The Perils of Naming: On Donald Trump, Jews, and Antisemites

ABSTRACT

Antisemitism, which has been called the “longest hatred,” appeared to be on a sharp decline in the United States in the early years of the new century. Over the past five years, antisemitism has surged to life, registering a 100% increase in reports of antisemitic incidents in the United States between 20016—18. That period coincides, and not by accident, with the presidency of Donald Trump, who declared himself to be a friend of Jews and a strong supporter of the state of Israel, has lapsed into stereotypical representations of Jews as beholden to money and loyal only to their own. In this way, the boundary between philosemitism and antisemitism became hard to trace. It is especially noteworthy that Trump arrogated to himself the right to define Jews, a move that calls to mind the infamous declaration of the mayor of Vienna in the late nineteenth century, Karl Lueger: “Who is a Jew—that I determine.” This paper explores the naming of Jews not only in the context of Trump's declarations, but also policy formulations such as his Executive Order on antisemitism and the IHRA definition.

KEYWORDS:

• Donald Trump
• antisemitism
• naming

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 “Israel okays $72 million anti-BDS project,” Times of Israel, 29 December 2017, https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-okays-72-million-anti-bds-project/; see also Reut Cohen and Elli Avraham, “North American Jewish NGOs and Strategies Used in Fighting BDS and the Boycott of Israeli Academia,” Israel Studies, vol. 23, no. 2 (2018): pp. 194–216, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/israelstudies.23.2.09.

2 See the list at https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/anti-bds-legislation.

3 See the ADL’s 2019 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents at https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/antisemitic-incidents-hit-all-time-high-in-2019. In 2017, there was a 57 percent increase in incidents: https://www.adl.org/resources/reports/2017-audit-of-anti-semitic-incidents; in 2016, there was a 34 percent rise: https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/Anti-Semitic%20Audit%20Print_vf2.pdf.

4 See the report by the Anti-Defamation League, “Extremists Use Coronavirus to Advance Racist, Conspiratorial Agendas,” 10 March 2020, https://www.adl.org/blog/extremists-use-coronavirus-to-advance-racist-conspiratorial-agendas, and Eric Cortellessa, “Conspiracy that Jews Created Virus Spreads on Social Media,” Times of Israel, 14 March 2020, https://www.timesofisrael.com/conspiracy-theory-that-jews-created-virus-spreads-on-social-media-adl-says/.

5 The extent to which federal agencies during the Trump administration were prepared to label the domestic threat varied, as Betsy Woodruff Swan reported in “DHS Draft Document: White Supremacists Are Greatest Terror Threat,” Politico, 4 September 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/04/white-supremacists-terror-threat-dhs-409236. See also the testimony of FBI Director Christopher Wray before the House Homeland Security Committee, 17 September 2020, https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/worldwide-threats-to-the-homeland-091720.

6 On the irreducibly antisemitic core of white nationalism, see the now-iconic treatment of Eric K. Ward, “Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism,” 29 June 2017, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2017/06/29/skin-in-the-game-how-antisemitism-animates-white-nationalism.

7 See the ADL report from 10 June 2020, “Small But Vocal Array of Right Wing Extremists Appearing at Protests,” https://www.adl.org/blog/small-but-vocal-array-of-right-wing-extremists-appearing-at-protests. This follows an earlier report from the ADL: “White Supremacists Embrace ‘Race War,’” 8 January 2020, https://www.adl.org/blog/white-supremacists-embrace-race-war.

8 Camila Domonske, “59 Confederate Symbols Removed Since George Floyd's Death,” NPR, 12 August 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/08/12/901771780/report-59-confederate-symbols-removed-since-george-floyds-death; John Burnett and Piper McDaniel, “Confederate Statues Come Down Around U.S., But Not Everywhere,” NPR, 6 October 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/10/06/919193176/confederate-statues-come-down-around-u-s-but-not-everywhere.

9 Eugene Scott, “Trump’s Ardent Defense of Confederate Monuments Continues as Americans Swing the Opposite Direction,” Washington Post, 1 July 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/01/trumps-ardent-defense-confederate-monuments-continues-americans-swing-opposite-direction/.

10 See James Valentine, “Naming the Other: Power, Politeness and the Inflation of Euphemisms,” Sociological Research Online, vol. 3, no. 4 (December 1998): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.5153/sro.184.

