Trump's Pogram And People On Both Sides Of The Aisle

Sparks by Nancy Ohanian

Ivanka and Kushner-in-law are Jews. When government-sanctioned Cossacks-- quietly sanctioned-- were murdering Jews in Imperial Russia there were tsars who protected wealthy Jews in St. Petersburg. A few years ago, I visited the Grand Choral Synagogue that Alexander II sanctioned in 1869 at the request of wealthy Jewish financier Joseph Günzburg-- loudly sanctioned-- Petersburg's first synogogue. Decades later, my grandfather, fleeing Cossacks raiding the countryside, spent his last night in Russia before immigrating to America at that synagogue.

Over the weekend, the Trumpist Regime sent Pence out to the media to claim Trump was not responsible for rabid anti-Semite, self-proclaimed Nazi and Trumpist Cesar Sayoc (#MAGAbomber) in Florida nor for Robert Bowers (#MAGAshooter) in Pittsburgh, who killed 11 people praying in their synagogue and them said "All these Jews need to die." NBC reported that Pence "rejected the suggestion that there is a link between the kind of political rhetoric" used by devoted neo-Nazi Señor Trumpanzee and "acts of violence like Saturday's deadly shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh or last week's mail bombs sent to prominent Trump critics." Pence said "Everyone has their own style, and frankly, people on both sides of the aisle use strong language about our political differences. But I just don’t think you can connect it to acts or threats of violence." Isn't that nice? Just think fall those neo-Nazis whose dinners were spoiled by people on the other side of the aisle. Senator McConnell may have gotten a tummy ache when someone yelled at him.

The vice president called for “unity” earlier in the day at a campaign event in Las Vegas. "What happened this morning in Pittsburgh was not just a criminal act, it was evil," he told NBC News. He added that the administration is "absolutely determined to do everything in our power to prevent these types of attacks from happening in the future."

But when asked about calling Democrats a "mob," as he did at campaign stops a day before, Pence indicated that was part of political debate.

“The American people believe in the freedom of speech,” Pence said. “And throughout the history of this country we’ve always had vigorous debates and then we settle those debates in the ballot box. We don’t settle them through acts or threats of violence like the pipe bombs we saw sent to the Obamas, the Clintons, to CNN and others.”

And he characterized the president’s penchant for name calling as part of the reason Trump has effectively connected with a large contingency of the country.

“The president and I have different styles, but the president connected to the American people because he spoke plainly.”

When asked if the president’s rhetoric is “healthy” for the country’s civil discourse, the vice president said “debate is healthy in America,” and, again, dismissed any connection between “the kind of violent behavior we witnessed in Pittsburgh” to “the political debate.”

After the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting it has become abundantly clear to more Jews that to support Trump now is to say that his pro-Israel policies are more important than his enflaming of anti-Semitism. Jay Michaelson reminded Daily Beast readers yesterday that "After the 9/11 attacks, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said that countries now had to choose between fighting terror and abetting it, that there was no neutral ground. In his metaphor, you were either sitting in the smoking section, or the no-smoking section. In the wake of the worst attack on Jews in American history, all of us, but especially American Jews like me, face a similar decision. We either support Donald Trump and the movement of hate he has unleashed, or we oppose it. There is no neutral ground, no justification that the benefits outweigh the costs. You’re in the smoking section, or the no-smoking section."

For American Jews in particular, this is a moment of reckoning. In the Jewish community, support for Trump is lower than it has been for most Republican presidents, but it’s still around 21 percent. The majority of Jewish Trump supporters are either Orthodox or right-wing on Israel-- in most cases, both. Among Orthodox Jews-- who comprise about one-fifth of American Jews-- support for Trump runs as high as 90 percent.

For two years, Jewish Trump supporters have said that the anti-Semitic alt-right isn’t Trump’s fault; that the president is not personally anti-Semitic (after all, his daughter and son-in-law are Jewish); and, most importantly, he has been a staunch supporter for Israel.

This, they say, outweighs whatever reservations we may have about Trump and the bigotry of his most ardent supporters.

As of October 27, 2018, that jig is up.

No amount of pro-Israel policies-- no embassy in Jerusalem, no encouragement of settlements, no increased aid-- outweighs the existential danger to Jews of the Trump movement’s coddling, or even overt encouragement, of anti-Semitism, racism, and nativism. Even those Jews not motivated by solidarity with Muslims, Mexicans, the media, and others singled out by Trump for opprobrium must now recognize that we Jews, ourselves, are at risk.

Although this should have been clear following the 60-percent increase in anti-Semitic attacks between 2016 and 2017, it is surely undeniable now.

It is beyond obvious that Trump, Fox News, and the “soft” alt-right are guilty of what has been called “stochastic terrorism.”  While they are not legally responsible for any individual particular terrorist act, including the slaughter in Pittsburgh, they have, over the past several years, created the environment in which “lone wolves” like Robert Bowers inevitably commit horrific acts.

In the case of stochastic terrorism, those responsible for it may still condemn each individual act of violence. They may sincerely be disgusted by it.  But without their acts, it would not have happened. They are responsible.

