if we work together.

There has been a very large increase in antisemitism in the Age of Trump. How do you explain this?

The numbers worldwide are staggering. The Anti-Defamation League recently released its 2023 Audit of Antisemitic incidents in the US and across the globe. The report showed there was a 140% increase year over year in antisemitic incidents in the United States, hitting a 3-year historic high. There were 5,000 attacks between October and December 2023 alone. These statistics are mirrored across Western democracies. We’ve seen a quadrupling of anti-Jewish attacks in France in 2023, a 589% increase in anti-Jewish attacks in Great Britain in 2023, a 320% increase in anti-Jewish attacks in Germany. Last month I addressed the Australian Jewish Community from the Sydney Opera House where just six months ago chants of “Gas the Jews” were being heard.

Trump and Trumpism have certainly been one of the factors at play here. We know from former Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly’s book that Trump believed that Adolph Hitler did “some good things." Immediately after the Charlottesville rally which was a major inflection point for the American Jewish community, he certainly gave a good dog whistle of antisemitic permissiveness when he said there were “very fine people on both sides” where terrible racists walked down the street chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”

Then of course there was his dinner with an antisemite leader at his Mar-a-Lago resort. In both big ways and small ways, Trump continues to tell antisemites that it is fine to operate out in the open and radicalize people through their use of disinformation and misinformation on the internet. But it is imperative that we not close our eyes to the broader operating forces, and that is extremist ideology — and we can certainly find that on the far right, as normalized by Trump — but also far left and Islamist Jihadist ideology.

To borrow from the title of a well-known book, social scientists and other experts have described the post-civil rights era as one of “racism without racists.” I am sure someone is writing a book about the Age of Trump where it is described as “antisemitism without antisemites.”

It’s an interesting proposition you raise. When we think of all the arguments that racists make to justify systemic racism in our society, I’d argue that a similar effect takes place with antisemitism. The language, stories and conspiracies of racism and antisemitism have been handed down from generation to generation as facts of circumstance which make them excruciatingly difficult to dislodge.

Our last greatest opportunity to do so was in the wake of World War II where we fought to remake the world order in such a way as to prevent global wars and ideologies that dehumanized others. I fear that with that work largely remaining undone, as most clearly manifested in the failings of the United Nations and post-war international institutions being captured by anti-democratic and illiberal actors bent on using those structures against the very values they were built on. When you have the most brutal regimes, such as Syria, responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of their own citizens, sitting on and chairing the UN Human Rights Commission, we know those institutions are a failure.

So where does this leave us with regards to antisemitism? We have seen this movie before, at a time when lists are being created to exclude Zionists/Jews from literary, artistic and musical communities, universities are boycotting and disinviting Israeli scholars, and a general global campaign is underway to delegitimize the only Jewish and democratic state, we must understand that such forces at play have a playbook they are using, and that is of the Nazi regime. Those of us fighting to combat antisemitism are very careful with Holocaust comparisons, in fact, usually we criticize such comparisons. However, we are at a point right now where there is no way to close our eyes to the same patterns and societal forces at play and the impact on Jewish communities worldwide which is one of fear and disillusion.

Part of the challenge with confronting white supremacy, racism, and antisemitism and other related belief systems and ideologies is the lazy trap where too many people believe that these concepts are normative and just “opinions” when in reality these are empirical truth claims that can be proved or disproved. To that point, what is antisemitism? How is it related to racism and white supremacy?

That is a huge question that I will try to answer in a parsimonious manner. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in its working definition on antisemitism states, “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” As part of its definition, the IHRA provides examples taken from the lived experience of Jews around the globe. Those examples include instances where Israel is delegitimized, demonized and subject to the use of double standards (known as 3 Ds).

Beyond attacks on Zionism, the core of antisemitism has been centered on our people’s maintenance of our cultural and religious identity for thousands of years. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Spanish, and the majority of European powers that arose in the modern era always viewed Jewish identity as a challenge to state power and religion. No matter how permissive those powers were of Jews living within their borders, there was always a sense that we were hidden in plain sight. That fierce independence of who we are has always been one of our strengths, but the flip side of that strength has been that anyone with an agenda of radicalism could point the disaffected in the direction of Jews as the cause for their struggles.

In this time of democracy crisis and ascendant neofascism and resurgent antisemitism, what does Holocaust Remembrance Day mean for you?

For me and for many Jews around the world, Yom Hashoah generally represented a day of commemoration of a travesty that had taken place in our past. We’ve been committed to keeping that memory alive, centering the lessons of those atrocities in our modern day lives. This year felt very different. We are no longer looking in the rear view mirror, rather waking up every morning witnessing more and more incidents that point directly to patterns that led to those atrocities. I was lucky enough to commemorate Yom Hashoah, on Lake Wannsee, having been invited to do a month-long residency at the American Academy in Berlin which sits on Lake Wannsee. Lake Wannsee is infamous for the villa where Nazi leadership cemented their plans for “the Final Solution” and the annihilation of European Jewry. Spending Yom Hashoah at that villa this year, walking the beautiful and manicured grounds of the beautiful Villa while remembering the bureaucratic and highly sanitary language used to design a whole of society campaign to rid Germany and Europe of its Jewish population.

Finding myself, as do so many Jews around the globe, in this surreal moment when it seems that all the safeguards that had been put in place post-WWII are showing cracks, international institutions that were built to enforce the rule of law being captured by illiberal and anti-democratic forces, and educational and research institutions created to continue the study and teaching of the horrors of the Holocaust having been rendered impotent to Holocaust denialism and distortion-based conspiracies, this Yom Hashoah can only be described as waking up to a nightmare that has become real.