11 Michael Ohl, The Art of Naming, trans. Elizabeth Lauffer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018).

12 Quoted in Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 145.

13 Wilhelm Marr, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum (Bern: Rudolph Costenoble, 1979), p. 15.

14 Ibid., pp. 4, 11, 32.

15 See, for example, Jacques Ehrenfreund, Les juifs berlinois à la Belle Époque (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000).

16 See J. J. Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment (New York: Basic Books, 1996), pp. 6–7. See also David N. Myers, “Perceptions,” Jewish History: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

17 Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew (New York: Schocken Books, 1948), pp. 68–69.

18 David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013).

19 In the perverse symbiotic relationship between antisemitism and anti-antisemitism, this linkage of Jew and Zionist is mirrored in the equation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism that figures prominently in the IHRA, State Department, and now executive order formulae. And that equation may serve, in a further turn of the perverse dynamic, to reinforce the original antisemitic reductionism of Jewishness to Zionism.

20 See Ward, “Skin in the Game.”

21 Masha Gessen, “The Real Purpose of Trump’s Executive Order on Anti-Semitism,” New Yorker, 19 December 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-real-purpose-of-trumps-executive-order-on-anti-semitism.

22 See the Southern Poverty Law Center’s research summary on Taylor at https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/jared-taylor; on Spencer, see “Richard Spencer Tells Israelis They 'Should Respect' Him: 'I'm a White Zionist,” Haaretz, 16 August 2017, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/richard-spencer-to-israelis-i-m-a-white-zionist-respect-me-1.5443480.

23 Ron Kampeas, “Five Takeaways from the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Presidential Forum,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 4 December 2015, https://www.jta.org/2015/12/04/politics/five-takeaways-from-the-republican-jewish-coalitions-presidential-forum.

24 Ron Kampeas, “That Trump Ad: Is it Anti-Semitic? An Analysis,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 6 November 2016, https://www.jta.org/2016/11/07/politics/that-trump-ad-is-it-anti-semitic-an-analysis.

25 Abby Phillip, “Trump’s Statement Marking Holocaust Remembrance Leaves Out Mention of Jews,” Washington Post, 27 January 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-statement-marking-holocaust-remembrance-leaves-out-mention-of-jews/2017/01/27/0886d3c2-e4bd-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html.

26 See Rosie Gray, “Trump Defends White-Nationalist Protesters: 'Some Very Fine People on Both Sides,'” Atlantic, 15 August 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/trump-defends-white-nationalist-protesters-some-very-fine-people-on-both-sides/537012/.

27 Meagan Flynn, “Trump Accused of ‘Dipping into a Deep Well of Anti-Semitic Tropes’ During Speech to Jewish Voters,” Washington Post, 9 December 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/12/09/trump-israeli-american-council-anti-semitic-claims/.

28 See Jonathan Lemire and Darlene Supeville, “Trump: Any Jew voting Democratic is uninformed or disloyal,” 21 August 2019, AP, https://apnews.com/article/1bc3065eb2e4414289ef0ac1ac4ebaf7.

29 Daniel Victor, “Rudy Giuliani Says He’s ‘More of a Jew’ than George Soros,” New York Times, 24 December 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/24/us/politics/rudy-giuliani-george-soros-jewish.html.

30 See the Pew Center “Portrait of American Jews” survey from 1 October 2013, https://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/#fn-17239-5.

31 My analysis here rests on two fallible assumptions: first, an emotional connection to Israel suggests a willingness to identify as a Zionist, and second, a strong connection to Israel is not identical to a strong connection to the Jewish people. The 2013 Pew study points to a gap between the latter two sensibilities of about six per cent. Meanwhile, see the 2020 AJC survey at https://www.ajc.org/news/survey2020, and compare to the 2015 survey at https://www.ajc.org/news/ajc-2015-survey-of-american-jewish-opinion.

32 Compare this account by Linda Gradstein, “American Jews’ Declining Attachment to Israel,” 12 January 2017, https://themedialine.org/news/american-jews-declining-attachment-israel/ to Dov Waxman, “Young American Jews and Israel: Beyond Birthright and BDS,” Israel Studies, vol. 22, no. 3 (2017): pp. 177­–199, doi:10.2979/israelstudies.22.3.08.

33 See Sfard’s legal opinion for the human rights organization Yesh Din at https://www.yesh-din.org/en/the-occupation-of-the-west-bank-and-the-crime-of-apartheid-legal-opinion/.

34 See the European Union’s Press Office’s statement, “The Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online,” 22 June 2020, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_20_1135.

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David N. Myers

David N. Myers holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author or editor of many books in the field of modern Jewish history.