It was only 5 days ago when former POTUS Trump went full antisemite in an interview with Israeli journalist Barak Ravid.
“It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress,” Trump said. “Today, I think it’s the exact opposite, and I think Obama and Biden did that. … The Jewish people, in the United States, either don’t like Israel or don’t care about Israel. I mean, you look at The New York Times—The New York Times hates Israel, hates it. And they’re Jewish people that run The New York Times. I mean, the Sulzberger family.” (It’s important to note that NYT publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. is actually a Christian.)
The dual loyalty trope is one Trump’s danced with for years. “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat — I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” he said in response to a 2019 statement made by Ilhan Omar that the U.S. should reconsider the amount of aid it provides to Israel.
“Accusing Jews of having allegiance to a foreign government has long been a vile antisemitic slur that has been used to harass, marginalize, and persecute the Jewish people for centuries,” said Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt in response to Omar calling out the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee back in March of 2019. Meanwhile, that same trope has become Trump’s favorite canard.
And just a couple days later, the Goyim Defense League — a virulently antisemitic, white supremacist organization spanning the U.S. — participated in a coordinated flier drop across the country over the weekend, hitting neighborhoods in at least eight states, including Alabama, California, Idaho, Illinois, North Carolina, Texas, Vermont and here in Colorado. The fliers — which first popped up last month in Beverly Hills — continue to push the hateful, false narrative that link the COVID-19 pandemic to a “Jewish Agenda.”
Colorado has long been a hotbed for GDL activity. From the ADL: In October 2020, ‘Roccet The God,’ an Aurora, Colorado-based Black rapper took part in a Denver “banner drop” alongside GDL advocate Joseph Bounds. In a subsequent GDL podcast, which included footage of the banner drop, Roccet said, “This is Roccet the God. GoyimTV.com. You know what I’m saying? Us goyim gotta stick together. You wanna know who killed Mary? Them pedi Jews.” Roccet then points to his t-shirt which reads, “Who killed Mary Phagan? The ADL. Protecting murders & pedophiles since 1913,” a reference to the long-standing antisemitic lie that Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager, was responsible for the 1913 murder and rape of Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old factory worker. Frank’s eventual lynching was a primary catalyst in the formation of the ADL.”
Just a couple weeks ago at the end of the Chanukah holiday, antisemitic stickers were posted throughout the Uptown Denver neighborhood blaming Jews for terrorist attacks in the U.S.
Make no mistake — the problem is getting worse, and at a very alarming rate. “From 2019 to 2020, the Anti-Defamation League reported 61 instances of white supremacist propaganda appearing in Colorado, putting it in third place in the United States, trailing only California and Texas. In 2018, the number was 72. And in 2016? Just three.”
Meanwhile, in the last year and a half, the number of these propaganda attacks is up nearly 100% compared to 2019-2020.
“Prior to this month’s recent incident, we had calculated that we had almost 120 of these propaganda-type incidents that have occurred just over the past year-and-a-half in the Denver and Colorado area,” said Scott Levin, regional director for the ADL Mountain States Region, in an interview with Channel 7 News on Dec. 7.
The message Trump hammers home is unmistakable: Jews are not real “Americans,” and yet we continue to wield inordinate control over this country’s media and have even had “absolute power over Congress” in the recent past. And that message continues to embolden the growing, hateful ranks of antisemitic organizations across the nation and here in the Centennial State.
This isn’t going away on its own.
