If one had been lifeless set on dividing President Trump’s MAGA coalition on the seams, how would he proceed? Attempting to drive a wedge by the immigration subject doesn’t essentially make sense: Tightening and securing America’s borders is so core to the nationalist-populist MAGA venture that there might be little room within the coalition for a lot dissent. Attempting to divide MAGA alongside financial laissez-faire or populism strains can be doomed to fail: As necessary as pocketbook points are to on a regular basis People, the wonky particulars of fiscal coverage usually don’t stoke fiery ardour.
One may do so much worse, nonetheless, than specializing in Jews — and particularly, on the respective relationships between American Jews and American Christians and between america and Israel. I skilled this firsthand, but once more, this week.
As an observant Jew, I used to be offline just lately for the vacation of Sukkot — often known as the Feast of Cubicles or the Feast of Tabernacles. Of all of the Jewish holidays, it’s the one most intimately affiliated with pure pleasure and happiness. Because it says in Leviticus, “you shall rejoice earlier than the Lord your God for a seven day interval.” And so I did.
Once I got here again on-line Wednesday night, I discovered that whereas I used to be off, the unhinged conspiracy theorist Candace Owens had ludicrously accused me of foreknowledge — or maybe complicity — within the homicide of my very own buddy Charlie Kirk. A declare like that’s appalling conduct, at greatest. Something goes, it appears, to push the (totally baseless) narrative that the Jews had one thing to do with Kirk’s demise.
Owens is hardly the one distinguished right-of-center voice who has embarked down this darkish highway. Tucker Carlson, the onetime cable information king now moonlighting as a dissident podcaster, has evinced an unhealthy obsession with the Jewish individuals and the state of Israel. From accusing Israel of “genocide” to entertaining Hitler/Nazi apologia to “simply asking questions” about whether or not Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad asset to dismissing the Hebrew Bible itself, Carlson’s agenda has grow to be fully clear.
The checklist goes on. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and her former colleague Matt Gaetz spend an inordinate period of time as of late railing towards alleged — and allegedly nefarious — Jewish and Israeli affect on American tradition and politics. Decrease-name conspiratorial Jew-haters typically discover their method onto the nation’s hottest podcasts.
All of this, in the meantime, whereas Trump, the chief of the MAGA motion, stays avowedly supportive of tight-knit U.S.-Israel relations. The Trump Justice Division and broader administration, furthermore, stay stalwart supporters of the protection and safety of the Jewish individuals. From his first to his second time period, Trump has been the most pro-Jewish president in American historical past.
So, what offers?
The instant aim of this concerted disinformation operation is the debasement of American Jews, however the extra politically salient aim is the gaslighting of American evangelical Christians — the core of the MAGA base, and an overwhelmingly pro-Jewish, pro-Israel constituency. By focusing a lot on the Jewish individuals and the Jewish state, these provocateurs have a wider aim in thoughts than merely ostracizing America’s small Jewish minority. They wish to alienate evangelicals too.
The aim, then, appears to be nothing lower than the whole supplanting of MAGA with a new political motion — an offended, ultra-conspiratorial, unbiblical, neo-pagan motion of misfits and their hangers-on.
Given the terribly formidable (and dastardly) nature of that aim, the stakes are enormously excessive. Traditionally, political actions die once they grow to be subsumed by paranoid Jew-hatred. So too do societies crumble and nations perish once they activate their Jewish populations and fall prey to the world’s oldest bigotry.
And for evangelical Christian supporters of the Jewish individuals and the Jewish state, all the operation is nothing lower than a collective slap within the face. Jews are harmed, and Christians are insulted.
The distinction of what I skilled throughout Sukkot and what I found afterward is each stark and illuminating. Whereas I used to be “rejoicing” with my household earlier than God, as I’m commanded to do, brokers of destruction had been fabricating probably the most outlandish lies conceivable to sow division and resentment. It’s the everlasting wrestle of humanity going again millennia: justice versus tyranny, order versus chaos, mild versus darkness.
I do know which facet of that everlasting divide I’m on. My hope is that the American proper and the MAGA coalition know which facet they’re on too.
Josh Hammer’s newest ebook is “Israel and Civilization: The Destiny of the Jewish Nation and the Future of the West.” This text was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer
