There Are No White Supremacist Jews
August 2017, white supremacists marched in Charlottesville shouting, “Jews will not replace us”. October 2018, one white supremacist posted on social media that “Jews are taking over the white house”, and that Trump is a puppet of the Jews. Shabbat, the same month, a man enters a synagogue during a Bris celebration and butchers Jewish people who are praying. December 2018, Women’s March leader and Louis Farrakhan (“I’m not an antisemite, I’m an anti-termite”) fan, Tamika Mallory says: “White Jews, as white people, uphold white supremacy…”
At the same time, the conversation about racism within the Jewish community began heating up. Today, numerous articles and op-eds are being published about this issue. “White Jews” are being accused of upholding white supremacy. That’s what the Jewish community concludes when we read articles accusing us of actively promoting white supremacy. Note that this comes at a very specific point in time, when the Jewish community is coming under attack by both radical ends of the political spectrum. I spoke to several activists to understand the emerging discourse on the difference between “upholding white supremacy” (of which Jews are being accused), and “being a white supremacist”.
Following this discussion, I understood that both terms are sometimes being used with the aim of shutting down any discourse on the immense rise in…
