Antisemitism is the canary in the coal mine.
It’s an old canard, and it’s deeply rooted in truth. We can see it play out historically time and time again. In 1881, for example, in Tsarist Russia, when Jews were rumored to be involved in the assassination of Alexander II, which resulted in pogroms and the passing of the May Laws, and Jewish students were banned from universities. That fire engulfed Russia, with tens of thousands Jews murdered over the ensuing years, and then raged into neighboring Austria and Romania.
In 1903, Russian writer Sergei Nilus published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an appendix to his book The Great in the Small: The Coming of the Anti-Christ and the Rule of Satan on Earth. Protocols is a completely debunked and horrific essay written (and heavily plagiarized from an earlier French satirical novel called Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu by Maurice Joly, published in 1864, that didn’t mention Jews at all) to portray Jews as an organized, secret cabal working behind the scenes to control the world through economic institutions and media and religious espionage. Each chapter was the minutes from a secret meeting where their “plans” were unveiled. It was presented as fact and was also recast in the margins of Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent in a series called The International Jew in the 1920s (Hitler praised the publication). Eventually, Jew-hatred in Russia intersected with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the end of the Romanov Dynasty, ushering in the Bolsheviks and leading to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
It happened in Weimar Republic Germany during the 19th Century, as Wilhelm Marr’s League of Antisemites gained popularity, operating under his treatise The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism, published in 1862 and much more successful follow-up, The Victory of Judaism over Germandom, published in 1879. This work all laid the foundation upon which Adolf Hitler would build the Third Reich. Marr popularized the term “antisemitism” as a means to divorce Jew-hatred from religious persecution (the popular German term at that time was simply Juden Haas, or “Jew Hate”). Eugenics were en vogue, and by casting the Jews as an inferior race of people, it became a more digestible form of bigotry to his followers.
Antisemitism is a unique form of hate. It morphs into whatever the societal ailments of that time and place may be. The crucifixion of Christ? Blame the Jews. The Black Plague? Blame the Jews. Rumors of dead Christian children? Blame the Jews. Capitlism destroying Russia? Blame the Jews. Communism infiltrating the West? Blame the Jews. Illegal immigration? Blame the Jews.
To say that antisemitism is what causes a societal collapse would be conjecture. What I’m talking about is correlation, not causation. But the things that lead to antisemitism are clearly the kinds of things that also lead to societal collapses — misinformation, misogyny, class warfare, bigotry, economic strife, and almost uqbiquitously: Authoritarianism.
Under Trump’s first administration, there was a precipitous rise in incidence of antisemitism. It was steeped in the emboldened far-right margins of the political spectrum, who finally saw in Trump the kind of leader who resonated with their mindset and made them feel much safer in expressing their views publicly. That rise in antisemitism continued unabated, however, as anti-Jewish sentiment ballooned from the left side of the aisle amid growing hostilities between Hamas and Israel, first due to the riots at Al-Aqsa Mosque in 2021, and then subsequent to the Hamas terror attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
The horseshoe theory played out in inctrovertible proof right before our eyes.
Political parties aside, it’s clear the United States remains at a crossroads after the 2024 election, where Trump won back the POTUS seat in a decisive fashion. Division and identity politics take the spotlight in the miasma we see now, and antisemitism continues to be a growing—not subsiding—issue here in the United States (regardless of how Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu may view Trump’s win) and even in our Colorado bubble.
Just this last week, for example, vandals spray painted literal dozens of antisemitic hate messages on buildings and sidewalks all over the University of Colorado campus in Boulder. While not it may not be surprising that such attitudes exist there, given the myriad displays of Jew-hatred since Oct. 7, 2023 on college campuses, (and CU’s Ethnic Studies Department’s own participation in fueling them in Boulder) it’s still deeply unnerving to the nearly 10,000 Jewish students at CU.
CU’s statement on the vandalism was direct, if perfunctory:
In the early morning hours of Nov. 1, several buildings on the CU Boulder campus were vandalized. The antisemitic messages contained in the vandalism violate the university’s policies on free expression and Campus Use of University Facilities, as well as Colorado law.
We are working as quickly as possible to remove the graffiti and proactively providing support resources to impacted groups on campus.
CU Boulder strongly condemns tactics and messages such as these, which target students, faculty and staff. This type of conduct is not a productive way to address the difficult conversations facing our society today in a respectful and civil manner.
If anyone affiliated with CU Boulder feels they are the target of discrimination or harassment, please reach out to the Office of Victim Assistance. For a full list of resources and information available to students, faculty and staff, please visit this resources page.
The CU Boulder Police Department is investigating. If you have any information about these crimes, please contact CUPD at 303-492-6666 and reference case number 2024-2190. Tips can also be submitted anonymously to CUPD.
To learn more about how CU Boulder supports free expression, please visit our free expression website.
I imagine we’ll see that re-released several more times this school year. Nonetheless, the nation remains deeply divided among myriad issues, and the election merely cast a spotlight onto them. The road ahead looks more uncertain than ever. Now, a man embracing the label of “authoritarian” prepares to step back into the Oval Office he was removed from four years ago; a notable chaos agent with retribution on his mind, and — as of when I’m writing this — control of the Senate and SCOTUS already in place, with the House looking as though it may follow suit given current vote counts.
Is the rampant Jew-hatred we face in the United States the cause of this? No. But it is certainly correlated. There’s only one topic in which the two most divergent edges of our political spectrum converge, and it remains in play.
Antisemitism.
