How Is the GOP Getting Away With Presenting Itself as the Enemy of Antisemitism?

We have entered Bizarro World.

Last weekend, Republican congresswoman and potential vice president Elise Stefanik traveled to Israel to speak to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Stefanik was there to promote Donald Trump, discredit Democrats, posit Israel as an outpost of the global far-right authoritarian movement she and her party hope to create, and position herself and Republicans as the truest opponents of antisemitism and protectors of Jews. 

It was an emblematic moment of a truly bizarre political development. The idea that Donald Trump’s Republican Party is pretending to be the entity that will protect Jews from prejudice and oppression ought to make us feel like the world has been turned inside-out. 

That’s precisely what they’re claiming, each and every day. The primary threat to Jews now and in the future is supposed to come from leftist college students, and only the GOP can protect us. But let’s remind ourselves of a few things about the Republican Party and the broader American conservative movement of which it is a part:

• It is wholly committed to fostering a conspiratorial worldview that inevitably arrives at antisemitism. Conservatives have always been prone to conspiracy theories, but today conspiracy theorists are the core of the Republican base, to the point where disavowing them is impossible When a kooky Republican congresswoman starts talking about Jewish space lasers, it’s the inevitable outcome of a discourse in which Jewish financier George Soros is the secret puppetmaster behind every protest and political development, “globalists” are controlling the world, and there is a “Great Replacement” underway in which a conspiracy, often described as led by Jews, is plotting to “replace” white Americans with dark-skinned immigrants. Party leaders and pundits — including the aforementioned Elise Stefanik — regularly repeat this idea.

• It seeks to create an international alliance of far-right authoritarians. Key Republican figures like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson are especially keen to build this alliance; wherever a far-right party or demagogue can be found, it’s a good bet the American right will be praising them publicly and promoting greater ties with them. To put it mildly, far-right authoritarians have not historically been friends to the Jews. 

• Both substantively and rhetorically, it echoes the fascists of the past who sought to wipe Jews from the earth. The leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, regularly talks about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the country, deploying rhetoric that Adolf Hitler used to justify the murder of 6 million Jews. He and other Republicans glorify violence and fantasize about using it against their enemies. The party is preparing for an unprecedented mass deportation of immigrants, fed by Trump’s clear intention to make America white again. It is eager to ban books that give an equal place to those who are not of the dominant demographic groups in society. The party is a personality cult devoted to an obvious bigot who is cheered on by neo-Nazis and white supremacists everywhere, and frequently makes comments about Jews that evoke antisemitic tropes.

• It is happy to invite antisemites into its fold. Learning that people with prominent positions in the GOP or its associated movement have white nationalist associations and beliefs is a near-daily occurrence. Just the latest example: The Minnesota GOP has endorsed Royce White, a far-right extremist with a long history of making antisemitic statements, as its nominee for the U.S. Senate.

It’s this party we’re supposed to believe is going to protect the Jews? 

Yet in just a few months, Republicans have managed to convince people that they are brave warriors fighting antisemitism. It’s much like the way they say “We’re the party of Lincoln,” as though every one of them wouldn’t have taken the South’s side in the Civil War had they been alive in 1864 (and many of them still do). 

How did Republicans convince people they’re the real opponents of antisemitism?

The October 7 Hamas attack and the subsequent Israeli war in Gaza created a political opportunity for Republicans, one they immediately understood and eagerly seized. The complicated feelings of liberals and Democrats around this issue, at a time when believing something as basic as “It’s bad to kill civilians, whether Hamas does it or Israel does it” produces a torrent of hatred from those less burdened by moral consistency, opened up a space for politicians like Stefanik, who stands out for her cynical opportunism even in a profession full of cynical opportunists. She saw that the time was right to elevate her own profile while using legitimate fears of antisemitism as a weapon in the right’s domestic and international culture war — against its political opponents, against higher education, and against pluralism itself. 

In her speech to the Knesset, Stefanik described the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians this way: 

“What we are witnessing today is a story of the forces of good versus evil. The forces of civilization against the forces of barbarism, of humanity versus depravity...

“My country, and all countries, must stare truth in the face: This is not Israel’s fight alone. It is also our fight, the West’s fight. In truth, total victory is about more than responding to one attack, it’s about restoring a way of life... 

“When the enemy is inside the gates of the United Nations, America must be the one to call it by its name and destroy it. President Trump understood that, and B’ezrat hashem [with God’s help], we will return to that strategy soon.”

Stefanik also spoke of “crushing antisemitism,” but as anyone who understands antisemitism knows, it isn’t something that will be “crushed” if only we are brutal enough. Were that the case, the hearts of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza would be filled with affection for the Jewish people. And Stefanik’s invocations of “the West” fighting a struggle of “civilization against the forces of barbarism,” while perhaps not explicitly racist, are precisely the kind of thing racists are often heard to say. 

This is something new

Like many liberal Jewish Americans, especially those with conflicted feelings about Israel, I have always felt somewhere between uneasy and repelled when witnessing the increasing Republican affection for the Jewish state, which began in earnest in 2001. That was the year two things happened: The last Israeli prime minister from the Labor Party, Ehud Barak, departed office to be replaced by the far-right Ariel Sharon; and the September 11 attacks gave the American right a new clash of civilizations through which they could define themselves and their enemies, something they had lacked since the fall of the Soviet Union a decade before. 

But what’s happening now is far more disturbing than watching a bunch of evangelical Christians dance the hora while they dream of Armageddon, or seeing Sarah Palin wear a Star of David around her neck. Today, American conservatives are ignoring and justifying the antisemitism in their own ranks while they simultaneously portray fighting antisemitism as a right-wing cause, one driven by the most illiberal of values. 

We ought to ask them why, precisely, they think antisemitism is bad. Is it because no religious or ethnic group should be marginalized or treated with hatred and contempt? Is it because prejudice in all its forms is wrong? Is it because dark conspiracy theories of societal manipulation by sinister cabals of Jews are toxic and often used to justify violence?

They don’t believe any of those things. At a moment where antisemitism has become more of a reality than at any time I can remember, I’d like to believe most Jews understand that Jews will not be protected by racists and right-wing authoritarians. They won’t be protected by those who want to use antisemitism as a weapon to advance their own anti-Muslim bigotry. They won’t be protected by those who want to dismantle democracy, ban books, institute religious tests for entry to the country, and carry out mass deportations. 

What to do with that knowledge is complicated, but we can’t forget this fundamental fact: These are the last people we should trust.