One of the most disturbing realizations of the past election was how many of Donald Trump’s supporters are racists, anti-Semites and white supremacists. A majority are Islamophobes as well, supporting Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians and – here’s the strange part – they’re also enthusiastic Zionists.
How can anti-Semism and Zionism manage to coexist? This was the question Naomi Zeveloff asked in a piece in the Forward, a lefty Jewish magazine.
Zeveloff found that many white supremacists admire Israel for “fighting the ‘good fight'” with Muslims. They admire a society which privileges a single ethnicity and religion and actively discourages multiculturalism. For white supremacists Israel is a “model for white nationalism and/or Christianism.”
Columbia University sociologist Todd Gitlin put it less charitably:
“Anti-Semitism and right-wing Zionism are varieties of ultra nationalism, or, to put it more pejoratively (as it deserves to be put) tribalism. They both presume that the embattled righteous ones need to bristle at, wall off, and punish the damned outsiders. They hate and fear cosmopolitan mixtures. They make a fetish of purity. They have the same soul. They rhyme.”
Weeks after the election white supremacist and anti-Semite Richard Spencer gave a talk at Texas A&M University. Security was provided by Houston’s Aryan Renaissance Society and WhiteLivesMatter. Some came to listen, others to protest. But Texas A&M Hillel Rabbi Matt Rosenberg came to engage. After Spencer’s talk Rosenberg asked Spencer, somewhat naively, to join in a “loving and radically inclusive” act of studying Torah together. Spencer scoffed at the idea that he needed some loving to counterbalance all the hating, and instead used the rabbi’s invitation to point out Zionism’s uncanny similarity to white supremacy:
“Do you really want radical inclusion into the State of Israel? […] Jews exist precisely because you did not assimilate to the gentiles […] I respect that about you. I want my people to have that same sense of themselves.”
Birds of a feather.
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