…and in Michigan, McMorrow is running around the airwaves trying to pin the West Bloomfield synagogue attack on El Sayed. It doesn’t take much effort to see which way the Dem “leadership” — which in practice means armies of fund-raisers and consultants — will be dragging the coming midterm elections.
There are categories of people whose daily and nightly lives involve objectively higher risks of violence because of their demographic status: employees in certain kinds of public-facing jobs (cue the dopey Waffle House jokes), women, African Americans, LGBTQ+ers and in particular trans people, latin@s, homeless people, sex workers. Jews are not one of those groups.
There are all kinds of nuanced quantitative and qualitative debates to be had about how one constructs the relevant stats, but none of those debates will conclude that nearly half of the Jewish men in the US have been dragged into the carceral abyss, that Jewish women in particular need to cover their drinks in bars for fear of sexual violence, or that ICE invaded and occupied Kiryat Joel for months on end. The vast majority of antisemitic violence is discursive, not physical. That doesn’t make it any less real, serious, or frightening than physical violence; but it definitely doesn’t make it more real either — in part because physical violence is always discursive.
Yet here we are heading into another crucial round of elections, and what’s the Dem establishments squawking about? Sexual violence? Nope — if anything, they’re debating how much farther to bend on women’s health care. Racial violence? Nope — on the contrary, they’re debating how much farther to bend on “welfare reform” and “policing.” Are they debating how to demobilize state-funded paramilitaries and how to punish them for their pogroms? Nope — the best we get is the “problem” of “immigration.” Go down the list, nope nope nope. Instead, the specter of antisemitism is mysteriously appearing as the defining issue of the coming midterm elections.
And, to be clear, this constellation is crystal fucking clear. The same political forces that have spent the last few years attacking “DEI” and “woke” culture in education — basically, attention to and advocacy for and with people whose daily and nightly lives have involved objectively higher risks of violence because of their demographic status — have been using ginned-up allegations of antisemitism as cudgels to beat universities and levers to pry them open.
Everyone with eyes and ears in their head has figured out by now that, since our war against Iran began, Netanyahu has systematically tried to subvert peace prospects by launching new attacks. (Yes, pro-Israel peanut gallery, I know — shut up.) But here’s the thing: that isn’t new. He relied on the same MO in 2024 to provoke pro-Palestinian activists and modulate the presidential election. (So, yes, lefts, he played you — so you shut up too.)
Please, let’s not do this again. Understand well: the overwhelming majority of discussion you see and hear about antisemitism is tendentious, overinflated bullshit intended to divide and conquer. But not all of it, and that matters in a big way. So try, really try, to tune out the noise and listen for the signal.