I learned about Anne Frank from my mother and grandma, and read parts of her Diary when I was about the same age as she had been when she was murdered. The Holocaust documentary shows how her family’s backstory illustrates the “slow creep” of Fascism, which I view as a mischaracterization. In the context of history, it happened in a flash, after a creeping build-up that accelerated after the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Hearing accounts of Anne Frank from survivor Susan Helsinrath Warsinger, we learned that Anne was brighter, more thoughtful and more mischievous than most girls her age. We found out that her father owned a successful business in Berlin, and moved his family to Amsterdam as he recognized the growing threat in Germany. The Netherlands seemed like a safe place until Hitler stormed all of Europe. Borders shifted rapidly during this period, as refugees’ sought safe havens that became more ever more elusive.

The United States did not form such a haven for Jews in the age of the Holocaust. The American State Department was run by a WASPY clique of anti-Semitic bigots. Their prejudices were enforced by the residual economic pressures of the Great Depression, which fed the existing xenophobia towards all immigrants, but Jews in particular because so many of them would have fled to the U.S. if they could have. It was argued that with 25 percent unemployment, letting in large numbers of immigrants would produce riots in the streets by workers afraid for what few jobs were available to them, but it is hard to disentangle this convenient narrative from the anti-Semitic prejudices of those who most often offered it.

Sadly, the anti-Semitism that infected the State Department was never extinguished in the U.S. It has been nurtured back into prominence by Donald Trump and his followers, as has brazen racism toward other groups.

Watching the excavation by Burns, Novick and Botstein of the slow creep of an unbalanced far right in Germany reminded me vividly of what we have seen happen in the United States over the past half-decade. The Fascism of Trump’s political movement has taken over the Republican Party, and threatens to destroy the Republic. The MAGA denial of the results of the 2020 Election and its determination to rig future elections are undeniable, sinister dynamics. Their canonization of Trump leaves them with no respect for democratic outcomes. He has fueled their fears of the Great Replacement Theory and anti-Semitism in America, while trying to insult Jews into supporting him. The farther Jews become removed from the Holocaust, the greater is our tendency to euphemize and sugar-coat bad news, and even to be enticed into far-right politics. Jews who cater to Trump are a mystifying lot, ignorant as to how they contribute to our own demise by supporting him. Consider:

The basis of Hitler’s persecution was that Jews were a “race,” to be extinguished. The idea that Jews are a single race is refuted by the differences in ancestry between Ashkenazi Jews, mostly from Europe, and Sephardic Jews from North Africa and the Middle East. Trump declared Judaism to be a race, in a 2019 Executive Order. His pretext was that Jews were being persecuted on college campuses by pro-Palestinian activists. At the time, he condescended to American Jews saying, “You’re brutal killers; you’re not nice people, but you have to vote for me; you have no choice . . .” Yet this blood libel did not dissuade right-wing American Jews from supporting him.

This week, he upped the ante saying, “No President has done more for Israel than I have. Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith . . . , U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel — Before it is too late!” The dramatic teachings from the Burns documentary illustrate this sort of rhetoric is no trifling matter.

Trump has exploited decades of white nationalist frustrations and taken the Republican party to the outer fringes of the far-far right. His followers now appear to view the outcomes of the Civil War and WWII as objectionable, as witnessed by their unapologetic racism and growing allegiance to right-wing dictators such as Vladimir Putin and Victor Orban in Hungary. That CPAC held their conference in Hungary speaks volumes about the Republican mindset under Trump.

Trump’s insidiousness lies in the fact that his movement is gaining strength without him. As part of the America First coalition, there are 299 Republican candidates for federal, state and local offices, who deny the results of the 2020 Election. Their goal is to rig elections, restore Trump to power and stack every level of government with people friendly to their agenda. The fall of Liz Cheney and rise of Marjorie Taylor Greene underlines the extent of the threat.

People can no more be a little bit fascist than women can be a little bit pregnant. The parallels of our present dysfunction to Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here are haunting. Donald Trump is a real-life Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip. MAGA fulfills Lewis’s prophecy, depicted in his novel, of the League of Forgotten Men, while the army Trump commanded to storm the capital is the realization of Lewis’s Minute Men, a paramilitary force intervening in politics. His followers’ intent is to delegitimize any election results they don’t like and to take over every level of government. It IS happening here, and it must be stopped to prevent Civil War II, or the breakup of the United States.

This finding puts the leaked draft opinion of Judge Samuel Alito into stark relief as an outlier and raises questions of whether the conservative majority on the US Supreme Court is Establishing religion in taking a stance against any constitutional right to abortion. The religions in question are Catholicism and Evangelicalism, both of which, along with Mormonism, contain a majority or plurality that opposes abortion.

