Trump’s antecedents

| 3:00 pm EDT September 22, 2024
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In my late teens and twenties I was a member of the nascent evangelical group that eventually grew into the Christofascist monstrosity we all know and loathe today. A common motif among evangelicals of my day — dare I say a glassy-eyed mantra? — was to refer to the Jews as “God’s chosen people.” It was always said with a certain self-satisfied smugness, a tedious, patronising superiority. Nobody I knew ever bothered to ask the question, “Chosen for what?”

That may have been because we knew (at least subconsciously) that the Jews were “chosen” to start a world-ending Armageddon, possibly in Armageddon itself, from which we, the “saved,” would emerge victorious, and everybody else — including the Jews — would be destroyed. In other words, no matter how much “Christian love” we slathered on the proposition that Jews were chosen by God, it was in the end a perfectly dreadful, decidedly Hitlerian idea. It was antisemitism in its usual dreadful form, the kind that ends in genocide.

Along the way we employed the usual antisemitic tropes, particularly one that’s still enunciated today even by otherwise enlightened Democrats. The trope of Zionism and what it implies. Let me say it once and loud and, I hope, unequivocally: not all Jews are Zionists. To insist otherwise is itself antisemitic.

So much of America’s love affair with Israel today is rooted in the insane idea that Israel exists exclusively to ensure the ultimate destruction of the world. It was always part of evangelical Christian arrogance to dream that the world would go up in flames and we would be rescued from those flames. It never occurred to us that a few billion other human beings had other ideas, other loves, other hopes, other dreams. That’s the whole problem with genocide, it’s way too easy for the genocidal to forget such things.

Well I haven’t forgotten. So when I see Donald Trump employing similarly cringe worthy ideas about the Jews I am reminded of my previous life and the evil we mistook for righteousness. For example, in a campaign event on Thursday that was ostensibly about denouncing antisemitism, the actual 2024 GOP nominee for president told the audience, “If I don’t win this election … the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.”

I don’t know about you, but when a man who is routinely compared to Hitler, including once by his current running mate, says something like that, it carries seriously ominous connotations. Especially since this is the man who once referred to a group of torch-bearing neo-Nazis as “very fine people,” hosted a Holocaust denier at dinner at Mar-a-Lago, once said Hitler “did some good things,” and routinely claims that Jews control the media, among other vile utterances.

Trump’s claim that the “Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss” carries the unmistakable suggestion that Jews would be at fault if Trump doesn’t win, and they would therefore be fair game for reprisals from MAGA loonies. In other words it must be interpreted as a threat: “Vote for me or else.” And given Trump’s unquestionable antisemitic antecedents, I see no other interpretation.

Naturally the mainstream media is going to let him get away with this latest foray into loathsome antisemitism. They ultimately always do. Maybe as an experiment, Trump really should try shooting someone on Fifth Avenue and see what happens. There was a time when I was sure he was speaking metaphorically. Today I am no longer quite so sure. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.