The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
From George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, 18 August 1790
Dear Reader,
This Memorial Day, I reflect on the great American victory of the Second World War. The cost of freedom, the lives lost to save the world. It mattered that the USA and not the USSR was the major winner of the war. The US victory in World War II secured its position as the dominant global power, economically, militarily, and diplomatically. Americans rebuilt war-torn nations through the Marshall Plan and established the postwar international order, including institutions like the United Nations, the IMF, and NATO. For the world, it meant the defeat of genocidal totalitarianism, a reassertion of sovereign self-determination, and a new era, no matter how imperfect, of American-led global stability. And over the next half-century, the United States’s victories created losers: international racism and international communism. Nazi Germany, the Soviet Bloc, Apartheid South Africa, and even domestic white supremacy, they all fell to the heirs of George Washington. The 20th century was the undisputed American century.
Now in the 21st century, as America has suffered from the cynicism of politics following Vietnam and Watergate, the dislocation of deindustrialization and the Gig economy, and from the social dysfunction of family breakdown, consequently, there has arisen an old bigotry made a new tool of subversion: very online antisemitism. What I call Very Online Antisemitism refers to the growing ecosystem of memes, influencers, and conspiracy theories spreading Jew-hatred under the guise of irony, contrarianism, or political discontent. These are the ideas of the 20th century’s losers, not the winners; their spread is a sign of decline and crisis. Let’s be clear, Judenhaas, Jew-hatred is what antisemitism is, it is the hatred of Jews, as Jews, for being Jews. And, antisemitism is a deterministic bigotry that attempts to craft a worldview around the hatred of a people. To use the hatred of Jews to make sense of the world, especially among those for whom things are not going their way when they think it should; and it is an explanatory bigotry that scapegoats problems onto a people. Historically, America was the most tolerant Western and Christian society of Jewish people. Jews fleeing the pogroms in Russia and hatred in France came to America for a reason. If anything, America was known for racism against Blacks and Native Americans, and for intense episodes of anti-Catholicism, and conspiracies regarding Freemasons. But Protestant America had inherited the Reformation’s tendency toward a high regard for Jewish people and an emphasis on the Tanakh, the Old Testament. Hence, the prevalence of Hebrew-origin first names for Anglo-Protestant Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries.