About 30% of Americans are religiously unaffiliated, up from 8% in 1990. They overwhelmingly believe abortion should be legal (73%). So Alito and the Republican Party are imposing their religious beliefs on these secular Americans who see no secular purpose in an abortion ban. This is nearly 100 million Americans we are talking about.

MSNBC: “For Religious Right, Abortion Was A Means To Power As Segregation Lost Political Potency”

Mainline Protestants — Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, etc., make up about 10% of Americans, down from 30% in 1970. Still, that is 33 million people. Some 60% of them think abortion should be legal in most or all cases, and 5% say they don’t know, so that I think we may conclude that 65% of these denominations’ members don’t think it should be illegal. That leaves 35% who do, of course, but they could not win a vote at a national convention of any of these churches.

About 70% of African-Americans identify as Protestant, and 52%, a majority, believe abortion should be legal. Note that 28% of African-Americans are evangelicals, so that explains why the support isn’t higher. About 6% are Catholic.

There are roughly 74 million Catholics in the US, about 30% of the population. This Pew Research Center poll found that 48% of them believe abortion is for the most part legal, whereas 47% disagreed. American Catholics are far more liberal than their church hierarchy, and a higher percentage of them gets abortions than is true among Protestants. The Supreme Court is effectively siding with the American Catholic minority against the more numerous abortion supporters.

Pew says of American Jews that it classifies “5.8 million adults (2.4% of all U.S. adults) as Jewish. This includes 4.2 million (1.7%) who identify as Jewish by religion and 1.5 million Jews of no religion (0.6%).” Another 2.8 million American adults have at least some Jewish background, through a parent or other relative.

Based on polling, Pew finds that 82% of Jewish Americans think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. For the Catholic Alito, four of his Catholic colleagues, and one conservative Protestant (Gorsuch) to de facto deprive Jewish women living in states controlled by Republican legislatures of the right to control their own bodies in accordance with their religious beliefs is surely a triumph of some religious traditions in the US over others, and is discriminatory. See for further on this argument today’s IC column by H. Scott Prosterman.

Buddhist Americans are something like 1.2% of the population and are a mix of white converts and Asian-Americans. 82% of them believe abortion should be legal. This result is wildly at variance with what most Asian Buddhists would say. The Dalai Lama, for instance, has called abortion a form of killing. But Buddhist Americans have their own distinctive approach to this issue.

Muslim Americans are about 1.1% of the population. On the order of 56% of them believe abortion should be legal, and another 9% don’t know. So 65% of them don’t have a strong objection. I have pointed out that ten Muslim-majority countries have abortion on demand, and another 19 allow it under certain circumstances.

So Alito is taking a position more conservative than that of a majority of Muslim Americans.

So who wants to ban abortion? 63% of Evangelicals, who are 17% of the population, about 35 million people, and 47% of Catholics, roughly 34 million people. Even if you add all abortion critics in all the religions together, they are a minority of the country. Some 69% of Americans over all want to maintain Roe v. Wade.

Other organizations arose in reaction to this tragedy, and have organized Torah studies, musical tributes, and service projects including blood drives and collections for food banks. That the Tree of Life complex also hosts two other congregations impacted by the tragedy, Dor Hadash and New Light Congregation, speaks to the unusual inclusivity of the Pittsburgh Jewish community. It was my pleasure to live there for three years, and attend services at Tree of Life. So it’s personal.

An ugly irony is that the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA also occurs this week. This is a right-wing demonstration of solidarity with the organizers of the deadly 2017 rally, who are defendants in Federal civil trials for inviting and staging these criminal acts. Nine plaintiffs injured in 2017 are suing 14 men and 10 groups that sponsored the rally, for violating their civil rights. The Civil complaint is in play because there was no federal or state effort to hold them accountable for criminal action, while Donald Trump was president. The defendants fecklessly argue that their actions constituted “free speech,” and that violent acts were self-defense. This is yet another Republican effort to hijack the concept of “free speech” protections, and twist into a counterintuitive, wrongful application.

It occurs in the wake of Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson pushing his own “replacement theory,” arguing that the “Democratic Party” (a dog whistle for Jewish Americans) is “trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters, from the third world.” His objection is that naturalized Americans are “diluting” the electoral power of “conservative” white voters. Carlson claimed, “The power that I have as an American, guaranteed at birth, is one man, one vote. And they are diluting it.” No Tucker, the Electoral College dilutes the votes of California and New York, but ALL votes count as one regardless of the voters’ skin color or birthplace. Perhaps Carlson wants non-white votes to count as three-fifths, which was the original Electoral College intent, to appease white plantation owners. And non-white people also have natural rights “guaranteed at birth.”

Those murders were a consequence of former President Donald Trump’s hyper-partisan divisiveness. Anti-Semitism comes in two forms these days: From the left there is a misunderstanding of the distinction between Judaism the religion; and Zionism, the political ideology, which has morphed into a brand of nationalism. Right-wing leaders in the US and Israel have promoted nationalism as a call to arms against “the other.” The unholy alliance between former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former president Trump resulted in exclusionary, toxic elements becoming a central part of their political ideology in both countries. Both men poisoned their political systems to an extent that makes it difficult to repair.

