This Election Has Been America’s Most Antisemitic Yet

Today marks the end of our third Trump election cycle and somehow the Maga movement has found new depths of racism to plumb, more extreme conspiracies to peddle, and new groups to incite violence against regardless of whether Trump wins or loses.

American Jews have played a central role in the Trump campaign – though while in previous cycles Trump made grand overtures to the country’s Jewish communities, this year he appears to be tiring of us. Speaking at a “Fighting Anti-Semitism in America” event in Washington DC in September, Trump claimed that he would “defeat antisemitism and defend our Jewish citizens in America” and, in the same breath, that Jews who voted for someone as “anti-Israel” as Kamala Harris should have their “head examined” and should take the blame if he loses – a terrifying threat for a group of people who have in recent history endured pogroms and mass shootings.

Embedded in Trump’s Washington speech are two contradictory assumptions: that Jews are loyal, and should be, to the state of Israel; and that Jews should be loyal to the United States of America, but are not. In fact these assumptions are completely consistent with the antisemitic dual loyalty trope and great replacement theory.

Trump both happily reduces American Jewry to Israel while also stoking resentment at us for not acting rationally on our foreign allegiance, possibly in order to deliberately disrupt America’s racial makeup. According to Trump, if Jews are loyal to Israel, we should support him for president because he hates Palestinians even more than the Democrats. But even if we subscribe to Trump’s logic we can’t win, because if we are only loyal to Israel we are therefore disloyal to America. In fact, we might even deliberately cause Trump to lose to hurt (white Christian) America.

The dual loyalty trope has a long history in both Europe and the US and far predates the state of Israel. The trope asserts that Jews are so loyal to their own community that they will be disloyal citizens in their chosen countries. This trope has historically been used to scapegoat and villainise Jews, to enact violence towards us and to deny us full citizenship rights. While not deployed quite so explicitly, the Democrats have shown that they are not immune from mentioning Jews’ dual loyalty either: President Biden has often implied that American Jews need Israel to keep them safe. It is Trump, however, who has honed the trope into an extremely sharp weapon.

Trump’s insistence on Jews’ loyalty to Israel has allowed him to claim he’ll keep Jews safe despite well-documented evidence to the contrary. The Republican Jewish Coalition recently ran an ad encouraging Jews to vote for Trump even if they don’t like his policies (or his supporters) on the basis that he will defend Israel. The ad highlights the tension on college campuses over Israel and dismisses Kamala Harris as only caring about “defending the Squad”. What exactly will Trump keep us safe from? Being spit on while walking around campus, a danger that – while real – hardly compares to Charlottesville pogromists shouting “Jews will not replace us” or the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, both of which happened on Trump’s watch.

The claim that Jews aren’t loyal to America fuels the conspiracy that we are actually trying to destroy it from within. One way we supposedly do this is through the great replacement theory, a conspiracy theory that claims Jews – who are paradoxically perceived as both white when accused of betraying the white race and non-white when included in those polluting the white race – are trying to harm the white race by lowering the white birth rate and increasing the population of minorities. This theory underpins anti-immigrant rhetoric, anti-trans ideology and even anti-abortion claims, and has been one of the linchpins of the Trump campaign. Jews only make up 2.4% of the US population but from the amount we have been talked about on the campaign, you would think we were everywhere – and that is by design.

In truth, politicians from both parties are actually more supportive of Israel than the American Jewish population, and antisemitism and Jewish safety is given very little concern if we’re in danger from the far right or if we dare to criticise Israel – which increasingly, many of us do.

According to a poll taken in May 2024, 51% of American Jews would support halting weapons shipments to Israel. An even more recent poll showed that only 9% of American Jews rank Israel as their first or even second biggest election issue; it is tied for ninth on a list of 11 issues for the Jewish community overall. The same poll reported that 87% of American Jews support a ceasefire and 63% view Netanyahu unfavourably. The poll also indicates that, as in every previous election, Jews will vote for Democrats, by a wide margin. Most will do so based on issues that have nothing to do with Israel or antisemitism: Jewish Americans’ two top voting issues for this election are preserving democracy and abortion.

In late October, Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City reminiscent of the 1939 Nazi rally at the same location. Before the rally a Jewish speaker who recently sued Harvard over antisemitism dropped out because he felt the lineup, which included shock jock podcast host Tucker Carlson, was a danger to Jews. A comedian speaking at the rally made racist jokes about Puerto Rico and about Jews and money. Indeed Trump’s “America first” slogan has a racist and antisemitic history. The slogan was first coined by nativists in the nineteenth century to fearmonger about immigrants harming American citizens. The slogan next used by Woodrow Wilson to signal his desire to remain neutral when the first world war broke out. The Ku Klux Klan also adopted the slogan to support racist and xenophobic sentiment that inspired anti-immigration policies. During the second world war the America First Committee adopted the slogan to support isolationism and American nationalism. The movement also was riddled with antisemitism and racism and was even linked to Nazism.

While better positioned on antisemitism, Kamala Harris has not been free from mistakes. The campaign has even employed New York congressman Ritchie Torres as a surrogate to the Jewish community solely because of his unwavering support for Israel and despite his attacks on any Jew who disagrees with him. While not employing overt antisemitism, the campaign has missed numerous opportunities to refocus the conversation on Jewish safety to target the far more dangerous rightwing antisemitism. Additionally, while President Biden is no longer the candidate, the Harris campaign is not running in a way that differentiates Harris much from Biden, especially on Israel.

Antisemitism is a very real issue in America, thanks in no small part to the efforts of its two presidential candidates, who have throughout their respective campaigns feigned concern for Jewish safety to attack marginalised groups both at home and abroad. Whatever happens after this election, American Jewry does not stand to benefit.