Latent antisemitic attitudes are becoming more and more painfully obvious as of late, from the trend of vandalizing Jewish cemeteries that has become increasingly prevalent over the past few months, to over a hundred bomb threats made to Jewish Community Centers in the past two months alone; even Pewdiepie (according to the media). Why are all of these antisemites coming out of the woodwork now? Well, one needs merely take a look at the rhetoric employed by President Donald Trump to see the cause.
Following his recent address to Congress, Trump was hailed by pundits. John Bresnahan of Politico claimed that the speech was a “Reagenesque moment for Trump,” as though that is a good thing; Jim Acosta of CNN claimed that it was a “powerful moment,” as though the speech wasn’t an empty and worthless generalization that offered precisely no insight into Trump’s plans. The only reason the speech was praised is because Trump didn’t overtly attack any specific groups of people and sounded like a real person rather than a caricature of a tyrant for once in his political career. Nonetheless, earlier that day Trump still managed to imply that the bomb threats made against Jewish Community Centers were akin to Democrats inciting violence at Trump rallies.
Throughout this speech, Trump painted immigrants as basically evil, stating his intentions to create an office to help “victims of immigration crime” and even bringing along some guests; family members of those killed by immigrants. By promoting this brand of nationalism, Trump intentionally or not promotes alongside a sort of white ethnocentrism. By isolating the country from the “other,” from the Muslim and Mexican, and by calling for an “us vs them” mentality, Trump validates the white nationalist and places every other group of people on the other side of a divide, impassable by birth or skin color. The historical relationship between nationalism and antisemitism has been well-documented, and thus it comes at no surprise that in President Trump’s increasingly intolerant America, antisemites would find themselves comfortable enough in a regime to take this sort of action.
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