Democrats are Better than Republicans on Antisemitism

Our Republican friends would like us to forget that the leader of the Republican Party, the man the GOP thrice nominated for President of the United States, is a corrupt, ignorant, convicted felon who admires authoritarians and aspires to be one with a long record of antisemitism and accusing Jews of disloyalty. Those are not the only antisemitic tropes he’s used. Trump dined with Kanye West and white nationalist/Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Trump said that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the 2017 Charlottesville march that featured white supremacists carrying tiki torches chanting “Jews will not replace us.”

Trump repeatedly invokes Hitler and the Nazis and called for the “creation of a unified reich” on May 21, 2024. No less an authority than JD Vance once called Trump “America’s Hitler.” If you don’t think Trump is antisemitic, read Rob Eshman’s article. It’s impossible to conclude otherwise.

On September 19, 2024, Trump said that Jewish people ought to have their heads examined and that if he doesn’t win, “the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that.” Read the transcript of the relevant portion.

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove wrote on September 20, 2024, that Trump is “trafficking in the most base form of antisemitism” and that what Trump said last week “is beyond dog-whistle. It is a form of preemptive scapegoating aimed to scare Jews into voting for Trump. … It is abhorrent, it has no place in our national discourse, and it must receive blanket condemnation from every person of conscience.”

Yet few Republican members of the House or Senate have ever condemned him for his antisemitism, and none of his rivals for the 2024 nomination condemned him for antisemitism during the campaign. All five top GOP House leaders backed Trump for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination.

But 147 Republicans voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election, an election Joe Biden won legally and fairly, hours after the violent antisemitic insurrection incited by Trump on January 6, 2021, failed.

Our Republican friends would like us to forget that the top House Republicans, all elected by their GOP peers, all have histories of antisemitism:

• On October 25, 2023, Republicans unanimously elected Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) Speaker of the House following Kevin McCarthy’s ouster. Johnson is a dangerous MAGA extremist who was one of the main players in the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Johnson has ties to Israel’s far-right, has engaged in antisemitic rhetoric, and displays a Christian nationalist flag outside his office. He called abortion “a holocaust” and linked the judicial philosophy that legalized the right to an abortion to Hitler. On January 30, 2024, Johnson invited a pastor with a record that includes notoriety as a Christian Nationalist, involvement in the January 6th insurrection, and a long history of spewing hateful vitriol toward Jews, Muslims, LGBTQ+ individuals to serve as Guest Chaplain. No Republicans objected.
• Republicans previously elected Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who voted against certifying the 2020 election hours after Trump incited a violent insurrection, as their House Leader and Speaker of the House. In 2018, McCarthy posted and then deleted an antisemitic tweet about Jewish money in politics following outcry from the Jewish community. He not only never apologized, but he doubled down by refusing to admit it was antisemitic. His Republican colleagues responded not by censuring him, asking him to resign, or stripping him of committee assignments, but by electing him Leader. (Republicans seem to have a thing for this antisemitic trope — in that same election cycle, at least six Republicans ran ads featuring Jews clutching cash.)
• Republicans elected Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) House Majority Leader. Scalise voted against certifying the 2020 election hours after Trump incited a violent insurrection. Scalise blamed “radical, Soros-backed elements of the Democratic Party” for violence against Republicans in 2018 and described himself as “David Duke without the baggage.” (Soros conspiracy theories are antisemitic.)
• Republicans elected Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) House Majority Whip. Emmer did not vote against certifying the 2020 election (nobody’s perfect) but he established his anti-democracy bona fides by signing on to an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit by the State of Texas to invalidate the 2020 election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He established his antisemitic bona fides by accusing Jewish billionaires of trying to buy Congress. He’s never apologized.
• Republicans elected Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to the #4 spot, House GOP Conference Chair. Stefanik, who voted against certifying the 2020 election hours after Trump incited a violent insurrection, supports Great Replacement Theory, the same racist, antisemitic conspiracy theory that the shooter who killed ten Black Americans in Buffalo believed in. Stefanik backed Carl Paladino for Congress.

