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The news media has decided that YouTube streamer Hasan Piker is the main issue in the midterm election because he is, supposedly, a symbol of all things antisemitic. Inevitably, a reporter asked Trump about Piker last week. And just as inevitably, Trump responded to a question about antisemitism by indulging in grotesque antisemitism.
“How a Jewish person could vote for a Democrat is not even, if you think of it, not even believable,” Trump burbled. Having started with insults to Jewish voters, he expanded his bigoted nonsense. “It is not possible, in a world of rationality, that somebody who is Jewish, that somebody who is Black could vote for a Democrat.”
This is hardly the first time that Trump has presumed to speak for Jewish people, or claimed that the majority of Jewish people who vote Democratic are irrational and/or not really Jews. He regularly insists that American Jews who do not support him are ungrateful to him and are being “very disloyal to Israel.” He’s also said that some Jewish people “don’t love Israel enough.”
(Oh, and he also said Jewish people should support him because he opposes a wealth tax. Because all Jewish people are rich and greedy, get it?)
(Oh and he also has had friendly dinners with open far right antisemites.)
Hasan Piker is a shock jock YouTuber who sometimes phrases things poorly and sometimes says genuinely ugly and antisemitic nonsense (he’s praised Mao and called Orthodox Jews “inbred,” for starters.) He also though has specifically tried to refute the antisemitic talking point that Trump is stuck on—Jews, Piker insists, are not “monolithic” and to say that they are is “a very dangerous mode of propaganda.” (A point many antizionist Jews, like me, have made as well.)
Piker is a pundit with no formal role and few informal connections to the Democratic party. His record on antisemitism includes bigoted statements, but also sincere efforts to discuss the dangers facing Jewish people. Donald Trump, in contrast, is the literal president of the United States and he regularly insults Jewish people in gross and self-serving ways, over and over. Why is the media obsessively asking every Democrat they can find about Hasan Piker and antisemitism (even Democrats who literally don’t know who he is!) while nobody asks Republican candidates to criticize their orange antisemitic god king?
The Media Cares About Israel, Not Antisemitism
One obvious answer is that the media doesn’t care about bigotry directed at Jews but cares a lot about criticism of Israel. As a result, criticism of Israel is obsessively framed as antisemitic while bigoted attacks on Jews by Chistian Zionists are normalized and even encouraged.
Or to put it another way, Trump’s particular brand of antisemitism doesn’t register as antisemitic because most political and cultural elites agree with him. Most Zionists (Jewish and non-Jewish) probably wouldn’t put things as crudely as Trump does, but in the public sphere, many seem to agree that the role of Jewish people is to flatter America by supporting Israel.
As I’ve explained before, Israel is seen by many Americans (Jewish and non-Jewish) as a kind of guarantor of America’s liberal virtue. The US liberated the camps in World War II and thereby showed that it was on the right side of history. America’s continued support of Israel is framed as a moral antifascist calling (by liberals like Joe Biden) and as a fulfillment of Biblical injunctions by Christofascist dipshits like Mike Huckabee. Either way, the role of Jews is to cosign the virtuous identities of non-Jews by expressing gratitude through public displays of Zionism.
Many people have pointed out that when Trump says Jews who do not support Israel are “disloyal”, he is repeating the dual loyalty trope—suggesting that Jewish people are really loyal to Israel rather than to the United States.
Fewer people have discussed the fact that Trump’s accusations reflect a broad consensus about how American Jews are supposed to behave and who is supposed to benefit from our identities. Jewish people are valued and celebrated as long as we express gratitude to the US for its Zionism and support for Israel. If we are not Zionist—if we are not sufficiently loyal to Israel—then we are questioning not just America’s policy but America’s virtue. At that point we are ignored, or told that we are not real Jews, or targeted for discrimination and silenced. Jewish Voice for Peace chapters aren’t suspended from college campuses for antisemitism. They are suspended from college campuses for failing in their Jewish duty to embrace Zionism and thereby validate America.
This is also why mainstream Jewish orgs are so invested in combating Zionism, and why they mostly shrug about Trump’s antisemitism—issuing pro-forma statements that reprimand Trump for saying that Jews are loyal to Israel while carefully avoiding any acknowledgement that in fact some Jews are not Zionists. For big Jewish donors and big Jewish orgs, Zionism has been the key to their identity as loyal Americans; pushing for the US to support Israel is a way to signal loyalty to America and to position Jewishness as a quintessential, central part of American identity.
Jewish orgs realize that fighting bigotry, as bigotry, puts you in the same position as Muslims, Black people, trans people, and other marginalized people—it makes you a critic of America’s failures and exclusions. Americans don’t like to hear about their failures and exclusions. But fighting for Zionism until recently has been very different. When Jewish orgs demand support for and enthusiasm for Israel, they are praising and honoring America’s exceptional virtue. Zionist advocacy has turned Jewish organizations into insiders, working alongside right wing Christians and mainstream liberals for the glorification of America itself.
And Elon Musk too
It isn’t Jewish orgs that primarily control discussions of Zionism, though. It’s the same politicians and media oligarchs who enthusiastically spread trans hate, fire Black journalists for daring to point out that racists are racist, and whine relentlessly about that one time in the horrible age of “woke” when they were briefly forced to consider treating marginalized people with minimal respect.
People who do not want to treat marginalized people with minimal respect also don’t want to treat Jewish people with minimal respect. That’s why Elon Musk’s Nazi salute was presented as a brief novelty, and why he can say ugly antisemitic shit over and over without mainstream journalists ever suggesting in any way that Republican candidates should maybe answer for taking money from the white supremacist Nazi billionaire.
Musk and Trump see Jewish people as inferior, naturally subservient, and/or debased. But they are rich white men who signal their full-blooded Americanism by being rich white men and endorsing Zionism. Hasan Piker, in contrast, is a Muslim whose Americanness is suspect because of Islamophobia and because he opposes Zionism. Antisemitism is neither here nor there in this discussion; no one cares about protecting Jewish people. What they care about is protecting America’s sense of its own righteousness which is bound up in Zionism. Aiding a violent Zionist government in Israel is red-blooded Americanism because it (supposedly) extends US protection of Jews post-Holocaust, and because targeting Muslims is seen as necessary and godly in a country whose identity has been increasingly defined through Islamophobia.
Trump treats Jewish people like tools whose purpose is to glorify his Christian nationalist rule via Zionism. There is little pushback from media or Jewish orgs or from civil society in general because everyone tacitly agrees that the purpose of Jewish people is to glorify gentiles via Zionism. As support for Israel plummets, Jewish people, and all people of good will, are going to have to reassess how to advance Jewish rights and Jewish safety in a world where Jewish Zionist identity is no longer seen as a bulwark of American exceptionalism. Maybe we should consider—in the long tradition of the Jewish left—solidarity with other marginalized people, be they Black, Muslim, Palestinian, or immigrants. Loyalty to Trump, and all he represents, is just pledging ourselves to being lesser partners in fascism. And fascism has never been kind to Jews.
How is praising Mao antisemitic? And while you're on that point, is there absolutely nothing redeeming about Mao in your opinion? Just curious. I would think you of all people would have some more nuanced thinking on that topic.