The Tree of Life killer was not interested in history or confused about Judaism and Zionism. He just hated Jews, motivated by one of Trump’s “Big Lies” – that the Jews were “funding” the caravan of poor people on an Exodus from Central America through the venerable Hebrew Immigration Aid Society (HIAS). He represents a continuation of the anti-Semitism that arose in during the Crusades, and included 1000 years of brutal pogroms, murderous sprees, and expropriation of property and art throughout Europe, into the late 19^th Century. At times, Muslims protected Jews from the Christian invaders, and had a period of strong collaboration centered in Southern Spain and North Africa around the time of Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides). He collaborated with noted Islamic philosopher ibn Rushd, and built on the teachings ibn Sina (Avecina), with whom he shares credit as a forbear of modern medicine. Church-sponsored and Roman oppression made allies of Muslims and Jews at various times throughout history.

The victims were all vulnerable, and many were elderly. 97 year-old Rose Mallinger was known for endless volunteer contributions, including preparing breakfast for the congregation. Cecil and David Rosenthal were mentally disabled brothers, who lived in a group home and showed up every Saturday. The lives of Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Jerry Rabinowitz, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger also mattered. All except the Rosenthal brothers were senior citizens, and all were killed while at prayer, in a state of rest and repose.

Trump had the audacity to make an unwanted appearance at the scene three days later, defying requests from Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald to stay away. He inflamed and exacerbated the trauma, by making a phony show of care and condolence. To some, it was like a murderer showing up at a victim’s funeral to say, “Oh this is horrible; why all this senseless hate,” which he stoked and fueled. He further inflamed the situation by arguing that it illustrated a need for easier availability of guns, as he did with the Sandy Hook massacre.

Trump’s presidency was characterized by disingenuous acts that served to both 1.) Placate (or con) right-wing Jews into believing his support for all of Netanyahu’s excesses showed an affinity for Judaism, and 2.) Issue code words to Jew-hating Nazis to come out and act out with the same comments. They add up to a campaign of “Trojan anti-Semitism” and included:

–Declaring Judaism to be a nationality, in direct conflict with our spiritual and cultural history.

-Falsely declaring that Democrats are disloyal to Israel, ignoring the maxim that “friends don’t let friends commit suicide.”

-The destructive Abraham Accords, which created “peace” between Israel and countries it never had a war with, while dismissing Palestinian claims. By writing Palestinians out of the equation, he sowed the seeds for another generation of conflict.

-His open support for the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and his profane equivocation of “very fine people on both sides.”

-Recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was a sop to right-wing Jews and an incendiary gesture to Palestinians and the rest of the world. It was also a sop to the Evangelical community. Trump said last year, “We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem . . . That’s for the Evangelicals.” So he’s playing to the “Apocalypse Soon” crowd.

Despite this open Republican embrace of Jew-hating, race-baiting Fascism, some Jewish Republican elected officials continue to support his agenda, and ongoing effort to overturn the 2020 Election. Elected officials such as Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN) have contributed to the toxicity, AND our implicit demise by turning a blind eye to the most visceral threat to free exercise of religion and voting rights in our history. They have aided and abetted these crimes. Under Trump’s presidency, anti-Semitic violence and expressions have rose at an unprecedented rate in the US. This is not an accident, and Jewish Republicans who dismiss the connection reflect an unhealthy brand of myopia and denial.

To Trump and Republican leadership, the 11 murder victims were statistics, and fodder for political opportunity. But they were all good Jews with families, careers and vital, interesting lives. Each had his or her own unique Soul Print:

“Healing 10/27” spawned a consortium of other organizations that offer support, counseling and healing therapies: 2 for Seder, Squirrel Hill Stands Against Gun Violence and Love Like the Boys. The latter is dedicated to the memories of victims David and Cecil Rosenthal,” inseparable brothers known for their innocent kind-hearted nature.” Their tribute page on Facebook notes:

“We can’t make sense of the events at the Tree of Life but we can choose how we react to them:

React with love.

Offer a smile.

Reach out to those in need.

Treat the next person in line.

Lend a helping hand.

Include someone new.

Live cheerfully.

Trust others.

Don’t wait for happiness. Create it.

Let’s show we are stronger than hate.

Live like the Rosenthal’s.

Love like the boys.”

—–

Donations can be made to the Tree of Life Synagogue here.

—–

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

CBS Pittsburgh: “Commemoration Planned For Tree Of Life”

One of the many horrifying images from the Jan. 6 rampage on the U.S. Capitol shows a long-haired, long-bearded man wearing a black “Camp Auschwitz” T-shirt emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, and under it the phrase “work brings freedom” – an English translation of the Auschwitz concentration camp motto: “Arbeit macht frei.”*

These and related images, captured on television and retweeted on social media, demonstrate that some of those who traveled to Washington to support President Donald Trump were engaged in much more than just a doomed effort to maintain their hero in power.

