Certainly not all Trump supporters are anti-Semitic, although I have little doubt that most anti-Semites are rabid Trump enthusiasts.

Trump did not create anti-Semitism in this country; it has existed since the days of colonial America. Rather, he has uncovered the long-simmering coals of anti-Semitism then fanned the emerging flames via hate-filled rhetoric playing into the bigoted world view of individuals who despise not only Jews but Muslims, blacks, Hispanics and others.

Trump has made religious, racial and ethnic hatred respectable, a badge of honor, a display of right-wing unity or “nationalism,” the president’s code word for this poisonous patriotism. As New York Times columnist Charles Blow noted, “Trump has produced a toxic environment of intolerance in this country that is deep and wide. He has flirted with the deepest racists and Nazis, and it has not gone unnoticed by them.”

In a press briefing shortly after the Pittsburgh synagogue killings, presidential press secretary Sarah Sanders stated that Trump was a “unifier.” And a unifier he is, as no one has energized the radical right like Trump. When white nationalist Richard Spencer, one of the organizers of the Charlottesville Neo-Nazi demonstration, was asked whether he considered Trump an ally, he stated the president “was the first true authentic nationalist in my lifetime.” Nationalist to people such as Spencer means “white” nationalist and “white” power.

There’s little doubt that Robert Bowers, the man who murdered 11 Jewish-Americans and wounded six others (including four police officers) in Pittsburgh, was mentally ill. The question is, would this individual’s pathological hatred of Jews have manifested itself in a murderous rampage if Trump had not been spewing vitriolic rhetoric for the past three years?

A recent New York Times editorial stated that Trump “has encouraged his supporters to think of his critics as traitors and enemies.” It’s hardly surprising that a fanatical, emotionally disturbed follower of the president would decide to kill these enemies and traitors. As former Secretary of State Colin Powell noted, we live in an environment “where deranged people feel empowered.”

Mental instability, presidential vitriol, hundreds (if not thousands) of hate-peddling websites plus easy access to assault-style military weapons have made mass shooting increasingly common. That’s what transpired in Pittsburgh, and, with little doubt, will happen again. This time it was Jews; the next time it could be Mexicans, Muslims, African-Americans, members of the “fake news” media, Democrats or other perceived enemies of the people. Or Jews again.

With the exception of slight increases in 2015 and 2016, violent crime and property crime rates have fallen sharply in the U.S. over the past 30 years, yet:

¯ The 2017 FBI Uniform Crime Report shows that in 2016 hate crimes reached their highest level since 2012, with 1 in 5 of these offenses motivated by religious bias.

¯ The Anti-Defamation League reported that anti-Semitic incidents increased 57 percent from 2016 to 2017, with the latest number the highest since that organization began tracking these acts in 1979.

Is the spike in these incidents and crimes merely an aberration in the downward crime trend, or are they a consequence of Trump’s never-ending verbal attacks on minorities? Why do so many Americans tolerate this evil, blithely ignoring a president who revels in stirring his base to near hysterical hatred?

Eric Ward of the Southern Poverty Law Center states the Martin Luther King Jr.-led Civil Rights Movement presented a significant problem for the white supremacist ideology. How could intellectually inferior African-Americans have created and carried out such a successful law- and culture-changing campaign? Their answer was African-Americans could not have succeeded without the help of a secret organization that was “manipulating the social order behind the scenes” like a diabolical Wizard of Oz. There must be an insidious network that was controlling the media, banking, entertainment, the schools and top federal government officials.

To white supremacists, this organization is, of course, a fiendishly clever group of international Jews. According to the SPLC, today’s white supremacists believe that Jews, “often coded as ‘globalists’ — are pursuing policies to destroy the ‘white race’ in their ‘traditional homelands’ like Europe and the United States through the deliberate importation of non-white people.” Jews are especially despised by white supremacists as they are viewed as the most significant threat to the white race.