The contrast between Democrats and Republicans is clear:

• Compare the 2024 Democratic and Republican platforms on Israel and antisemitism. The Democratic platform is the strongest and most detailed platform on antisemitism ever adopted by any American political party. The Republican platform is … well, read it for yourself.
• In February 2019, when Republicans moved to include language clearly and specifically condemning antisemitism in an unrelated bill, Democrats unanimously voted to include the language — and then 177 Republicans voted against the entire bill, including the antisemitism language. But the bill passed with the antisemitism language drafted by the GOP, thanks to 100% Democratic support and 18 Republican votes.
• In March 2019, the House passed H. Res. 183, which again clearly and specifically condemned antisemitism. No Democrats voted against, but 23 Republicans did.
• On May 25, 2023, the Biden-Harris administration released the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.
• On May 31, 2023, the House unanimously passed Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (D-FL) resolution condemning the rise of antisemitism and calling on elected officials to identify and educate others on the contributions of the Jewish American community.
• On September 28, 2023, as part of President Biden’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, eight federal agencies clarified — for the first time in writing — that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits certain forms of antisemitic, Islamophobic, and related forms of discrimination in federally funded programs and activities. Title VI applies to all programs and activities supported by federal financial assistance — these protections are wide-ranging and provide important tools to prevent and curb discrimination. Read the details, along with highlights of dozens of actions taken by the Biden administration to counter antisemitism pursuant to the National Strategy, in this fact sheet.
• The Biden administration launched a listening tour of schools and colleges to hear from Jewish students about hostility on campus.
• The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, led by Amb. Deborah Lipstadt, published a report on September 28, 2023, on Biden administration policies, programs, and actions worldwide aimed at countering antisemitism.
• On October 26, 2023, the White House slammed “grotesque” displays of antisemitism on college campuses following Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack against Israel.
• On November 5, 2023, The Biden-Harris Administration condemned, “in the strongest terms, the alarming rise in antisemitic incidents at schools and on college campuses” and announced some of the steps it is taking to address this alarming rise.
• On November 15, 2023, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) offered an amendment (№114) to H.R.5894, the Fiscal Year 2024 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, which would prohibit funding going to any higher education institution that supports an event where antisemitism allegedly takes place. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and other Democrats voted against the amendment (which passed the House and probably will be removed in the Senate) because, as Nadler explained, “threatening to pull federal funding from the universities and college campuses that need our help the most is, at best, wildly counterproductive. Moreover, the amendment is so broad that it threatens to defund institutions that are working in good faith to fight antisemitism on campus. Under Representative Lawler’s construction, a university might lose its funding if a single student showed up to a single event with a single antisemitic sign — even if that student had no affiliation with the school. It should also be noted that Congress doesn’t cut funding to universities when individual students on campus use vile racist or homophobic speech.”

Republicans would rather that we ignore the rot at the head of their party and the cancer of hate and antisemitism that has metastasized throughout the GOP at the federal and state levels. Republicans would rather that we ignore the leaders of the Democratic Party: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) — all of whom have compiled perfect records on Israel and antisemitism during their time in office. That’s good for U.S.-Israel relations and the Jewish-American community but tough luck for Republicans.

Republicans want us to focus on seven or so Democrats known as “the Squad” who are out of pattern with the overwhelming support for Israel’s safety and security evidenced by vote after vote by Democrats in Congress as well as the Democratic Platform on Israel. The Squad is less than 4% of the 213-member Democratic Caucus. I’m all for calling out our own side, but not creating false equivalencies. Do you really think that the Squad, collectively, has more influence than the Democratic leadership team? The influence of the Squad pales in comparison to the GOP leadership, comprised entirely of members with antisemitic histories. Each party always has outliers. The difference between the Democratic and Republican parties is that antisemitism is mainstream in the Republican Party,

Republicans also seek to divert attention from their party’s antisemitism by conflating antisemitism on campus with the Democratic Party, as if students and faculty, not the Democrats actually in Congress, set policy for the country. The anti-Israel activists blocking traffic, airports, and train stations are not members of Congress. Some are threatening to stay home instead of voting to reelect Biden. Not exactly true blue Democrats.

We should not take the bait. We should not let the Republicans distract us from antisemitism and authoritarianism in the mainstream of the Republican Party by blowing the views of a few out-of-pattern Democrats out of proportion. We take the bait when we dignify their pearl-clutching with a rational response, as if their concerns are made in good faith.