As their writings make clear to me as a scholar of American anti-Semitism, some among them also hoped to trigger what is known as the “Great Revolution,” based on a fictionalized account of a government takeover and race war, that, in its most extreme form, would exterminate Jews.

Extreme anti-Semitism

Calls to exterminate Jews are common in far-right and white nationalist circles. For example, the conspiracy theorists of QAnon, who hold “that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who are plotting against Mr. Trump,” traffic in it regularly.

The anonymous “Q” – the group’s purported head who communicates in riddles and leaves clues on message boards – once approvingly retweeted the anti-Semitic image of a knife-wielding Jew wearing a Star of David necklace who stands knee-deep in the blood of Russians, Poles, Hungarians and Ukrainians and asks with feigned innocence, “Why do they persecute me so?”

Images of long-nosed Jews dripping with the blood of non-Jews whom they are falsely accused of murdering have a long and tragic history. Repeatedly, they have served as triggers for anti-Semitic violence.

More commonly, including in recent days, QAnon has targeted Jewish billionaire philanthropist and investor George Soros, whom it portrays as the primary figure shaping and controlling world events. A century ago, the Rothschilds, a family of Jewish bankers, was depicted in much the same way.

QAnon members also mark Jews with triple parentheses, a covert means of outing those whom they consider usurpers and outsiders, not true members of the white race.

‘White genocide’

Another website popular in white nationalist circles displayed photographs of Jewish women and men, downloaded from university websites, so as to help readers distinguish Jews from the “Aryan Master Race.” “Europeans are the children of God,” it proclaims. “(((They)))” – denominating Jews as other without even mentioning them – “are the children of Satan.”

The website justifies rabid anti-Semitism by linking Jews to the forces supposedly seeking to undermine racial hierarchies. “White genocide is (((their))) plan,” it declares, again marking Jews with triple parentheses, “counter-(((extermination))) is our response.”

Members of the Proud Boys, another group that sent members to Washington, likewise traffic in anti-Semitism. One of the group’s leaders, Kyle Chapman, recently promised to “confront the Zionist criminals who wish to destroy our civilization.” The West, he explained “was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race.”

Chapman, like many of his peers, uses the term “white genocide” as a shorthand way of expressing the fear that the members of the white population of the United States, like themselves, will soon be overwhelmed by people of color. The popular 14-word white supremacist slogan, visible on signs outside the Capitol on Wednesday, reads “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Composed by David Lane, one of the conspirators behind the 1984 assassination of Jewish radio host Alan Berg, this slogan originally formed part of a larger document entitled “The White Genocide Manifesto.” Its 14 planks insist that Jews are not white and actually endanger white civilization. “All Western nations are ruled by a Zionist conspiracy to mix, overrun and exterminate the White race,” the manifesto’s seventh plank reads.

While influenced by the infamous anti-Semitic forgery known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the document goes further, blaming members of what it euphemistically calls the “Zionist occupation governments of America” for homosexuality and abortion as well.

QAnon followers, the Proud Boys and the other far-right and alt-right groups that converged on Washington imagined that they were living out the great fantasy that underlies what many consider to be the bible of the white nationalism movement, a 1978 dystopian novel, “The Turner Diaries,” by William Luther Pierce.

The novel depicts the violent overthrow of the government of the United States, nuclear conflagration, race war and the ultimate extermination of nonwhites and “undesirable racial elements among the remaining White population.”

Symbolism outside the Capitol

As opinion writer Seyward Darby pointed out in The New York Times, the gallows erected in front of the Capitol recalls the novel’s depiction of “the day of the rope,” when so-called betrayers of their race were lynched. Unmentioned in The New York Times article is that the novel subsequently depicts “a war to the death with the Jew.”

The book warns Jews that their “day is coming.” When it does, at the novel’s conclusion, mass lynchings and a takeover of Washington set off a worldwide conflagration, and, within a few days “the throat of the last Jewish survivor in the last kibbutz and in the last, smoking ruin in Tel Aviv had been cut.”

“The Turner Diaries”’ denouement coupled with the anti-Semitic images from the Capitol on Wednesday serve as timely reminders of the precarious place Jews occupy in different corners of the United States. Even as some celebrate how Jews have become white and privileged, others dream of Jews’ ultimate extermination.

Jonathan D. Sarna, University Professor and Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

*This article has been corrected to remove an unsubstantiated reference to a T-shirt with an anti-Semitic acronym.

