March 2, 2023

By Steve Jonas, MD MPH

Anti-Semitism, the more polite term for “Jew-Hatred,” has been present in Roman-Western society for several millennia.  For example, (with some commentary):

139 BCE Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Hispanus expels all Jews from the city of Rome.

59 BCE Cicero criticizes Jews for being too influential in public assemblies. [Oh my. Cicero lives!]

19 CE Roman Emperor Tiberius expels Jews from Rome.

38 CE Thousands of Jews killed by mobs in the Alexandrian pogrom.

50 CE Jews are ordered by Roman Emperor Claudius "not to hold meetings." Claudius later expelled Jews from Rome. [Man, those Jews are just dangerous, especially when they talk to each other.]

66 CE Under the command of Tiberius Julius Alexander, Roman soldiers killed about 50,000 Jews in the Alexandria riot. [Alexandria was obviously not a good place for Jews to be.]

66–73 CE In the First Jewish–Roman War [in what is now Palestine] the Jews are crushed by Vespasian and Titus.

70 CE Over 1,000,000 Jews perish and 97,000 are taken as slaves following the destruction of the Second Temple.

And the list goes on. 

It was St. Augustine who among his other “oh-so-useful” (sic) doctrines, laid the basis for post-Roman European anti-Semitism, by codifying the doctrine that “that the Jews killed Christ.”  Of course, that was, and still is, a myth.  While traditional Jewish priests of the time regarded Jesus Christ as a bothersome upstart, it was actually the Romans, for whom he was also a bothersome upstart, who did the deed.  There is some question as to whether or not there was an actual historical “Jesus,” but whether the Romans executed a particular historical person is beside the point.  A) as illustrated above, they killed plenty of Jews, and B) that the holding there was in reality such a person who was killed for his beliefs and his political influence is a central element in the existence over the millennia of an anti-Semitism that is based upon such an event.  And it wasn’t just the Catholic Church.  At the time of the Protestant Reformation institutional, religious anti-Semite (Martin Luther was strong avatar of it) in quicky morphed over into many of the new sects.

From the time of St. Augustine, there were numerous examples of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic acts throughout the history of the development of what is known as “Western Society” in Europe.  Total Jewish communities were affected.  The Jews were expelled from England in 1290. The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492.  Anti-Semitism continued to be widely present in Europe, primarily on a religio-cultural basis alone, until the late 19th Century.  Then, in the 1870s what has become the modern form of anti-Semitism, that is incorporating it into electoral politics, was first developed by a German preacher, Adolf Stoecker. 

In 1892, “The International Anti-Jewish Congress,” led by Stoecker, convened at Dresden, Germany; it appealed to "the Government and Peoples of Christian Nations Threatened by Judaism" to expel ‘the Semitic race of Jews’ from Europe.”  Political anti-Semitism also developed in Austria in the 1890s, and as well was rampant in early 20th-century France with the “Dreyfus Affair.”  At about the same time came the wide-spread political use of anti-Semitism in the Russian Empire, with the publication of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” claiming that there was an “international Jewish conspiracy aiming to take over the whole world.”  As it happened, it was my father, Harold J. Jonas, who did the research for the first book that proved that the “Protocols” are a forgery, published by Columbia University Press under a Gentile name in 1942.  There have been others since.  Nevertheless, “The Protocols” are still widely circulated. 

In the 1920s and 30’s anti-Semitism flourished in, along with many European countries, the United States, again as for example documented by my father in his paper “Anti-Semitica Americana” (Contemporary Jewish Record, Oct., 1941).  Henry Ford (yes that Henry Ford) began publishing anti-Semitic tracts in his newspaper the Dearborn Independent in the 1920s and in the 1930s published Nazi screeds in that paper while the Nazis returned the favor by publishing Ford articles in the Deutsche Beobachter.  As spelled out in the alternate-history-novel-based-on-fact by Philip Roth, “The Plot Against America,” Charles Lindbergh was a leading between-the-wars anti-Semite as well.  And then there were the widely broadcast “Father” Coughlin and Gerald L.K. Smith

After the conclusion of “The War Against the Jews,” which resulted in the deaths of 6,000,000 people just because they were Jews, one might have thought that anti-Semitism would, if not go away, be confined to very dark political corners.  Ah ha, given how anti-Semitism has been used in Western Europe and outside of it, as in the United States before World War II, that has proved to be an idle wish. 

Of course, the United States has had hate built into its social fabric since the founding of its predecessors in the 17th century British colonies.  Racism, that is the doctrine that people of African descent are “inferior,” was first developed by the Portuguese to justify the introduction of slavery into Brazil in the 16th century.  It was extended to the British colonies in North America in the 17th.  And of course, racism-as-the-basis-for-slavery was easily turned into hatred of “the Blacks” in general after the U.S. Civil War as Jim Crow became slavery’s successor in the South of the latter quarter of the 19th century, along with the construction (following the death of Reconstruction) of the Doctrine of the “Lost Cause” which arose in the South in 1890s.

But political hate has had other expressions in the U.S. since major non-English immigration began with the arrivals of significant numbers of Irish in the 1830s (yes that was before the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s), and then against the Germans in the 1850s-70s, and against the Italians and the Jews and Eastern Europeans in the last quarter of the 19th century into the first part of the 20th.  As well, after they had supplied much of the labor to build the early railroad in the West, there was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1883. Hate was built into all these “anti’s” which eventually led to the Republican (anti) Immigration Act of 1924.  It virtually banned the immigration on any nationalities other than the “approved ones” of Anglo-Saxons and Northern Europeans.  The rest were excluded, and by definition hated.  Which brings us down to the present time.