The one Palestinian American member of Congress out of 435 views the creation of modern Israel as a catastrophe for her people with the same intensity that we view the creation of modern Israel as the miraculous realization of a 2,000-year-old dream for the Jewish nation. Had this dream been realized ten years earlier, six million Jewish lives could have been saved. But no matter what Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) says and how many times she says it, she only gets one vote. Her views on Israel are not the views of the Democratic Party — the votes in Congress prove it. Her rhetoric on Israel is not Democratic Party rhetoric.

The vast majority of Democrats (including most Jewish members) voted against censuring Tlaib on November 7, 2023, because, as Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) explained, members of Congress should not be disciplined for exercising their right to free speech, no matter how offensive that speech might be, and because the censure resolution “not only degrades our Constitution but it cheapens the meaning of discipline in this body for people who actually commit wrongful actions, like bribery, fraud, violent assault and so on.” Rabbi Jay Michaelson noted that it was “a rich irony to see a cadre of 2020 election deniers accusing Rep. Tlaib of spreading a false narrative.”

What I said about members of Congress applies tenfold to celebrities, students, musicians, and others in public life — as well as campus protesters. They don’t speak for the Democratic Party, they are not elected officials, and while they may (even in the absence of evidence) influence some of their followers, to take the bait by pretending their views have remotely the importance of views held by major government officials is an exercise in self-delusion. The protesters attack Democrats and call President Biden “genocide Joe.” The Democratic tent is large, but not large enough for that kind of hate. The protesters did not speak at the Democratic Convention — they were literally outside the tent. Only in the Republican Party do we find leaders of the party emboldening violent extremism and engaging in antisemitic rhetoric.

We should not conflate the left writ large with the Democratic Party unless the Democratic Party mirrors and welcomes the antisemitic left the way the Republican Party mirrors the antisemitic right. When Democrats see antisemitism within their party, they are quick to condemn it.

Jonathan Chait notes that “it is certainly true that there is antisemitism on the left, frequently presenting itself as criticism of Israel. (The usual trick is to make an antisemitic statement and replace “Jews” with “Zionists.”) But it is overwhelmingly directed in opposition to the Democratic Party. The most antisemitic activists on the right tend to be pro-Trump, which is why the ranks of J6ers were overrepresenting with white nationalists. The most antisemitic activists of the left despise Joe Biden and generally oppose the Democratic Party.”

We only have two major parties in this country. Extremists on the left have no choice but the Democratic Party and extremists on the right have no choice but the Republican Party. In a country of 330 million people you will find antisemitism on the left and the right. But only in the Republican Party do you see antisemites elected to statewide and national office.

You don’t see Democrats in Congress or the White House describing marchers carrying tiki torches chanting “Jews will not replace us” as “very fine people.” You don’t see people with Nazi flags at rallies for Democratic candidates. Republicans would rather we talk about students no one heard of before who deliver anti-Israel speeches. Anti-Israel speeches are not good but even when they veer into antisemitism, are they in the same category as antisemitism in government, espoused by the highest-ranking members of one of our two major political parties?

Antisemitism is unacceptable in all forms and from all sources. But if we are serious about fighting antisemitism, pretending that all forms of antisemitism present the same threat level and that “both sides” of the political spectrum have the same problem is an exercise in denial. As between the two parties (we don’t get to vote for Dean of Students), the magnitude of the problem is far greater within the Republican Party. In January 2024, Republicans launched an impeachment drive against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that was laced with antisemitic rhetoric.

That’s not what donors to some Jewish organizations want to hear. That’s not what some non-partisan organizations think they can say. That’s not what some self-proclaimed independent, above-it-all, think for themselves both-siders are willing to accept because for them, “partisanship” is a dirty word. But the worst form of partisanship is creating a false equivalence between the parties on any issue; doing so plays into the hands of the party that benefits from the false equivalence — in this case, the Republican Party. Maybe we’re better off sticking to the truth.

By writing this article I’ve just given a master class on what it means to take the bait. Republicans will play this game again and again. It’s all they’ve got. I could re-run this piece every time the GOP does this the way the Onion re-runs its gun tragedy piece. Instead, I’ll just update this post as needed.

I wrote a similar post focused on why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel.

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This post was last updated on June 4, 2025.