—-

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Jewish Dems: “Jewish Community Response to Capitol Siege – Voices from the Hill”

Human beings are a very young species, perhaps 300,000 years old, and have not had time to differentiate much. There is no significant genetic difference among human populations, from Ireland to China. Skin color is a very minor adaptive mechanism driven by the need to get enough but not too much sunshine to embryos to make vitamin D. Being starved of ultraviolet rays will cause lighter skin to be selected for over thousands of years. There is nothing intrinsically superior about it. A black complexion is better adapted to high UV ray environments like those at the equator.

Anyone who knows the history of Nazi (and other racist) science is chilled to the bone at what Trump said, and at its implications.

Just to make sure they understood what he was driving at, Trump threatened the Minnesotan Republicans with a flood of “Somali” immigrants, which he said Joe Biden was conniving at — i.e. he depicted Black immigrants of Muslim heritage as threatening undesirables. The Minnesota demographer’s office estimates about 52,000 Somalis in Minnesota, a state of 5.6 million, i.e. they are less than 1%.

Trump’s fixation on pigeon-holing people by race has caused him to denigrate most Americans. Trump’s lazy bigotry, of stereotyping and projecting his own narcissism on everyone else, is infuriating, but it is also very dangerous, because the president is a role model and people follow his cues.

Under Trump’s watch, Nazis in Charlottesville chanted “Jews will not replace us,” as they retailed, zombie-like, the bizarre conspiracy theory that Jewish Americans are engineering international immigration to the US for cheap labor to replace white people. Trump called the Nazis very fine people.

Apologists have tried to imply that he did not mean it. But he did.

Greg Miller at the Washington Post reports that

“After phone calls with Jewish lawmakers, Trump has muttered that Jews “are only in it for themselves” and “stick together” in an ethnic allegiance that exceeds other loyalties, officials said.”

It is the most monstrous thing about Trump that he seeks political advantage by trying to make Americans hate one another and fear one another.

It is obscene that Trump said this about our Jewish American brothers and sisters in the wake of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who gave unstintingly of herself to better the lives and expand the rights of all Americans.

Trump just attacked Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) again at a rally, in his own version of Orwell’s “Two minutes hate.”

Trump said of Omar, “She’s telling us how to run our country. How did you do where you came from? How is your country doing?”

Omar is an American citizen who was elected to Congress, she pointed out in response. Trump, she says, doesn’t seem to get it. If the people elect you to represent them, you get to help run the country. It doesn’t matter where you were born. Seven of the 39 men who signed the Constitution were foreign-born. Two of them were born in the West Indies, and we know what Trump thinks of Caribbean countries.

Donald “Bonespur” Trump, who got deferments to avoid serving in Vietnam might consider that 269 Jewish American soldiers died fighting in Vietnam.

Trump knows nothing of this account of Jewish Americans in our country’s major wars. It notes, “In World War I, there were more than 250,000 Jews who answered America’s call to action: over 3,500 were killed; over 12,000 were wounded; and they received over 1,100 decorations for bravery.”

Or consider this poignant list of Jewish American service personnel who have died in America’s wars since 9/11. Here are a few heartbreaking entries:

Wolfer, Stuart A.
Major, Army,
Florida 4/6/08
Baghdad, Iraq

Rosenberg, Mark E.
Major, Army,
Florida 4/8/08
Baghdad, Iraq

Yelner, Jonathan A.V.
Senior Airman, Air Force,
California 4/29/08
Near Bagram, Afghanistan

Farkas, Daniel
1st Lieutenant, Army National Guard,
New York 7/4/08
Kabul, Afghanistan (Camp Phoenix)

Weinger, Robert M.
Sergeant, Army National Guard,
Illinois 3/15/09
Jalabad, Afghanistan

Pine, Shawn
Lieutenant Colonel, Army Reserve,
Texas 5/20/09
Near Kabul, Afghanistan

Schulte, Roslyn L.
1st Lieutenant, Air Force,
Missouri 5/20/09
Near Kabul, Afghanistan

As for Trump, he had bone spurs when his time to serve came.

Jewish American physicians and nurses have been at the front lines fighting Covid-19, as have first-generation immigrant medical personnel, including Muslims. They have risked their lives. Some came out of retirement to be of service. Some have died.

Trump has run his presidency as a grifter, and would not recognize sacrifice if it fell on him from a great height.

——

Bonus Video:

THE JEWISH JOURNEY: AMERICA | March 2015 | PBS

This February, more than 100 gravestones were vandalized at the Chesed Shel Emeth Society Cemetery outside of St. Louis, Missouri and at the Jewish Mount Carmel Cemetery in Philadelphia.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has called anti-Semitism in the U.S. a “very serious concern.” An ADL task force confirmed that 800 journalists in the U.S. have been targeted with more than 19,000 anti-Semitic tweets. The organization also reported an upsurge in anti-Semitism on U.S. college campuses.

