The American people face the resurgence of violent anti-Semitism. Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and assorted racists hold court in our communities. They find comfort in the halls of power presided over by elected officials. They inhabit police departments. The president tells the nation: “There are good people on all sides” as the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, explode with the sounds of thugs chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”
Since the ascendance of Donald Trump, the Southern Poverty Law Center notes a sharp increase in anti-Jewish acts over the past three years. These are among the glaring headlines: The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh is stained with the blood of men and women taking part in Sabbath prayer; men in Hasidic dress endure the insult and abuse of passersby on the streets of New York; Monsey, New York, is the scene of a violent attack on Jews celebrating Hanukkah; Youngstown, Ohio; Palo Alto, California; and many more towns and cities are scenes of vile words and bloody deeds.
Anti-Semitism’s resurgence today is embedded in racist, anti-immigrant and anti-working class ideology.
To be sure, anti-Semitism has a long history, one that predates capitalism. But its resurgence in the 21st Century, embedded in racist, anti-immigrant and anti-working class ideology, demands a response from the entire working class and all who embrace our country’s democratic ideals. These corrupt ideologies are linked: all are the offspring of great power national chauvinism based on the exclusive “racial and cultural superiority” of Anglo-Saxons and the old ruling circles of their English Protestant descendants. This is the source from which U.S. white supremacy evolved, and it’s founded in part in the justification for slavery, the notion that they are superior to all, including other European nationalities, religions, and all people of color.
The ideology of white supremacy serves as a cover to shield the right and extreme right corporate forces – finance capital, fossil fuel, big pharma, real estate moguls, bankers and billionaires and their spokesman Donald Trump – from their responsibility for poverty, insecurity, job loss, wars for oil, and climate disaster.
Such an environment spreads a welcome mat for all forms of vile hatred and harm. It is a fetid incubator for individual acts of anti-Semitism and for organizations that offer authoritarian rule, even terror and fascism, as their remedy. This is the context – time, place, and circumstance – for the rise of anti-Semitism in 2020.
Working-class people gain nothing from the rise of anti-Semitism, racism, Islamophobia, and enmity towards other nationalities. The U.S. working class comprises a multi-racial, multi-national rainbow of people of all genders. The benefits of our unity, our ability to learn, earn and struggle together, are found in our fight each day for unions, equality, healthcare, education, a secure retirement, and all other needs.
The Trump administration delivers a poisonous message.
Week in and week out, the Trump administration delivers a poisonous message to the American people. Anti-Semitism is part of that message, as are white supremacy and hatred of immigrants. These toxic ideologies are deeply intertwined, as we saw in the terrorist attack on the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh. The perpetrator targeted Tree of Life specifically because of its participation in HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society). He posted on social media that congregation was helping “invaders” who were entering the country to “kill our people.” The idea that the changing demographics of our country is an attack on white Americans is an obsession of the extreme right, from the mob in Charlottesville to the Republican strategy of targeting racially and nationally oppressed people with voter suppression laws.
“Replacement” ideology is pure white supremacy in the service of the most backward right-wing section of the capitalists.
This program is pure white supremacy in the service of the most backward right-wing section of the capitalist class. The goal is to preserve ruling-class power by sowing division and permanently altering the political life of our nation. Trump aims to replace our hard-won democratic gains and working-class and democratic organizations with the lie of the day, with insult and injury beneath a toxic fog of fear and disunity.
So, what is our future? That future is in formation—in the broad swath of struggle across our country to have top quality healthcare and education for everyone, to save our home – the Earth, to live in peace, to protect immigrant families, the LGBTQI community, to defend the right to vote, to create jobs with a future, to eliminate racism, anti-immigrant hatred, Islamophobia, misogyny, and anti-Semitism, and to end threats of war and murder. Is there more? Yes, lots more.
The Communist Party USA calls for action and unity against the regeneration of the fascist ideology of anti-Semitism, linked to racism and xenophobia. Our cornerstone belief across our 100-year history is that the working class requires unity, mutual respect, and the fight for equality to win its demands.
The Communist Party USA urges its members and all Americans: Get involved: The next steps are in the weeks and months leading up to the decisive 2020 elections. Nothing can stop the organized will of the working class and democratically-minded people broadly making the fight their own.
By National Board, CPUSA| January 21, 2020
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