Fascism Rising

American Jewish leaders and institutions: will you fight back against right-wing threats to our democracy and way of life with the same intensity you campaign against Israel's critics on the left?

In the late 1930s, the Jewish leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky frantically crisscrossed Eastern Europe warning Jews of impending “catastrophe.” The Jews of Europe were living precariously, he prophesied, on the edge of a ‘volcano,’ at risk of being consumed by its flames.

Establishment Jewish leaders wrongly dismissed his warnings – perhaps blinded by opposition to his militant, right-wing views in the Zionist debates of the time​. His warnings unheeded, the fires he foresaw consumed much of European Jewry. ​

I’m reminded of Jabotinsky ​now as I sense an ominous storm gathering that threatens the ​democratic, rules-based world order ​undergirding global stability for the past 75 years.

The storm clouds darkened in the US this past week: Immigrants rounded up; our ​gates closed to refugees; a camp at Guantanamo being prepared for non-citizen detainees.

In just two weeks, we’ve seen insurrectionists pardoned, including heads of fascist militias then welcomed to Congress, while the prosecutors who brought them to justice are now the ones threatened.

Decorated public servants are being run out of office, demonized and punished for their perceived lack of loyalty to the new President.

We’re seeing national tragedies – from plane crashes to fires and floods – weaponized to serve political agendas and nationalist drums beaten to promote territorial expansion.

In this heated environment, the Jewish community faces its own specific storm: rising antisemitism. The same administration​ threatening our democracy is wasting no time ​playing politics with Jewish fear​. This week, a new Executive Order to combat antisemitism focused only on “anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities” with not a word about antisemitism emanating from the political right.

​No one should be surprised. This administration told us in advance that they would pardon violent, Nazi-adjacent Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and deport foreign-born students with whose politics they disagree.

​My goal here is not to rehash the objectionable, anti-democratic actions this administration has taken or will yet take.

My focus is ​on whether the leaders and institutions of the Jewish establishment are taking the gathering storm that threatens our democracy and our way of life seriously enough.

Jewish attention did focus for a time this past week on whether or not Elon Musk performed a Nazi salute. Debate intensified around whether or not the ADL, still looked to as a​ leading communal authority on antisemitism, erred in giving Musk a pass over the gesture.

But the Musk salute itself isn’t the issue. Nor even is Musk’s affinity for the far-right AfD party in Germany and his despicable willingness to whitewash their Holocaust denial.

The issue is that the volume of the fuss over the salute highlighted the depth of the silence in the face of the threat of fascism and right-wing ethnonationalism in this country and around the world.

It’s not 1938, thank goodness.

We’re not, I don’t believe, anywhere near Jabotinsky’s smoldering volcano, which proved fatal to a third of the world’s Jews.

But it’s well past time for the leadership of the Jewish community to mobilize around the very real threat the ethnonationalist right poses in this country and globally.

We seem to have no trouble raising vast sums and bringing intense pressure to bear when our community hears young people and left-wing activists criticize Israel.

So where are the emergency campaigns to counter global fascism and take on racist militias and neo-Nazi paramilitaries?

You’ll get no argument from me that some Palestinian rights activists on campuses and in left-wing spaces are obnoxious, uninformed and at times antisemitic. Those who embrace Hamas need pushback and condemnation, and Jewish students are owed physical safety at school and thoughtful tools to process and counter what they are confronting. (By the way, that’s why J Street is dramatically expanding our own campus program, J Street U.)

But let’s get real. The fundamental threat to our way of life comes not from misguided but powerless students and activists protesting the Gaza War, but from those with real power limiting personal freedoms, shutting the door on immigrants, criminalizing speech and undoing the democratic structures that ​brought Jewish Americans opportunity and freedom.

Let’s focus not on Elon Musk’s arm motions, but on the policies and actions of the President whom Musk elected.

Where are the statements from the leading organizations representing Jewish Americans speaking in one loud, clear voice to call out President Trump's actions?

When will the alarms sound about the threat from the rise of the far-right all across Europe and globally?

Our commitment to defend freedom and democracy must not be derailed when right-wing leaders claim to be “pro-Israel” because their politics​ align with those of a far-right Israeli government. Frankly, the dangers posed by the Netanyahu government to the democratic foundations of Israel themselves deserve far more attention from American Jewish leaders as well.

The Jewish people must not allow Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, Geert Wilders or other ultra-nationalist leaders to use “support for Israel” as a fig leaf for dangerous racist, xenophobic politics.

If we do not prevent this coming storm at home and call it out abroad, we risk the way of life we so value and the freedoms and security we cherish.

​When they come for the immigrants and the refugees, we must speak up for them.

When they come for the trans soldiers and students, we must speak up for them.

When they start arresting those enforcing the law, when they start purging the government of those who are not ‘loyal’, when they start deporting students for saying even things with which we disagree, we must speak up for them.

If we fail to speak now, we have learned that there will be no one left to speak up for us.