America: from the right and from the left: the current dilemma of the “Horseshoe.”
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
All of this from a Parsha we call Vayera or “יהוה appeared”: Genesis 19:10
Although Abraham appears as a nomadic wanderer, almost out of place in a strange land, and yet, Gd appears to him. He appears to be settled in this land.
Gd also appears to Lot, although he appears to be less than settled. What is the purpose of “these angels, messengers or of Gd, especially in such a strange place? Who exactly was Lot to his fellow citizens, to his neighbors, and to his countrymen?
He lives there, but he does not appear to be “of there,”
Of course, always begging the question of who we are, and “of where . . .”
וַיֹּאמְר֣וּ ׀ גֶּשׁ־הָ֗לְאָה וַיֹּֽאמְרוּ֙ הָאֶחָ֤ד בָּֽא־לָגוּר֙ וַיִּשְׁפֹּ֣ט שָׁפ֔וֹט עַתָּ֕ה נָרַ֥ע לְךָ֖ מֵהֶ֑ם וַיִּפְצְר֨וּ בָאִ֤ישׁ בְּלוֹט֙ מְאֹ֔ד וַֽיִּגְּשׁ֖וּ לִשְׁבֹּ֥ר הַדָּֽלֶת׃
But they said, “Stand back! This fellow came here as an alien (outsider), and already he acts as the ruler! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” And they pressed hard against that householder — against Lot — and moved forward to break the door.
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The current dilemma of what some are referring to as the “antisemitism horseshoe,” – which has the appearance of its legs bending inward, from both sides.
In a somewhat recent snapshot of the American political spectrum, the young faculty of Moral Clarity speaks to the rising tide of antisemitism emanating from the right and the left.
Antisemitism has become so normalized on the Left and the Right that not only is hating Jews accepted, but those who do so are passionately defended.
For the record and in understanding history, this is exactly how civilizations collapse.
The way the Democratic establishment has rallied behind Mamdani’s bid to become mayor of New York City has been eye-opening. This man has a clinically deranged Jew-obsession with Israel. As a student, he founded a chapter of the terror-glorifying Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization devoted to Israel’s destruction.
In a healthy polity, that alone would be career-ending.
As a legislator, he made the risible claim that Israel is responsible for the New York Police Department’s behavior—reviving the trope that Jews are to blame for all social ills. This can only be recognized as his newfound glees, while supping from the age-old trough of Blood Libel.
In mayoral debates this year, he repeated Hamas’s grotesque blood libel that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, despite it being wholly unrelated to being the mayor of New York City, or, for that matter, anything resembling ‘the truth.’
The best one can say for him is that he is a truly despicable individual whom anyone with a modicum of decency would treat as though he were a modern and somewhat refined version of one who would stoke a Jew-pogrom, especially so if given the opportunity. Let’s keep an eye on how that might unfold.
Once understood as a mark of moral degeneracy, antisemitism has now become a price Democrats are willing to pay for political convenience. The Democratic machine, cowed by its own activist base, treats intersectional antisemitism — whatever that means — as a necessary evil for retaining young voters.
If this is what passes for morality in today’s Democratic Party, anyone with half a conscience would understand this and take a hard pass.
For the last few years, I have argued that the threat from the Left was greater than that from the Right because, on the Right, there was a clearer sense of where the boundary of unacceptability lay. On the Left, it was never clear where the line between the liberal left and full-blown socialists was drawn — if it was at all. On the Right, it was clear that once the Nazi salutes came out, you were toxic. No longer. The Woke Right has been let out of its cage.
Tucker Carlson — once the face of Fox News — has spent his post-television career turning that platform into a megaphone for resentment and paranoia. He has hosted Holocaust deniers and antisemites such as Daryl Cooper. Most recently, he has given airtime to neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, a man who denies the Holocaust, venerates Hitler, and is, all things told, a steaming pile of elephant dung. Carlson fits that description, too.
In an astonishing display of moral bankruptcy, the Heritage Foundation — the flagship conservative think tank — stood by him. Its president, Kevin Roberts, declared that Heritage would not “cancel our own people” or “police consciences.”
Roberts then descended into full antisemite mode himself, accusing those angered by Carlson’s Jew-hatred of forming a “venomous coalition” of globalist elites — a phrase straight from the Far Right’s conspiracy lexicon. His clarification the next day that he disagreed with Fuentes’ views was as limp as his spine.
If the new moral standard is that you can abhor antisemitism abstractly while enabling it concretely, then the American Right is in deep, deep trouble.
Betraying Jews is now a bipartisan endeavor in American politics. On the Left, the Jews are the face of oppressive whiteness. On the Right, they are the face of globalism. The vocabulary differs, but the target is the same.
The political center is not holding because it no longer believes. If antisemitism is no longer a problem, it is because America has decided it no longer wants the burden of having moral standards. It is easier to tolerate evil and redefine hatred as opinion than to confront it and name it.
History’s lesson about societies that normalize antisemitism is clear: they rot from the inside until the hatred that began with the Jews consumes everything else. That is where America is headed—unless those who still possess the courage to name evil as evil reclaim the ground they have surrendered.
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FROM THE UNITED STATES, DEPARTMENT OF STATE: Remarks: Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat ANTISEMITISM
https://2021-2025.state.gov/from-right-to-left-and-in-between-jew-hatred-across-the-political-divide/
Birkbeck, University of London / February 21, 2024
EXCERPT:
Antisemitism is not confined to the fringes of society. It is not a relic of the past, but a present-day reality that manifests itself in insidious ways, permeating all corners of our world. I noted earlier its ubiquity. Antisemitism rears its head across the political spectrum. It can be found among the far-right extremists who peddle age-old tropes of Jewish conspiracies and racial superiority, to the far-left activists some of whom may rely on antisemitism to express their political views or cloak their antisemitism in political arguments. We also see it among radical extremist Islamists who share these conspiratorial views as they engage in antisemitic imagery, rhetoric, and action.
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Us, the World, and Consequences.
An age-old question has reemerged in a way that very few are able to recognize, and just as many of us would do almost anything to ignore it or hide it. At one time, it was well understood in Europe as “The Jewish Question,” along with all the varied solutions to either solve or mitigate that Question, at least for the sake of Europeans struggling to understand who they were in terms of their belonging to one another.
The Jews were facing the same problem, then and now.
It might be best for us if we were to study the texts of the past, which speak to “belonging,” both to the rights and the responsibilities thereof. Yes, Ginny, *it is that important*