Let us just list a few current examples, which (for one reason or another mainly find themselves in the expressions of Republican politicians, and commentaries on the resurgence of political anti-Semitism as well

1. A headline in “The Daily Kos” from March, 2016: “Trump Uncorks a Genie of Anti-Semitic Hate and Harassment Online.”

2.    From The Washington Post in November of that year: “Anti-Semitism is no longer an undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody.”

3.    As noted above, Political Antisemitism was developed by German and Austrian politicians in the 1870s and 80s, It was brought to full poisonous flower by the Nazis who openly used it in all of their electoral campaigning right up to Hitler’s takeover of the German Government on March 23, 1933 with the passage of what was called the Enabling Act.  Once gone, but never forgotten.  Political anti-Semitism is just too useful to the Right: see the well-known "The Jews will not replace us" at “Charlottesville.”  And once again, to make sure that his listeners knew exactly how he felt on the matter, Trump uttered the forever famous “good people on both sides” spiel (a German word used in English to denote an extravagant statement).

4.    When I was growing up back in the 1940s and 50s the name of Rothschild, a family of wealthy Jews, was used by anti-Semites to denote “the international Jewish conspiracy” (to do one or more of a variety of horrible things).  The distinction (sic), still denoting “the international Jewish conspiracy” has now been placed on the head of George Soros.  Just last year Tucker Carlson (who?) was mainstreaming George Soros conspiracy stories.  Carlson actually made a documentary entitled: “Hungary vs. Soros: The Fight for Civilization.”

5. Going back to 2016, the Anti-Defamation League sounded this alarm: “We’ve been troubled by the anti-Semites and racists during this political season, and we’ve seen a number of so-called Trump supporters peddling some of the worst stereotypes all through this year. And it’s been concerning that [Donald Trump] hasn’t spoken out forcefully against these people. It is outrageous to think that the candidate is sourcing material from some of the worst elements in our society.”  As a former Republican political activist named Charlie Sykes, noted: “The Right Normalizes Anti-Semitism. Not with a bang. But with a shrug.

6.   Then there is this short but very-much-to-the-point tweet from Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Tribe in reposting the “bang, shrug” column just above: “Amid evidence of rising anti-Jewish violence, the normally voluble right-wing media could not even be bothered to shuffle its feet.”5.    Getting back to Trump, still at the top of the preferred-candidate list for many Republicans, there was his noted dinner at Mar-a-Lago with two prominent anti-Semites, which he has to date declined to dis-avow.  In fact, there have been reports that he has taken a liking in particular to the rabid anti-Semite, Nick Fuentes.

7. Getting back to Trump, still at the top of the preferred-2024-candidate list for many Republicans, there was his noted dinner at Mar-a-Lago with two prominent anti-Semites, which he has to date declined to dis-avow. In fact, there have been reports that he has taken a liking in particular to the particularly rabid anti-Semite, Nick Fuentes.

8.    And let us finish off this list of the Republicans in particular and the U.S. Right in general (not all of them to be sure) starting to list further in the direction of the old-reliable, the hate-that-never-goes-away, (which, so unfortunately could go on and on and on) with that modern classic from Marjorie Taylor Greene concerning “Jewish Space Lasers.”  I will let the inimitable Andy Borowitz sum that one up for us:

“WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report [from July 4, 2021])—Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene reported that there had been numerous sightings of Jewish space lasers across the United States today. Greene said that the ‘increased Jewish-space-laser activity’ was a matter of deep concern, although she was not certain of the lasers’ purpose.  [SJ: Harkening back to that tried-and-true anti-Semitic trope discussed briefly above]: ‘You’ll have to ask the Rothschilds that,’ she said. ‘But it can’t be anything good.’ Complaining that the use of the Hebraic lasers had gone unchecked, she blasted the Biden Administration for its inaction on what she called ‘the No. 1 threat to our national security.’  ‘I don’t expect Sleepy Joe to do anything about it,’ she said. ‘I guess we’ll have to wait until August when Donald Trump’s President again.’ ”

Yes, for the Republicans in particular and the Right in general, racism is still at the center of their propaganda shtick, and they are very much bringing along anti-LGBTQ hatred, now expanded to cover the transgender members of the population.  But anti-Semitism has for many centuries been one the major political-hates in the Western world, and in this country at least, it is steadily creeping its way back into regular political discourse, for the Republicans and the rest of the Political Right.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH, MS is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at StonyBrookMedicine (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 35 books.  In addition to his position on OpEdNews.com  as a “Trusted Author,” he is a regular contributor to BuzzFlash.com.  His own political website, stevenjonaspolitics.com, is an archive of the 1000 or so political columns he has published since 2004, with the current columns being added to it as they appear.  He was also a career triathlete, 36 seasons, 256 multi-sport races, and writer on the sport (books and articles).  He now is officially retired from racing.

Among Dr. Jonas’ books of note on political science and history are: Ending the ‘Drug War’; Solving the Drug Problem: The Public Health Approach, Brewster, NY: Punto Press Publishing, (Brewster, NY, 2016, available on Kindle from Amazon, and also in hardcover from Amazon);  a “future history” of the United States (originally published in 1996) entitled The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022  (Third Version published by Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013, Brewster, NY, and available on Amazon).

His most recent book-set is Trump's Presidential Years: As They Happened, 2015-2021.  It is in six volumes, consisting of the 191 columns Dr. Jonas published on Trump, primarily on OpEdNews.com and BuzzFlash.com, from “Hair Trump or Herr Trump?” (10-6-15) to “Xenophobia and Racism: They're in the Republican Party's DNA” (3-19-21).  The six volumes are each available separately on Kindle (2022), under “Trump’s Presidential Years: As they happened, 2015-2021.”

Jonas has a blind-copy distribution list for his columns.  If you would like to be added to it, please send him an email at sjtpj@aol.com.