
German Remembrance of the Holocaust and Growing US Anti-Semitism (2018) - Tomte
https://kottke.org/18/10/german-remembrance-of-the-holocaust-and-growing-us-anti-semitism
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marsrover
Disclaimer: I did not vote for Trump (I feel the internet needs to know before
they down vote me)

It makes sense that an anti-Semitic individual would act out if they believed
that the president was also anti-Semitic. But I really think it’s who the
individual believes the president is that drives the action and that belief is
influenced by articles like this and the president’s public actions. I
personally don’t think the president’s actions point toward anti-semitism.

If every article an individual reads about Trump mentions some radical ideal
that Trump supports (whether or not he actually does), then we’re going to see
radical people who agree with those ideals.

I do think that anti-semitism is on the rise just like racism and political
bifurcation. But I think it’s more complicated than: Trump said the Mexicans
are taking out jobs.

~~~
krapp
I haven't seen any evidence that Trump is anti-Semitic, although some of his
comments (in particular his equivocation with the Charlottesville incident)
lead me to suspect that he has some bigoted views regarding race and
ethnicity. However, it is undeniable that his campaign and rhetoric were
attractive to the alt-right, neo-reactionary and white supremacist
communities, and the narrative of his election as an act of defiance by "angry
rural white males" afraid of the loss of white cultural identity and
demographic majority in the US has been well documented.

The US has always had a problem with anti-semitism, not to the same degree as
Europe, but it's a bigotry that's nonetheless been baked into Western culture
since the dark ages. It's not separate from hatred of foreigners, those are
closely correlated, and it's exacerbated in the light of a rightward shift in
culture and politics by the view that Jews in the US comprise a leftist cabal
within academia and finance undermining traditional American ideals in favor
of a Zionist agenda.

Of course, now we mostly don't talk about the perfidious Jews who secretly run
the world, we talk about "New York elites" and "cultural Marxists" and
"globalist bankers," and let people who know connect the dots. Distance from
the Holocaust and WW2 and web took the fangs out of that ideology for years
and history, having become tragedy, became shitposting edgelord meme culture.

To me, Trump is like a bright light attracting American bigots like moths. He
didn't create the swarm but it is drawn to him regardless. It is more
complicated, sure, but it's also simple - Trump attracts them because he, his
irascible, politically incorrect personality and his populist rhetoric makes
him seem like he really is one of them, just incognito.

