Fighting Antisemitism Without Jews

Trump thinks that only Christians speak for real Jewishness

Pope Pius XII, supercessionist and antisemite

Donald Trump claims to have devoted the early days of his presidency in large part to fighting antisemitism. His administration has unconstitutionally and illegally canceled $400 million in funding to Columbia university, claiming that the school has not done enough to fight antisemitism in the wake of pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year. Trump’s made similar (also unconstitutional) cuts at other universities. In addition, Trump has (unconstitutionally) targeted legal resident pro-Palestinian protestors, claiming they are antisemitic and can therefore be deported. One woman, Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, was arrested for writing an op-ed criticizing Israel’s (genocidal) policy in Gaza. This is a pretty clear violation of the first amendment. For fuck’s sake.

Trump again justifies all this unconstitutional fascist tyranny by claiming that he is speaking for Jews and defending Jews. Jews, though, are not convinced. In fact, according to a new poll from GBAO Strategies, fully 52% of Jewish respondents said that Trump is himself antisemitic. 70% said he was fascist or racist. 74% disapprove of the job he’s doing as president.

More than that, Jewish people overwhelmingly believe that the things Trump says he is doing to fight antisemitism actually increase antisemitism. 49% of Jews in the survey said that cutting funding to university increases antisemitism while only 26% said the cuts reduce antisemisim; 61% of respondents said Trump deporting pro Palestinian protestors increased antisemitism, and only 20% thought it reduced antisemitism.

Jewish people overwhelmingly reject Trump’s agenda in general and his policies (supposedly) on their behalf in particular. The fact that Jews think Trump is himself antisemitic, and is moreover promoting antisemitism, has, of course, not deterred Trump. Nor is it regularly mentioned in pieces about Trump’s “pro Jewish” policies.

For instance, this CNN piece on the Columbia funding cuts quotes one Jewish researcher who opposes the cuts and one Jewish student leader who supports them. But the he said/he said is not contextualized with any information about what Jews in general think of Trump or of this policy. (They fucking oppose it.) Nor is Trump’s own history of antisemitism mentioned or discussed.

All of which raises the question; why is this okay? Why is the Trump administration allowed to frame itself as the voice of Jewish people when Jewish people overwhelmingly despise him and think he’s harming us? Why is fascism being advanced in our name even when we’re saying pretty clearly that we hate fascism and this dreadful administration?

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The real Jews aren’t Jews, according to Christians

I think you can understand the dynamic here by looking at what Trump himself has said about Jewish people. Many times (and despite repeated pushback) Trump has insisted that he is the best friend Israel has ever had, and that Jewish Democrats who don’t vote Republican are “disloyal” to Israel and ungrateful to him. “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” he said in one typical statement.

Trump frames himself as the arbiter of Jewish loyalty and the leader of the Jewish people—the King of the Jews, if you will. The fact that Jewish people do not support him is not a sign that he is betraying Jewish interests; it’s a sign that Jewish people are betraying Jewish interests, because Trump—a Christian—defines true Judaism.

This sounds ridiculous. But it’s a very common form of antisemitism. Jewish people are often caricatured as inauthentic or fake; they are “rootless cosmopolitans” who do not really belong in America, or Germany, or Russia or anywhere. And if Jews are inauthentic—if they are not really themselves—then they are also fake Jews. Christians, in contrast, are authentic, real, natural—which means that Christians are the real Jews that Jews themselves can never be.

There’s a long history of this form of Christians-are-the-real-Jews philo/antisemitism. It’s referred to as supersessionism and is traced back at least to the early Church fathers, many of whom believed that the Christian church replaced the Jewish people as the chosen of God. The Jewish people no longer have a covenant with God; they are, indeed, no longer the Jewish people. They are fake and disloyal to themselves; the real Jews, the loyal Jews, are Christians. The only people who can speak for the Jewish people, in this formulation, are Christians; Jews are just degraded meat puppets to be manipulated by the hand of Christ.

Not just Jews

The belief that Jews cannot speak for themselves as Jews, then, is embedded in Chrisitan theology and practice. But it’s also important to note that this kind of epistemological delegitmization is a common experience for many marginalized people.

One egregious example involved Felicia Sonmez, a Washington Post reporter who is a survivor of sexual assault. Post editors told Sonmez that she could not cover the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of raping a woman in college. She was also prevented from covering misconduct allegations against New York governor Andrew Cuomo and Missouri Governor Eric Greiten.

You see the same dynamic in coverage of trans women. Most mainstream discussions of trans people do not include trans voices; instead, cis writers like Jessie Singal and David French are given large, lucrative platforms to discuss whether trans people should get health care and under what circumstances. As cultural critic and trans feminist Katherine Cross explained to me some time back:

We are the conversation piece in cisgender living rooms. We are an object of academic theory that demands explanation, not human beings to be engaged with . . . Who we are, when it is seriously countenanced at all, is still seen as outlandish; we are the nadir of ‘PC gone mad’ to some, people who change gender and sex, who trouble one of the most fundamental, bedrock assumptions of our society. Better to dismiss us as sideshows and debate about us like a coffee table abstraction than to seriously engage with who and what we are.

Cis people are better able to speak for trans people than trans people themselves; people who have not experienced sexual assault are better able to understand sexual assault than survivors; Christians are the true voice of Jews. In each case, marginalized people are seen as unable to speak for themselves; their voices are only valuable if they cosign or echo those who are not marginalized. Jews, sexual assault survivors, trans people, are not entitled to speak for themselves; they must fall silent before their betters. This is, in fact, a major part of what being marginalized means.

Trump’s program against antisemitism is antisemitic

The majority of Jewish people who say Trump is antisemitic are correct. The Jews who say that Trump’s programs to fight antisemitism increase antisemitism are right too. And one reason they’re right is that Trump’s opposition to antisemitism is itself antisemitic. Trump is speaking for Jewish people; he is claiming to embody Jewish people. He is sidelining us in discussions of, and policies designed to address, our own experiences. He sees us as tools and as supplicants, not as people. That’s dehumanizing, condescending, and stigmatizing. It’s antisemitic.

Jewish leaders and Jewish orgs have been reluctant to say any of this forcefully, in part out of cowardice, in part because they’ve prioritized support for the genocide of Palestinians above any other issue, including antisemitism at home. This is a massive moral failing, to put it mildly. Allowing christofascist leaders to ventriloquize Jews as a way to target other marginalized people is disgusting.

It’s also quite dangerous for Jewish people. Letting Christians decide what counts as antisemitism, and who counts as a Jew, will not buttress or protect Jewish people in this country. Fascism is bad for many reasons and for many people. Despite the failure of leadership, most Jews understand that it isn’t good for us, either.