By way of analogy, stochastic terrorists are like teenagers who put grain alcohol in a punch bowl. They may not be legally responsible when a bunch of kids get drunk, and one gets behind the wheel and kills someone in an accident. But any ethical human being knows that such consequences are unavoidable. Maybe not at every party, but one is enough.

In Bowers’ case, the causal connection is clearer that usual. Bowers parroted talking points not merely of the alt-right, which blames Jews for multiculturalism, but also of the ‘soft right’ like Fox News, which has ceaselessly repeated lies that dangerous “Middle Easterners” are among the current caravan of refugees; that ‘illegal’ immigrants are disproportionately criminals (in fact, the crime rate among undocumented people is lower than that of citizens); that immigration is thus an existential danger to America.

Trump, of course, has also said some of the same things, even though his own advisers know that they are false.

If you think about it, how could someone like Robert Bowers not commit a terrorist act? He’s been marinating in a stew of anti-Semitism, nativism, nationalism, and above all, rage. If not Bowers, then it would have been someone else.

And no, it does not matter that Trump condemned the attacks, and that the attacker himself believes Trump isn’t anti-Semitic enough.  For years, Trump’s leading supporters (and family members) have retweeted overt white supremacists and given platforms to them. Even in his recent condemnation of the 13 letter bomb attacks, he managed only to condemn “political violence,” feeding into the right-wing myth that there is equal violence on both sides, just as there were good people on both sides of the Charlottesville white supremacy march. As if antifa activists punching Richard Spencer or heckling Mitch McConnell are equal to a Robert Bowers, Cesar Altieri Sayoc, or Dylann Roof.

Nor, finally, does it matter whether Trump himself is anti-Semitic, which he almost certainly is not (even beyond his family, many of his longtime business associates, as well as his chief mentor, Roy Cohn, are Jewish). He is either unwilling or unable to see how his vicious rhetoric against immigrants and Muslims supports a right-wing movement that also hates Jews. He is unwilling or unable to see how his furious midnight tweets and shouted insults at rallies encourage tens of millions of Americans to be enraged at the media, Hollywood, and ‘elites’-- all of which, in anti-Semitic imagination, are disproportionately Jewish.

He may not get it, but he is responsible. And even if Trump himself can’t see that, we American Jews must.

David Frum noted in his Atlantic column that "one of the special moral challenges for American Jews in the Trump years is that-- for once-- we have largely been exempt from vilification by a hate-exploiting demagogue. Jews historically assume that bigots of any kind must sooner or later turn upon us as well. But Trump largely refrains from explicit anti-Semitism, and to a remarkable degree the pro-Trump conservative media refrain as well. In a true “only in America” moment, people who bear Jewish names and participate in Jewish life have been full partners in much of the Trump project."

There’s no politician to blame for the ideas in the synagogue murderer’s head. There are plenty to blame for the weapons in his hands. And at the top of that list is Trump, whose response to the killing was to blame the synagogue for not having armed guards of its own. In his famous letter to the Jewish congregations of Newport, Rhode Island, the nation’s first president pledged to them a country that would fulfill the biblical prophecy: “Every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Trump is an unworthy successor to George Washington who feeds off fear, normalizes it, and exploits it. He’s done it again today. This crime is not his fault at all. And yet he nevertheless found a way to use this crime to add to his own accumulating shame.

One week from tomorrow, the American people can start the process of stopping this home-grown fascism-- that is now rearing its ugly head on our soil-- in its tracks. As Andrew Gillum said Saturday, "The reports from Pittsburg are heartbreaking and devastating. Our houses of worship-- like our schools and movie theaters-- should be safe from this epidemic of gun violence. All Americans need words of healing; words of affirmation; and words of condemnation for the rising tide of hatred and anti-Semitism in this country. This epidemic of violence impacts all of us, from worshipers in a synagogue to a bible study meeting in Charleston to the brave men and women in law enforcement who give so much to keep us all safe. Hatred and violence will never win. What is right in our society will triumph over what is wrong."

Late last night the NY Times published an analysis by Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, For Trump, Dutiful Words of Grief, Then Off to the Next Fight. They wrote that Republican officials have been complaining for months-- among themselves-- that the orangutan occupying the Oval Office "lacks the ability to confront moments of crisis with moral clarity," as though an orangutan can grok the concept of moral clarity, let alone live by it. Trump choses "to inflame the divisions that have torn the country apart rather than try to bring it together." His phony-baloney statement of outrage "at anti-Semitism after Saturday’s slaughter at a Pittsburgh synagogue" was crafted by Ivanka and Kushner-in-law while Trump smoldered, eager to get back "into partisan mode, assailing his enemies. By the evening’s end he was tweeting about baseball, and on Sunday he went after another [Jewish] foe… Inside the White House, advisers veer between resolve, resignation and resentment-- struggling to get Mr. Trump to do and say what a typical president might, frustrated that he does not always heed their guidance and bitter that his critics are piling on. Sometimes they take it upon themselves to do what he will not."