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| Anti-Semitism on the left and right. |
I've blogged how the left has a growing anti-Semitism problem. (Aside: this week saw more examples: 1, 2, 3.)
But I must be honest: it's also true of the right, unfortunately. The conservative and right-wing movement in the US, despite influential Jewish conservatives like Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro, has a growing problem of anti-Semitism.
Historically, the fringe right has held the mantle of anti-Semitism: Adolf Hitler, actual neo-Nazis, white nationalists and open racists like David Duke, various alt-right figures whose open hatred for Jews has been condemned and pushed out of the mainstream.
It's one reason why Jews in the US historically tend to vote left.
Increasingly, these fringe views are seeing adoption in mainstream conservatism.
Most recently, popular right-wing commentator Candace Owens recorded an anti-Semitic conspiracy-riddled diatribe. In it, she accused Jews of controlling the media, censoring speech, threatening her personal safety, assassinating JFK, occupying US positions of power, murdering Christians for Passover rituals, and more wild-eyed conspiracy nonsense. She stated that a secret evil cabal masquerading as Jews established the state of Israel. It's terribly sad to watch:
The unique thing here is, Candace Owens is not fringe. She's mainstream.
Between Facebook, X, and Instagram, she's got over 15 million followers. Earlier this week her live broadcast, "The Truth About Zionism", garnered 1.6 million views. She's appeared on numerous conservative and right-wing news outlets, shows, and podcasts, including Fox News, the Dennis Prager Show, Joe Rogan Experience, and was most recently employed by The Daily Wire before being fired over her increasingly anti-Jewish statements.
This past week Owens shared the following image:
Her descent into anti-Semitic madness has other right-wing commentators asking, "What happened to her?"
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump distanced himself from anti-Semites, saying if elected he will deport jihad supporters.
(Aside: Owens doesn't support Hamas, as far as I know, but her path is quickly taking her in that direction. Barring a major course correction, I wouldn't be surprised to see her openly praising Hamas in the 12 months.)
What conservatives should watch out for
I'm a life-long religious conservative. From my vantage point, there are four major contributing factors towards right-wing folks embracing anti-Semitism:
- Conspiracy theories
- Anti-wokeism
- Persecution complex
- Isolationism
Allow me to elaborate each of these.
1. Conspiracies.
- Flat earth? Kabbalist Jews are hiding the true shape of the earth.
- 9/11? A Zionist plot to throw the US into a Middle East war against Arabs.
- JFK assassination? The gunman was actually a Jew working for the Mossad.
- COVID? It was created by Jews, covered up by Jews, the vaccine was created by Jews, and the lockdown a Jewish plot to harm the economy.
- Inflation? Jewish bankers and corrupt financiers are responsible.
- Some future societal ill that I haven't listed here? No worries, I'm sure we can find a way to blame the Jews!
For conservatives, embracing conspiracy theories can feel like truth telling. "They are lying to you, but I am going to tell the truth!" is a tempting message for people who already feel the mainstream institutions are untrustworthy.
2. Anti-wokeism.
The right wing has highlighted absurdities of wokeism. Outcomes of wokeism include advocating for children to have the right to cut off their healthy genitals upon experiencing dysphoria, the pseudoscientific idea that a person can change his gender at will, removing scholastic standards in the name of equity, giving prepubescent children access to pornography in the name of education, undermining merit through diversity hiring practices, the inability to define what a woman is. I could list more.
But an ugly reality is that this anti-wokeism can often devolve into anti-Semitism.
"The mainstream media is lying to us" easily becomes "The corrupt media controlled by Jews is lying to us."
We conservatives were beratingly told to "trust the science", but many scientists are disproportionately Jewish.
We rightly reject woke identity politics, holding to color-blindness and meritocracy. But this drives some to a different kind of identity politics: nationalism. While pride in national identity is no sin, it suffers many of problems of woke identity politics, resulting in tribalist abominations like white nationalism and so-called Christian nationalism.
3. Persecution complex.
We conservatives often feel like outcasts.
- Do you think men who dress as women are still men? Transphobe!
- Do you think marriage is between one man and one woman? Bigot!
- Do you think Islamic extremism is bad? Your label is Islamophobe.
- Do you think it's good for a country to have borders and control its immigration? Xenophobe and Racist!
