The connection between Antisemitism and White Nationalism

Note: The content of this article was originally developed and presented at a SURJ-Eugene Springfield Chapter meeting on 10/1/2020

We have all seen and heard the way Trump refused to
denounce white supremacy at the so-called presidential
debate with Joe Biden this past Tuesday night. We have
all heard how Trump also said, regarding the known hate
group The Proud Boys, that they should “stand back and
stand by.” Despite denials by the “White House” that this
was in any way a dog whistle of approval for Proud Boys,
the hate group itself took his comment to be an
unequivocal sign of support. That they celebrate what he
said, that he has not retracted or further explained his
comment, is the issue.

We are in a time of rising white nationalism, a social
movement that sees itself, as the “vanguard of a new,
whites-only state,” an ethno-state that will be created out
of violence and terror especially targeting people of color,
immigrants and Jews.

To understand how white nationalism functions we need to
understand how antisemitism itself is not only one kind of
manifestation of white nationalist violence, but a driving
force central to white nationalism, fueling not just some of
its violence but all of it, whether we are talking about
Charleston, Charlottesville, or The Tree of Life Synagogue
Massacre that happened in Pittsburgh two years ago, on
October 27.

As Eric Ward, executive director of the Western States
Center, states in his seminal article about this subject
“Skin in the Game” — white nationalism “positions
Jews as the absolute other, the driving force of
dispossession — which means the other channels of
its hatred cannot be interrupted without directly taking
on antisemitism.”

If we do not understand the centrality of antisemitism to
white nationalism, we will not know how to interrupt and
dismantle what is in fact a movement driven by the goal of
ethnic cleansing. We will not know how to understand who
is most vulnerable. As a person who is not Jewish, as a
white anti-racist, I feel a responsibility to keep this focus
central. We are all responsible for paying attention to this.

And we must understand that white nationalism didn’t
create antisemitism; it is fueling what is already present in
our society, as evidenced by the fact that in 1920 Henry
Ford brought the document The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, an antisemitic forgery first circulated by Czarist
police in 1903, to the United States, printing half a million
copies of an adaptation called “The International Jew” —
which feeds the antisemitic notion of the “Jewish
conspiracy” for global domination, one of the common
tropes about Jews, and a way to hold on to the idea of
white superiority by centering Jews as the cause of all
problems. The “Protocols” are still widely available,
exchanged over the internet, and you need to know about
them.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Eli Wiesel, about the
“Protocols” — “If ever a piece of writing could produce
mass hatred, it is this one….This book is about lies
and slander.”

Here is Eric Ward speaking about the times we’re in,
including a discussion of how white nationalism’s roots “lie
in the victory of the Civil Rights era,” and things we can
and should do NOW to interrupt and put an end to this
movement.

VIDEO feature: (from “White Nationalism, Racism and
Antisemitism in America Today,” June 10, 2020, presented
by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs”): Eric speaks from 23:57–37:24

Article authored by Carter, LTE/Messaging Committee