In the early 1930s, German communists—a fair number of whom later morphed into Hitler fans—fought pitched battles with Nazis in Berlin’s streets. At the same time, the German communist party refused to cooperate with anti-Nazi German liberals and socialists because they were allegedly “social fascists.”
Today, Donald Trump announced that his team was “looking into” paying the legal fees of the Trump supporter who sucker punched a black anti-Trump protestor and later said, “Next time, we may have to kill him.” Trump is currently solidifying his base by using the same polarizing tactics that Nazis—and communists—used to solidify theirs in Germany. Anti-Trump conservatives, especially Jewish conservatives, are receiving little but scorn from the American left which apparently considers them the modern-day equivalent of “social fascists.”
No doubt, as GOP presidential nominee Trump will eventually “pivot” his campaign. But how? I think I know how. He and Bernie Sanders already agree on economic nationalism and repealing or disrupting free trade deals with the rest of the world. The U.S. passed the Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariff in 1930 with disastrous results. No matter. Trump has indicated he also favors using the tax system to give Wall Street billionaires a punitive haircut. When he pivots, I predict he will adopt the rest of Sanders’ demagogic sock-it-to-the-billionaires—all except Trump!—platform.
Trump may not mention that many of the billionaires he demonizes are Jews, but his rabid supporters will. Trump will give tacit approval to such attacks because, as he said today, “All I know is what I read on the Internet.”
While also tilting left under pressure from Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton has managed to keep one foot planted in centrist reality.
Bernie Sanders has made it abundantly clear that he is not a liberal, certainly not of the old-fashioned kind. Socialism with a Bernie Sanders’ face diverges in significant respects from the socialism of Norman Thomas. Has anyone heard Bernie say a kind word during this campaign in favor of the First Amendment and Free Speech? Righteously denouncing Trump this week for the violent rhetoric culminating in the cancellation of Trump’s Chicago rally in the face of aggressive demonstrations by protestors, some of whom carried “Vote for Bernie” signs, Sanders offered not one word of cautionary advice to his supporters about the moral necessity of respecting the free speech rights of the Trumpsters. Instead, he seems to think it’s okay to make all of Chicago “a safe zone” for Black Lives Matter zealots by “shutting down” a provocative Trump rally.
Analogously, Sanders has become the uncrowned king of Arab American voters by promising to “level the playing field” against a too-powerful Israel in the Middle East. Apparently, his Arab supporters there and here interpret this an implicit promise to level—Israel. Are they wrong?
Sanders has said many kind things about the Sandinistas and the Castros’ Cuba over the past half century. What has he said friendly or favorable to Israel since completing his stint on a far-left Israeli kibbutz in the 1960s? Sanders’ recent, belated claim that he is proud to be a Jew seems to boil down to no more than that his past-tense sympathy for Holocaust survivors victimized by Hitler.
Trump claims also to be pro-Jewish by osmosis, given the conversion to Orthodox Judaism of his daughter, Ivanka, and the Jewishness of her two children. This supposedly makes up for his wink-and-a-nod to Arab voters by promising to be “a neutral kind of guy” vis-à-vis Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East.
Maybe these similarities are enough for some American Jews this fall to rally around a Trump-Sanders or Sanders-Trump ticket. Age before Beauty.
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