Matthew Anderson
Feb 25, 2017 · 4 min read

The latest in “majority telling the minority they’re not really oppressed”.

There are so many problems with this I don’t know where to begin.

To start with, your assertion that it isn’t significant in America is largely based on governmental action and doesn’t include even basic knowledge of the popularity of implicit antisemitism (in the form of stereotypes that aren’t necessarily consciously acknowledged but drive decision-making). Nor does it acknowledge the popularity of antisemitic hate crimes where Jews are number 2 per capita in hate crime targets, having only recently been overtaken by the LGBTQ community.

The fact is Jews (like asians) are a model minority and bigotry against them do not follow the same rules. The implicit belief in not being a real citizen and having divided loyalties is still there, but because the stereotypes are largely viewed as positive they’re not generally subject to the same hatred that ethnic groups viewed as overtly hostile are… well that is until the majority population perceives what it thinks are the model minority’s actual loyalties as being in conflict with the majority population’s interests. Because these implicit biases are largely unaddressed and often encouraged even by the subject population who see being seen as good at finance for example as a way to get ahead.

As such, when society as a whole sees reason to hate the model minority backlash tends to be swift and brutal. We see this in Japanese intermnment camps in the US and in the myriad Jewish expulsions throughout history, as well as the holocaust itself since Weimar republic was largely considered one of the best places to be a Jew. The very stereotypes which make the model minority desirable (intelligence largely), suddenly turn them into existential threats.

For Jews the stereotyped true loyalty is to a global tribe manifesting through economic. In other words, if they feel like they’re poor unfairly, it’s the perfect grounds to blame the Jews which is why hate crime against Jews remains so high because there are always poor people.

As for the recent uptick:

The uptick of attacks didn’t happen in isolation. Those “trolls” on twitter aren’t just trolls anymore. They’re empowered because they just elected their candidate as president of the united states. Donald Trump’s victory in the primaries literally came from this movement.

And how did he respond? Well you clearly missed the indicators that he is proffering political antisemitism because he did it three times during his campaign.

  1. At a meeting of conservative Jews he said, “Stupidly, you want to give money… But you’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money.” “You want to control your own politicians”. Note that this is a direct reference to the Jews as corruptors stereotype. This would be the theme of all of his campaign’s antisemitic messaging.
  2. The 6 pointed star on a Hillary poster which says “most corrupt politician ever” on top of a pile of money that he tweeted. Even though the standard star is 5 points this wouldn’t have really raised eyebrows if it hadn’t been for incident one and the fact that it was later found out that this was the source: https://archive.fo/E0Dto (caution, lots of antisemitism)
  3. The last campaign ad which featured dire warmings about our politicians being bought by a sinister cabal of globalists. The wording (drawn from antisemitic conspiracy theory rhetoric) and the strong featuring of three Jews who are not politicians makes it clear that this is again a reference to the Jews as corruptors with money stereotype.

Of course immediately when he took office, no mention of Jews for holocaust day of remembrance and he had to be pressured to make a statement about the antisemitic attacks.

It’s pretty clear he’s been exploiting political antisemitism and you haven’t been paying attention. These were bullhorns to his supporters that he’s against the Jews.

As for Israel:

Israel is not involved as of yet and seems to have no desire to be involved. The government put it’s pull support behind Trump and whether it doesn’t know or doesn’t care about Trump’s antisemitism, they lose more from dimishing Trump’s political capital then whatever they could gain from exploiting the antisemitism he ran on because he’s given them such a free hand. Israel cares little for the Jews in the diaspora.

Furthermore, paying attention to the plight of one marginalized group does not somehow detract from the others. In fact the American Islamic population seems quite sensitive to the fact that Jews are targets right now and are actively contributing the reconstruction efforts.

So in conclusion:

Antisemitism is a major force in American culture, it’s just largely ignored because it’s seen as benign for the most part, but this also translates to high per capita hate crimes.

Trump ran on antisemitism and continues to support it, bolstering his “troll” base including on that topic.

His support of Israel exists separately from his antisemitism, he never had to think about it because consistency was always something he lacked.

Stop telling a historically marginalized group they’re not oppressed!