Pittsburgh mass murderer Robert Bowers subscribed to this world view, posting online that “It’s the filthy EVIL jews [sic] Bringing the Filthy EVIL Muslims into our Country.” Arresting officers at the synagogue stated Bowers told them he “wanted all Jews to die.”

In line with this perspective, it’s hardly surprising that white nationalists, and their cheerleader president, continually attack George Soros, a Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist who donates money to human rights and liberal causes. Soros is the despised personification of the Jewish globalist conspiracy. Once again Trump fanned the flames of white supremacist hatred stating that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if Soros is funding the migrant caravan slowly making its way north through Mexico.

A reporter from the online news magazine Vice spoke to a Nazi supporter at the Charlottesville demonstration who stated he was searching for a leader “A lot more racist than Donald Trump. I don’t think you could feel about race the way I do and watch that Kushner bastard walk around with that beautiful girl.” (Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband, is Jewish, and she converted to Judaism.) This is an especially disturbing comment as it suggests that while Trump has let the racist beast out of its cage, he may not be able to control it.

After the Pittsburgh killings, Trump predictably offered the NRA position that “if there were armed guards inside the temple, they would have been able to stop him” (the shooter), as if guns were the solution to deep-seated anti-Semitic prejudice and persecution. Are we now a society where houses of worship, sacred spaces for prayer and contemplation, must be protected by armed guards? Is this “freedom” of religion?

At 97 years of age, Rose Mallinger was the oldest victim of the Pittsburgh hate-motivated slaughter. Born in 1921, she was a young woman during World War II and likely had relatives and high-school classmates who fought Nazi Germany. No doubt she heard President Roosevelt on the radio reassure the nation in the righteousness of the cause as casualties mounted in the protracted struggle against the Third Reich.

It must have been painful for her to learn that Nazis were marching in the streets of Charlottesville 72 years after the war, chanting, “Jews will not replace us,” while carrying banners reading, “Jews are Satan’s children.” Likely even more disturbing was listening to an American president state that some of these hate-spewing anti-Semites were “very fine people.” It may have seemed like a bad dream to Rose Mallinger. But it wasn’t a dream.

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George J. Bryjak lives in Bloomingdale, retired after 24 years of teaching sociology at the University of San Diego.

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Sources:

“2016 Hate Statistics” (2017) Uniform Crime Report 2017, https//ucr.gov

Amend, A. (Oct. 28, 2018) “Analyzing a terrorist’s social media manifesto: the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter posts on Gab,” Southern Poverty Law Center, www.splc.org

“Anti-Semitic Incidents Surged nearly 60% in 2017, According to the New ADL Report” (February 2018) Anti-Defamation League, www.adl.org

Blow, C. (Oct. 28, 2018) “Trump’s Potent Toxicity,” New York Times, www.nytimes.com

Burton, T. (Oct. 27, 2018) The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting comes amid yearlong rise in anti-Semitism,” Vox, www.vox.com

Gramblich, J. (Jan. 30, 2018) “5 facts about crime in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, www.pewresearch.org

Kelly, C. (Oct. 28, 2018) “Trump says Pittsburgh synagogue should have armed guards,” CNN, www.cnn.com

Malveaux, S. (Oct. 31, 2018) “Albright, Powell express disgust over incendiary rhetoric, Trump policies,” CNN, www.cnn.com

Maltby, K. (Nov. 1, 2018) “The loathsome connection between Anti-Semitism and white supremacy,” CNN. www.cnn.com

Rosenberg, Y. (Aug. 14, 2018) “‘Jews will not replace us’: Why white supremacists go after Jews,” Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com

Schwartz, A. (Oct. 27, 2018) “The Tree of Life Shooting and the Return of Anti-Semitism to American Life,” New Yorker, www.newyorker.com

“The Hate Poisoning America” (Oct. 29, 2018) New York Times, www.nytimes.com

Wagner, J. (Nov. 1, 2018) “Trump ‘wouldn’t be surprised’ if Democratic megadonor George Soros is funding the migrant caravan,” Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com