Most disconcerting, however, is the ADL’s admission that, although this increase in anti-Semitism is troubling, “it is essential to recognize that, for both positive and negative reasons – we are not alone.” In the 10 days following the presidential election in 2016, nearly 900 hate-motivated incidents were reported, and many on college campuses. Many of these incidents targeted Muslims, people of color and immigrants as well as Jews.

White supremacist groups like Identity Evropa, American Vanguard and American Renaissance have also been more active on college campuses.

I am a Jewish studies scholar. Research shows that this outpouring of anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic sentiment is reminiscent in many ways of the political climate during the years between the first and second world wars in the U.S. – known as the interwar period.

America as the ‘melting pot’

In its early years the United States maintained an “open door policy” that drew millions of immigrants from all religions to enter the country, including Jews. Between 1820 and 1880, over nine million immigrants entered America. By the early 1880s, American nativists – people who believed that the “genetic stock” of Northern Europe was superior to that of Southern and Eastern Europe – began pushing for the exclusion of “foreigners,” whom they “viewed with deep suspicion.”

In fact, according to scholar Barbara Bailin, most of the immigrants, who were from Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, “were considered so different in composition, religion, and culture from earlier immigrants as to trigger a xenophobic reaction that served to generate more restrictive immigration laws.”

In August 1882, Congress responded to increasing concerns about America’s “open door” policy and passed the Immigration Act of 1882, which included a provision denying entry to “any convict, lunatic, idiot or any person unable to take care of himself without becoming a public charge.”

However, enforcement was not strict, in part because immigration officers working at the points of entry were expected to implement these restrictions as they saw fit. In fact, it was during the late 19th century that the American “melting pot” was born: nearly 22 million immigrants from all over the world entered the U.S. between 1881 and 1914. They included approximately 1,500,000 million European Jews hoping to escape the longstanding legally enforced anti-Semitism of many parts of the European continent, which limited where Jews could live, what kinds of universities they could attend and what kinds of professions they could hold.

Fear of Jews/immigrants

Nativists continued to rail against the demographic shifts created by the United States’ lax immigration policy, and in particular took issue with the high numbers of Jews and Southern Italians entering the country, groups many nativists believed were racially inferior to Northern and Western Europeans. Nativists also voiced concerns about the effects of cheaper labor on the struggle for higher wages.

These fears were eventually reflected in the makeup of Congress, since the electorate voted increasing numbers of nativist congresspeople into office who vowed to change immigration laws with their constituent’s anti-immigrant sentiments in mind.

Nativist and isolationist sentiment in America only increased, as Europe fell headlong into World War I, “the war to end all wars.” On Feb. 4, 1917 Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1917, which reversed America’s open door policy and denied entry to the majority of immigrants seeking entry. As a result, between 1918 and 1921, only 20,019 Jews were admitted into the U.S.

The 1924 Immigration Act tightened the borders further. It transferred the decision to admit or deny immigrants from the immigration officers at the port of entry to the Foreign Services Office, which issued visas after the completion of a lengthy application with supporting documentation.

The quotas established by the act also set strict limits on the number of new immigrants allowed after 1924. The number of Central and Eastern Europeans allowed to enter the U.S. was dramatically reduced: The 1924 quotas provided visas to a mere 2 percent of each nationality already in the U.S by 1890, and excluded immigrants from Asia completely (except for immigrants from Japan and the Phillipines). The stated fundamental purpose of this immigration act was to preserve the ideal of U.S. “homogeneity.” Congress did not revise the act until 1952.

Why does this history matter?

The political climate of the interwar period has many similarities with the anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic environment today.

President Trump’s platform is comprised in large part of strongly anti-immigrant rhetoric. A Pew Charitable Trust survey shows that as many as 66 percent of registered voters who supported Trump consider immigration a “very big problem,” while only 17 percent of Hillary Clinton’s supporters said the same. Seventy-nine percent of Trump supporters embrace the proposal to build a wall “along the entire U.S. border with Mexico.” Moreover, 59 percent of Trump supporters actively associate “unauthorized immigrants with serious criminal behavior.”

I argue that much like the claims of interwar period nativists that Southern and Eastern European people were racially inferior, the assertions of President Trump and his supporters about immigrants and the dangers they pose are nothing more than demagoguery. The allegations about the high crime rate among immigrants are not borne out by statistical evidence: Immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes than people born in the U.S.

President Trump’s claims about the dangers posed by immigrants may not be supported by facts; but they do indicate the U.S.’ increased isolationism, nativism and right-wing nationalism. His most recent travel ban blocks immigrants from six predominantly Muslim nations, and includes a 120-day freeze on Syrian refugees specifically. And yet like the Jews of Europe from the interwar period, many of these refugees seek entry into the U.S. because their very lives are at stake.

For many scholars like myself, Trump’s “America First” approach is a reminder of the interwar period; all over again, we see anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-Semitism, going hand in hand. In the current climate, Muslims are also easy targets for a new generation of nativists, whose fears are used to justify turning away refugees and immigrants.

