November 30, 2022

The British entertainer and philosopher Elton John once sang, “You can tell by the lines I’m reciting that I’ve seen that movie too.”

So when Donald Trump yet again tiptoes right up to the line that separates mere cultural insensitivity from abject bigotry – and then obliterates that line altogether –  it’s clear that we have seen this movie far too many times. Despite his enthusiastic support for the state of Israel and his occasional exploitation of his Jewish grandchildren, it has now become impossible to excuse the former president for his ongoing and unfortunate habit of empowering anti-Semites.

The fact that Trump’s biases are a product of political convenience rather than deep-seated animosity is irrelevant. The ultimate outcome is that his behavior encourages and facilitates the hard-core haters who creep out of the cracks between our societal floorboards whenever the former president signals his approval. The most recent and most unnecessary proof of this thesis came last week, when Trump hosted a pair of noted anti-Semites for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Rapper Kanye West and notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes were his guests for a meal in which West and Trump sparred over which of them would be a superior presidential candidate in 2024 and Fuentes stroked Trump’s gargantuan ego with compliments regarding his skills as a campaigner.

The fact that the evening’s conversation did not include any discussion of the perceived shortcomings of the Jewish people and faith is immaterial. The fact that Trump invited West to join him only weeks after the rapper’s latest anti-Semitic public salvos (see my November 16 column) suggests a grotesque insensitivity and lack of awareness of the message sent by a once and potentially future president socializing with a known and repeated trafficker of anti-Jewish ugliness. 

But Fuentes’ presence links Trump to even more repulsive hatreds. Throughout his brief career as a political commentator, Fuentes has alternately declared his belief that the Holocaust never occurred and told hideous jokes that allude to the worst of the Shoah’s atrocities. Not limiting his bile to slurs against Jews, Fuentes has also reveled in similar invectives against women, blacks, gays and Muslims, along with praise for Vladimir Putin, the Taliban and Adolph Hitler.

After the story broke publicly and many prominent Republicans criticized Trump, the former president indicated that Fuentes had not been invited but had accompanied West. “He arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about.”

It is entirely possible that Trump was unaware of Fuentes’ identity and history prior to the dinner. But it is worth noting that once the news of Fuentes’ visit and past outrages became public, Trump’s only initial instinct was deniability. As of the time this column was filed, he has made no effort to denounce Fuentes or any of the highly objectionable verbal affronts that the white supremacist has uttered over the last several years.

In all likelihood, Trump will offer some half-hearted condemnation in the days ahead. This follows the same playbook that he employed after initially claiming that he knew nothing about former Klansman David Duke during the 2016 campaign after Duke endorsed him, or in the days after the Charlottesville race riots the following year, when Trump read a scripted statement walking back his original comments that there “very fine people on both sides” of a white nationalist rally. 

Then and now, Trump has calculated that this type of positioning helps with a small but loud portion of his base. He flirts with the worst type of racists, bigots and anti-Semites but avoids using language himself that would directly express similar sentiments. Several years ago, this tactic was odious. Now it’s simply tiresome.

Team Trump believes that such rhetorical tap-dancing is harmless, even while it normalizes hate speech for an unnervingly large portion of the populace. 

Team Trump believes that such rhetorical tap-dancing is harmless, even while it normalizes hate speech for an unnervingly large portion of the populace. So they will rationalize his conduct, although with a somewhat smaller echo chamber than before, because this is what they do. 

But as Sir Elton once sang, “You’re crazy if you think that you can fool me. Because I’ve seen that movie too.”

Dan Schnur is a Professor at the University of California – Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine. Join Dan for his weekly webinar “Politics in the Time of Coronavirus” (www.lawac.org) on Tuesdays at 5 PM.

Since I started writing about antisemitism about a decade ago, I’ve had trouble answering one question: Why are Jews, who excel in fields from literature to music, so bad at confronting lies and hate? 

Part of the answer of course is that antisemitism is irrational — based on conspiracy theories that morph every century. It’s also sadly the case that many Jews today in a position to create change — professors, heads of nonprofits, CEOs — would much rather suppress their Jewish identity to maintain their social “status.” 

But neither fully explains how, for instance, the lies of “Palestinianism” have been able to completely consume our campuses. A small exhibition at the New-York Historical Society shows that this was not always the case.

“Confronting Hate 1937-1952” examines how a groundbreaking media campaign launched by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) to combat rising antisemitism in the United States actually worked.

