Member-only story
The Campus Anti-Semitism Meltdown
Trump’s executive order prompts a media screw-up and a Twitter storm — but also raises real issues
The saga of Donald Trump’s executive order on “Combating Anti-Semitism,” signed last Wednesday, is a story in two parts.
The first part is a tempest-in-a-teacup story of botched reporting and an ensuing “Trump is Hitler” freakout on the left.
The second part is an actual story that raises difficult issues about bigotry, double standards, and freedom of speech.
Both parts say a lot about the current social climate.
Literally Hitler?
On the evening of Tuesday, December 10, social media erupted in alarm over a tweet from the New York Times account suggesting that a new executive order from Donald Trump was about to do nothing less than redefine Judaism, officially making it a “nationality” rather than a religion. (The Times story linked in the tweet had a single line referring to such a redefinition.)