Ingrid Anderson, Lecturer, Arts & Sciences Writing Program, Boston University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Some Jewish groups see the vandalism and threats as a sign that anti-Semitic groups have been emboldened by Trump’s election.

Jewish community centers and schools in at least 13 U.S. states reported receiving bomb threats on Monday, the fifth wave of such threats this year that have stoked fears of a resurgence of anti-Semitism.

The threats, all of which appeared to be hoaxes, were received in Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia, the JCC Association of North America said. For some centers, it was the second or third time this year they had been targeted.

Police in Mercer Island, Washington, also reported a community center was targeted by a bomb threat.

“Members of our community must see swift and concerted action from federal officials to identify and capture the perpetrator or perpetrators who are trying to instill anxiety and fear in our communities,” David Posner, a director at the JCC Association, said in a statement.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department’s civil rights division have said they are investigating the threats alongside police, but little information has been made public about any perpetrators.

Some Jewish groups see the vandalism and threats as a sign that anti-Semitic groups have been emboldened by Trump’s election. His campaign last year drew the support of white supremacists and other right-wing groups, despite his disavowals of them.

Via TeleSur

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

CBS This Morning: “New wave of threats to Jewish centers across U.S.”

1. Media Matters Tweet:

Fox co-hosts attack Mark Zuckerberg over expressing support for the Muslim community: https://t.co/c0M3YVpg7l pic.twitter.com/2yU4IHffhE

— Media Matters (@mmfa) December 10, 2015

2. Cenk Uygur:

“Mark Zuckerberg recently put out a statement supporting Muslims throughout the world. Sure there may be economic motivations to this, but nonetheless the words ring honest and true. Cenk Uygur, hosts of the The Young Turks, break it down.

“The millennial innovator who got the world to share sonograms, goofy wedding photos, relationship statuses and innermost thoughts onFacebook is doing a lot of sharing himself these days.

Now Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the site, has added his voice to one of the most contentious political issues of the moment, with a strong statement on Wednesday night in support of Muslims and Islam. Granted, his statement also made good business sense for Facebook. The site hasjust over one billion daily active users, many of them Muslims.”

The Young Turks: “Mark Zuckerberg Stands With Muslims”

Statement here:

“I want to add my voice in support of Muslims in our community and around the world.

After the Paris attacks and hate this week, I can only imagine the fear Muslims feel that they will be persecuted for the actions of others.

As a Jew, my parents taught me that we must stand up against attacks on all communities. Even if an attack isn’t against you today, in time attacks on freedom for anyone will hurt everyone.

If you’re a Muslim in this community, as the leader of Facebook I want you to know that you are always welcome here and that we will fight to protect your rights and create a peaceful and safe environment for you…”

Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and other bigots on the far right are nothing new in American history. Rather, they remind us of the worst and most shameful detours of the American Republic in the past. From the mid-nineteenth century racial theory became prominent in European and American discourse, in which peoples were conceived of as endogamous (only marrying among themselves and so producing ‘pure’ and ‘less pure’ ‘races.’) In contrast, in the 18th century most Western thinkers believed the differences among peoples had to do with climate and diet. The nineteenth century Romantic notion of race is a fantasy– people get all mixed up over time.

But it would be a mistake to think race was the only consideration in American xenophobia (hatred for foreigners). Powerful Christian revivalist movements created movements to missionize the world that had a horror of having heathens on the continent.

These twin pathologies of racism and religious bigotry were implicated in a whole series of white, Christian supremacist laws aimed at excluding whole swathes of the world from immigration to the United States enacted between 1882 and 1924. Here are the highlights. Or, lowlights.

1. Chinese Buddhists Both racism and religious bigotry built up toward Chinese-Americans brought in from 1849 to build the trans-American railroad. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first time a whole people was excluded from the United States. In the prejudiced language of the day, that Chinese were Buddhists, Confucianists or Taoists, i.e. “pagans” or “heathens” from an Evangelical point of view, was one of the reasons they should be kept out of the country. The total exclusion lasted until 1943, when 100 Chinese a year began being admitted, which was not much different from total exclusion. In 1965 the Immigration Act ended racial and religious exclusions based on racism and religious fanaticism, including of Chinese. Chinese-Americans have made enormous contributions to the United States, despite the long decades during which they were excluded or disrespected.

2. Japanese Buddhists. In 1907-08, the US and Japan concluded a “gentlemen’s agreement” whereby Japan would limit the number of passports it issued to Japanese wanting to come to the United States. In turn, the city of San Francisco agreed to end the legal segregation of Japanese-Americans in that city (yes, they had their very own Jim Crow). Not satisfied with the agreement, in 1924 racist Congressmen ended Japanese immigration completely. This action angered Japan and set the two countries on a path of enmity.