“Confronting Hate 1937-1952” examines how a groundbreaking media campaign launched by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) to combat rising antisemitism in the United States actually worked. AJC CEO David Harris calls it “a testament to the vision of creative individuals committed to preserving and strengthening our pluralistic democracy.”

American antisemitism didn’t begin in the mid-20th century, but it did reach a dangerous peak. In 1935, a newspaper called American Gentile featured on its front page: “Let’s Take America Away From the Jews!” and “Jewish CARTHAGE Must Be Destroyed if Free America Is To Survive!” By 1937, roughly 50 demonstrations a week, including rallies at Madison Square Garden, spewed antisemitic propaganda on the streets of New York City, inciting violence. Organizations such as the Anti-Jewish League to Protect American Rights and the American National Party distributed leaflets with slogans like “White Men Do Not Buy From Jews” and “Buy Gentile, Employ Gentile, Vote Gentile.” One 1938 survey found that nearly 41% of Americans thought that Jews were too powerful.

The campaign partnered with dozens of artists, writers, political leaders, women’s and church groups, and celebrities to spread anti-hate messages across the U.S. in innovative ways. 

The AJC campaign, spearheaded by advertising executive Richard Rothschild, partnered with dozens of artists, writers, political leaders, women’s and church groups and celebrities (including Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland) to spread anti-hate messages across the U.S. in innovative ways. Rothschild produced graphic posters, newspaper ads, and pamphlets, as well as comic books such as “They Got the Blame,” which chronicled the history of scapegoating.

Nazism, Rothschild said in a 1973 interview, sought to spread internal discord. “Divisiveness can be the source of a country’s greatest weakness,” he said. His goal: to show the evil of antisemitism while also showing the importance of unity. “It would not be enough to show that antisemitism was bad for Jews,” he said. “We had to show that it was bad for America and Americans.” 

For the first six years of the project, the AJC did not use its name. That changed after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. 

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a short documentary about an extraordinary 15-minute radio broadcast on Sunday, October 29, 1944. “Today, the National Broadcasting Company brings its listeners a program of historic moment,” war correspondent James Cassidy began the show. “The first direct broadcast of a Jewish religious service from German soil since Adolf Hitler and his Nazis began the destruction not only of the Jewish religion but of all religions, more than a decade ago.” 

The service, produced by the AJC and its radio director Milton Krents, took place in an open field near the site of a demolished synagogue in Aachen, Germany. With the sound of artillery rounds thundering in the background, we hear the haunting audio from Army Chaplain Sidney Lefkowitz, a rabbi from Richmond, Virginia, who led the service in front of 51 Jewish soldiers; a young private served as the cantor. 

In a short address, Chaplain Lefkowitz acknowledged what the service represented. “Even as we sadly observe the ruins amid we stand and consider the loss of lives with which this victory has been purchased, we are solaced with the thought, though the cost must be high, of the lasting memorial which consecrates the sacrifice, and upon it is written in letters that glow like burning coals, ‘The spirit of man cannot be conquered.’” 

The service, broadcast throughout Germany, was meant as a warning. “The Allied armies, composed of every color, faith, and nationality, will never halt until freedom takes the place of tyranny on every inch of Axis soil,” said Krents. But it also immediately captured the attention of Americans; the response was so profound that it was later re-aired. “The Aachen broadcast is a vivid reminder of the spirit and resilience of American GIs as they fought to eradicate Nazism,” said curator Debra Schmidt Bach. “Milton Krents understood the symbolism and importance of the service, and we are fortunate that he left us this poignant legacy and vivid example of the power of American cooperation.”

Forgotten in the decades after the war, the service at Aachen is only available to us now because of a chance discovery by AJC archive director Charlotte Bonelli, who noticed a brief mention of it in a Krents oral history in the mid-2000s. 

The lessons of the AJC campaign are extremely valuable. American Jews need to start using our creative brains to fight the demons now descending on three fronts (Islamists, white supremacists, and “Black Hebrew Israelites”), as rapper Kosha Dillz did with “Death Con 3.”

Just as important, the overall focus needs to be on unity — on the beautiful mosaic of immigrants that America once stood for. But you can’t have that mosaic if there’s an over-emphasis on race — from either real racists or “anti-racists.” Woke ideology is meant to create division — precisely the type of division that leads to increased antisemitism. 

The soldiers who attended the service at Aachen had survived Omaha Beach, one of the bloodiest sites of the Normandy invasion, and later fought in the brutal Battle of Saint-Lô in France. “These are men who belonged to a group of people that had been deemed by the Nazis to be cowardly — that they should be exterminated from the earth,” says Bonelli. “They’re standing on German soil, singing ancient Jewish prayers, equal members of the Allied advancing forces. It was a symbol that the war was coming to an end, and that Judaism and the Jewish people would survive.” 

