My view of Donald Trump was long a deliberate denial. Intellectually, I knew he was a soulless character lacking in ethics, morals, and basic human decency, but the dishonest attempts by the legacy media and entrenched swamp creatures to bring Trump down made me pretend Trump wasn’t as despicable as I knew him to be. There’s no denying Trump’s deplorability now.
In having dinner last week with the antisemitic rapper formerly known as Kanye West, the twentysomething white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, and the pedophilia advocate Milo Yiannopoulos, Trump figuratively shouted from the rooftops that he really is as despicable as more than half of America already believed. Adding insult to his own injury, Trump feigned ignorance that he didn’t know the identities and backgrounds of Fuentes and Yiannopoulos when they showed up supposedly unannounced. If I invited someone to dinner and they unexpectedly showed up with two guests, even a nobody like me would demand knowing their identities and why they were tagging along.
Kanye, who now goes by the name Ye, reportedly suffers from mental health issues, but he knew exactly what he was doing bringing Fuentes and Yiannopoulos to his dinner with Trump. Ye trumped Trump, playing the former president for a fool and using him as a prop to promote his own agenda, which is an unabashed hatred of Jews.
Kanye is running for president in 2024, a bid the chattering class doesn’t take seriously. I recall they said Trump could never win when he first made noises about running for president. The legacy media failed to appreciate the considerable hatred a big swath of America had for Hillary Clinton, and they possibly don’t appreciate America’s considerable hatred for Jews, which they’ve helped unleash. The legacy media for years has turned a blind eye to repeated antisemitic remarks by Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Minnesota’s Ilan Omar and fueled their legitimacy by calling them “progressives.”
Tlaib and Omar have the good political sense to refer to Jews as Zionists, but their goal is to delegitimize American Jewry, even those with the most liberal values. Tlaib recently declared that one couldn’t be a progressive if they supported Israel. You know who else made that argument? President Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a 2019 Newsweek op-ed where she also disparaged the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as “severely racist.”
Omar once tweeted that for Jews, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby.” She also has charged that “Israel has hypnotized the world,” and accused AIPAC of paying off American politicians. The anti-Israel “Americans for Justice in Palestine Action” in a November 21 report repeated that message, declaring that “rightwing Zionist organizations” tainted “our” elections.
According to the Anti-Defamation League website, Ye continuously promulgates antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories, most notably that Jews are disproportionately powerful and that they control the media, including the music industry. It’s a message long promoted by Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who the ADL has branded, “The Most Popular Antisemite in America.” Among those influenced by Farrakhan was the comedian Chelsea Handler who publicly praised his “powerful” race rhetoric.
Fuentes has previously denied the Holocaust and he’s called on Jews to stop talking about it. “I’ve heard enough about this Holocaust,” he said on one of his broadcasts. “I’ve heard enough about it.” The guy is a moron.
Unfortunately, there’s a fast-growing audience for Ye’s and Fuentes’ messages.
Antisemitic incidents have been rising steadily, reaching a record high in the U.S. in 2021 with a total of 2,717 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism reported to the ADL, a 34 percent increase year over year and the highest number of incidents since ADL began tracking them in 1979. An ADL 2021 survey revealed that 63 percent of American Jews had experienced or witnessed antisemitic behavior or comments in the previous five years.
Between May 7 and 14 in 2021, amid an outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas, there were 17,000 tweets using variations of the phrase, “Hitler was right.” The tweets were allowed long before Elon Musk took over the social media site. It’s reasonable to expect that Musk will tolerate such hate speech given that he welcomed Ye back on to Twitter after the rapper was suspended by previous management.
Indications are that more violent and extreme antisemitic incidents are fermenting. Ten days ago, New York City police arrested two men whose plans included “shooting up a synagogue.” The NYPD’s impressive crime prevention didn’t garner much publicity.
Antisemitism has even extended to the yoga world where a yogi in supposedly “progressive” Berkeley, CA, used her studio’s computers to register a virulent Jew hating video platform for her then boyfriend, who is tied to a growing movement distributing antisemitic flyers in the Bay area and other regions of the country.
Jewish college students are facing increased antisemitic hate, often couched in anti-Zionist verbiage and activities. One in three college students personally experiences antisemitic hate during the academic year, according to an October 2021 survey conducted for the ADL and Hillel International. The survey found that 32 percent of Jewish university students experienced antisemitism directed at them, often on multiple occasions.
As well, more than 350 anti-Israel incidents occurred on campuses nationwide during the academic year 2021-2022, according to the ADL’s annual Campus Report. The most common means of harassment involved excluding Zionist students, supporting anti-Israel violence, and perpetuating antisemitic tropes, according to the report.
Antisemitism in the U.S. has extended to the workplace. A survey of U.S. corporate hiring managers ResumeBuilder.com conducted this month revealed that one in four managers said they were less inclined to move forward with Jewish applicants. Additionally, 29% said they know of colleagues who are negatively biased against Jewish applicants.
When asked how they determine an applicant is Jewish, the respondents said it is often voluntarily disclosed. However, many respondents said they make assumptions based on the applicant’s educational background, last name, past or current experiences with Jewish organizations, and their appearance. Other ways respondents said they identify an individual as Jewish are “voice,” “mannerisms,” and “they are very frugal.”
When asked why they are less likely to move forward with Jewish applicants, the top reasons included Jews have too much power and control, claim to be the ‘chosen people,’ and have too much wealth.
To witness workplace antisemitism firsthand, a visit to the newsroom of the New York Times might be a good place to start. Here’s a paragraph from the July 2020 resignation letter of former Times columnist Bari Weiss, who is Jewish and has written a book about antisemitism:
My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.
The legacy media is feigning a concern about Trump having dinner with avowed Jew haters, but their motivation is to discredit Trump, not a genuine worry about America’s pervasive antisemitism. Tlaib and Omar, always quick to criticize Trump’s alleged racism, have been noticeably silent about his dinner with Ye. If their criticisms of Israel aren’t rooted in antisemitism, this would be an ideal opportunity to provide some validation.
In fact, I haven’t heard much public outrage or concern about Ye’s antisemitism, which is why he feels emboldened to escalate his rhetoric. Meanwhile, Jewish columnists like the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg engage in wishful thinking.
“Maybe this time, for the first time, it won’t get worse,” Goldberg opined in a column headlined, “Antisemitism’s March Into the Mainstream.” Expecting a different outcome on a story that’s recurred for centuries is the very definition of insanity.