3. Indian Hindus & Sikhs and other Asians. Not satisfied with measures against Buddhists, white Christians next went after Hindus and Sikhs. The 1917 Asiatic Barred Zone Act excluded from immigration everyone from the continent of Asia– it especially aimed at Indians, including especially Sikhs, but also Koreans, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesians, etc. etc. The American Immigration Council writes:

“During the same period, Asian Indians, particularly Sikhs from the Punjabi region who were originally brought by the British to work the Canadian-Pacific railroads, began to move south into the U.S. Pacific Northwest and California as farm workers. In response, nativist rioters burnt out the Asian Indian settlements in Bellingham and Everett, Washington in 1907. In the following decade, protectionist and racist groups, epitomized by the Asian Exclusion League, campaigned against the “Hindu invasion” or “Turban tide” that was perceived as an economic threat to native farmers. Laws were passed in California to strip land ownership from Asian Indians and Japanese in 1913 and 1920. In response, many Asian Indians married Mexican-American women, which for a time exempted them from the law. Asian Indian students who were supporters of independence from the British Empire were expelled from the country by order of President Theodore Roosevelt.”

“Finally, sustained political attacks against Asian Indians such as those orchestrated by Democratic Representative John Raker and immigration commissioner Anthony Caminetti culminated in the imposition of the 1917 Barred Zone Act. Asian Indians joined other Asian country nationals (except Japanese and Filipinos) who were excluded from immigrating to the United States. The final injustice to Asian Indians was exacted by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), which considered to which race Asian Indians belonged. The Court decided that although Asian Indians were Caucasian, they were not “white” and therefore could not be U.S. citizens. Harassment of the Asian Indian population continued, forcing many to return to India. By 1940 half of the Asian Indian population had left the country, leaving only 2,405.”

The provision in the act barring “polygamists” was aimed at Muslims. Would-be Muslim immigrants were asked at their port of entry if they believed a man could have more than one wife, and if they said yes, were turned away.

Japanese were not part of the act only because the Gentlemen’s Agreement already mostly excluded them. Filipinos were not excluded because the Philippines was then an American territory (i.e. colony).

4. Syrians-Lebanese. In the early 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan reappeared on the national stage and agitated against immigrants, Catholics, and Jews. The Klan infiltrated the Democratic Party and took it over, and won the whole state of Indiana.

The racist 1924 Immigration act set country quotas based on the percentage of Americans from that country already present in 1890. How exactly they determined how many Americans were British, German, etc. is not clear to me. But one consequence of basing the quotas on 1890 rather than, as was originally proposed, 1910, was that populations that came in big numbers during the Great Migration of 1880-1924 were often given low quotas. Populations that came in the eighteenth century or the mid-19th (e.g. in the latter case, Germans) had relatively large quotas. Syria-Lebanon (which were not separated until the French conquest of 1920) were given a quota of 100, even though tens of thousands of Lebanese came to the United States, 10% of them Muslim during the Great Migration. That community produced the great Lebanese-American writer and artist, Kahlil Gibran.

Now what we would call the Lebanese were excluded. In fact, some racists in places like North Carolina argued that greater Syria was in West Asia and so Lebanese/Syrians should be excluded on the basis of the Barred Asiatic Zone. They put Lebanese Muslims and Christians into the category of the “Yellow Peril”!

5. Other Middle Easterners, including Armenians. The 1924 Nazi-style quotas based on “race,” which mostly lasted until 1965, excluded most of the Middle East. The quota for Egypt? 100. Palestine? 100. Turkey? 100. Even the persecuted Armenians were given only 100 spaces annually.

The racial hierarchies visible in the 1924 act fed into an increasing concern with eugenics, with fears of decadent races and a determination to strengthen the master race by forbidding intermarriage and even by experimenting on live human beings.

6. Jews. In the 1930s when it would have mattered, the US government excluded Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany from coming to America. I wrote elsewhere, “the US in the 1930s did betray its ideals as a refuge for people yearning to be free. The episode of the SS St Louis, a ship full of 900 Jewish refugees that got close enough to Miami to see its lights before being turned back to Europe, epitomized this failure. A third of the passengers were later murdered by the Nazis. One Jewish refugee the US did take in was Albert Einstein. How would we not have been better off if we’d had more like him?”

Racists of that time argued that German Jews shouldn’t be admitted because Nazi agents might covertly exist among them.

Trump is proposing a 21st century version of the racist and religiously bigoted Barred Asiatic Zone and its racist and bigoted successor, the 1924 Immigration Act. This is the new Ku Klux Klan, infiltrating the Republican Party this time.

Those who have said they’ve never seen anything like it in American history don’t know their American history very well. The problem is not that what Trump is saying is unprecedented. It is that it echoes the ugliest episodes of American intolerance.

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Related video:

New York University: “When Long Island Was the Eugenics Capital of the World”