It is precisely this type of symbolism, innovatively updated for the 21st century, that needs to become a fixture on every U.S. campus.

Karen Lehrman Bloch is editor in chief of White Rose Magazine. 

It’s 7:10 a.m. on election day and I wake up thinking politics. The novelty of a Los Angeles rainfall offers symbolic hope that months of poll watching, pundit columns and excessive campaign contributions will finally be washed away. Both the rain and the election are overdue.  

Rain may dampen local turnout. “Low propensity voters,” AKA Democrats, might stay home. But in most of today’s key places such as Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Phoenix and the hills of New Hampshire, the weather looks good. Hard core politico that I am, I checked. Yesterday. 

As a doctor, I see politics through healthcare, with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as my touchstone. I walked precincts and contributed to President Obama’s campaign in hope that reform would improve access. The ACA, or Obamacare, brought health insurance to around 20 million Americans, about as many as enrolled in Medicare when it started. President Trump campaigned to “repeal and replace” it. But when the July 2017 vote arrived, replacement was mysteriously absent. The repeal, defeated by three Republican nay votes, including Senator McCain’s famously decisive “thumbs down,” would have cost an estimated 15 million Americans their health insurance. The minor expense of the healthcare subsidies didn’t harm the economy, nor were they keeping us from being “great again.” The issue seemed not about America’s healthcare, but Trump’s obsession with obliterating the Obama legacy. Then, as now, few Republican legislators would stand up to him.  

2:00 p.m. Not much news. The media reports a $2 billion PowerBall lottery ticket has been sold in LA.  PowerBall may have just picked LA’s future mayor!

4:00 p.m. The first polls on the East Coast close. Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) kicks off the early “tease projections,” all known shoo-ins. One of my grade school buddies, feeling pessimistic, texts his intention to drown his sorrows in Knob Hill Small Batch bourbon. It will probably not prove the worst choice of the evening.   

10:00 p.m. Déjà vu of the 2020 election. Florida unleashes a red flood, but it fails to spread beyond the state’s borders. The anticipated national red wave is morphing into a bluish-purple ripple, with the two sides struggling, evenly matched, like punch drunk boxers. The big prizes, control of the Senate and House, may remain unclaimed for days to weeks. 

A hopeful early sign is the defeat of many GOP election deniers. Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 loss was understandable, given his ego and utter self-absorption. But the “big lie” should have been transparent to everyone. On the eve of the 2020 election the polls all predicted Trump’s defeat. On election eve “538,” Nate Silver’s wonky poll-crunching website, estimated the likelihood of a Trump loss at 89%. Silver missed only one of the 50 states, calling Florida for Biden. Did multiple polling organizations also conspire in the “steal”? Could the Dems really steal tens of thousands of votes in multiple states and leave no trail of evidence? Will Rogers once commented that, “I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” Republican election deniers ironically seem more impressed than Rogers by Dems’ organizational capabilities.

Recent gerrymandering of legislative districts, voter suppression and the unleashing of a torrent of anonymous special interest money by the Citizens United decision conspire to push the public hand from the levers of power. 

Less hopefully, the American political system drifts farther from popular control. The Electoral College system, an obstacle to popular will, was “baked into the pie” in 1788. But recent gerrymandering of legislative districts, voter suppression and the unleashing of a torrent of anonymous special interest money by the Citizens United decision conspire to push the public hand from the levers of power. 

Saturday 8:00 p.m. Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto’s victory in Nevada secures Democratic control of the Senate. I’m reminded of Joseph Welch’s dramatic dressing down of Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1955 Army McCarthy hearing: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” McCarthy never recovered. American voters’ rejection of election deniers and Trump flunkies may similarly provide the shock needed to redirect the GOP and secure the political soul of the nation. 

Where do we go from here? LA’s election day rainfall won’t end our drought and a blue ripple won’t resuscitate the body politic. Trump lost the popular vote in two presidential elections and orchestrated GOP defeats in two midterms. The GOP leadership should have broken with him after January 6th. Now they should heed the voters, do the right thing and at long last, say goodbye to toxic Trumpism.

Daniel Stone is Regional Medical Director of Cedars-Sinai Valley Network and a practicing internist and geriatrician with Cedars Sinai Medical Group. The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of Cedars-Sinai.