(Jewish Group) "The savior of Israel": Antisemitism expert on what Trump's "good Jew and bad Jew sorting" signals
In the West, historically and in the present, white supremacy, racism, and antisemitism (which are interrelated concepts) have been used to attack and undermine real democracy. Donald Trump and the other neofascists and fake right-wing populists and “conservatives” are experts at using these weapons.
These weapons are used to divide and conquer by creating unfounded fears and anxieties among white Americans that Black and brown people, Jewish people, Muslims or some other marginalized group is going to take away “their country”. From before the founding to the present, that strategy has enabled policies that actually hurt the majority of white people in America. In that way, the psychological wages of whiteness have been toxic on both sides of the color line. As President Lyndon Johnson famously observed in a conversation with journalist and great truth-teller Bill Moyers, “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
The Age of Trump, is proof, again, of how that emotional training and conditioning has been so highly damaging to American society and politics.
Public opinion and other research show that a large percentage of (white) Republicans, are willing to end American democracy if it means that (white) people like them are not the most powerful and dominant group. Other research shows that racism is one of the most powerful determinants of party identification where those white Americans who are more likely to harbor anti-Black and anti-brown animus are much more likely to identify with the Republican Party. White Americans who identify as Democrats, by comparison, are less likely to have such animosity.
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Anti-Semitism, the herpes of bigotry, just when you think it has gone dormant, it flares up, and sometimes in people who have been carrying it and never realized it, but they are just as ready to spread it.
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