- Do you think it's good for families and society that children have both a mother and father? Homophobe!
- Do you hold any position contrary the major institutions of the US (medical, scientific, university, government, etc.?) If so, you're cancelled. You'll be fired from your job for wrongthink.
Often, this persecution reinforces our own views. If we face resistance from an opinion, it can actually strengthen our opinion. It's a weird quirk of psychology.
I experienced this myself during the COVID pandemic.
I had always believed that vaccines were good. Even wrote an occasional blog post about it.
But during the pandemic, my views on vaccines got all kinds of pushback from my own corner of the world, politically and religiously. Suddenly, I was persecuted: people were telling me I was demon-possessed, that I was in a dark delusion, that I was siding with the global elites (whoever they are...maybe the Jews?) People who I had known as friends for years turned on me. More than one longtime friend claimed I had received the Mark of Beast.
What was once a small issue for me became a large, strongly-held one. I wrote dozens, perhaps hundreds, of posts on this blog and social media arguing against the anti-vaxx position.
Though I still am convinced that the anti-vaxx position is terribly wrong and putting lives in danger, I probably went too far. Whether pro- or anti-, vaccines should not be a major part of our identity as conservatives or as disciples of Yeshua.
The same psychological backfire effect is true for conservatives at large, I suspect.
You might hold a somewhat reasonable position that the state of Israel has a bad policy on, say, religious minorities in Israel. You get pushback on that. Someone claims you're a bigot. Now your position is stronger. Now you think Israelis are persecuting Arabs; a form of racism. You get more pushback calling you an anti-Semite. Now your position is even stronger: Israel is committing genocide against non-Jews, and Jews worldwide have a deep hatred for non-Jews.
Down the slide you go.
I suspect in Candace Owens' case, she did exactly this.
She had some anti-Israel views in her time at the Daily Wire, putting her at odds with her bosses. When she faced pushback, she doubled-down. When her celebrity friend Kanye West started facing backlash for his praising of Hitler, she defended her friend, and this caused her to receive backlash as well. Finally, when the chasm between her views and that of her employer's became too much, she was fired from her job. This strengthened her anti-Jewish views even more, resulting in the clear anti-Semitism she's espousing today.
We conservatives must be careful not to confuse opposition for persecution. And even if we are persecuted unjustly, it doesn't mean our views are correct or just. When I hear that Candace Owens requires a security team because of death threats, I'm grieved by that, but it doesn't mean that her wild views on Jews are somehow true.
4. Isolationism.
The US has a long history of isolationism. In both World Wars, for example, powerful groups of pacifists and isolationists kept the United States out of these wars until there was no other choice.
Among American conservatives, isolationism still rings true for many. "Why are we spending so much of our GDP on foreign wars when our vets face homelessness and mental health crises?"
Like anti-wokeism, isolationism may have merits. But on its extremes, it leads to a cold indifference that abandons allies and righteous causes.
Staying out of foreign wars may be wise, but standing up against Nazi Germany was a righteous cause. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, and isolationism at its extremes tells the United States to do nothing.
In the case of anti-Semitism, isolationism can lure conservatives into thinking that we ought to abandon the righteous cause of Israel against Islamic terror. It has no foresight into a worse future where Islamism is allowed to reign free, a reality being experienced now in parts of Europe.
Summary
Conservatives have a growing anti-Semitism problem. The far-right and the far-left are not on opposite ends of a line. Rather, the line is a horseshoe, with anti-Semitism common to both far-left and far-right sides of the horseshoe.
Conservatives should be aware of this, root it out from our own movement. In the past we've successfully moved such views to the fringe. But now anti-Semitism threatens to creep into the mainstream through popular political influencers like Candace Owens and celebrities like Kanye West.
Conservatives must be on guard that our political persuasions on wokeness, isolationism, conspiracies, or that our persecution from mainstream institutions, real or perceived, doesn't cause us to blame the Jews. If we fail in this regard, we become an instrument of the devil, worse off than our progressive counterparts.
Finally, a call to you, dear reader. If you're reading this, you probably are a follower of Yeshua, and you're probably conservative. Can I ask you to unfollow Candace Owens? By doing that, we can signal we cannot abide her new positions on Israel and the Jewish people.
