The Man in The High Castle, Amazon Studios

Nobody can really credibly argue the Republican Party in its current form is “Pro-Black” by any stretch of the imagination, not in a vacuum, nor relative to the Democrats. You could say the Democrats are out of touch with Black voters and have a tendency to take their support for granted. It’s arguable that’s more a symptom of white privilege and an overall lack of awareness of the political and economic hardships imposed on Black Americans, while the other party’s political platform is currently largely based on an outright hostility to spreading that awareness.

The “Critical Race Theory” panic, at the end of the day, cutting through all the noise and bullshit, is weaponized racism. Republicans get their prized “suburban moms” to buy into fears their children will be indoctrinated into believing an alternate history where – and this is the part that none of them ever get to because they don’t want to admit it – a critical sector of the economy of the United States and the British colonial provinces before it was entirely dependent on forced labor from chosen by the color of their skin. After that ended and those laborers were emancipated, the state, local, and federal governments – as well as private entities – kept those people and their descendants in a state of official second-class citizenship, until a century later when it was formally abolished with the Civil Rights act. After that, the unofficial remnants and aftereffects of segregation still remain in place to this day, kept as such in no small part due to the efforts of the Republican Party and its voters.

That’s just about the shortest way we can describe how Black-White race relations map onto the liberal-conservative political divide in 2021. The specifics are less simple given the active recruitment and development of Black candidates for office and media figures in the right wing to act as human shields for protection against credible accusations of racism against its quest to preserve a white political hegemony over the United States at all costs. They put a lot of work into this complex maze of dog-whistled anti-anti-racism. There’s a reason why they had to dig up “Critical Race Theory” and turn it into a threat to national security and not just “we should be allowed to say the n-word whenever we want”. They know it’s not going to fly with the more moderate-ish voters they need to appeal to in order to remain viable.

It’s not all that clear we can say the same thing about how Republicans feel toward Jewish Americans however. Look at this pair of tweets – the one on the left was liked and retweeted by the Vice Chair of the Arizona Republican Party, while the one on the right was tweeted and then deleted by Ron DeSantis’s press secretary (to be clear it was about the country Georgia).

And these were just Wednesday. Last week was the Ohio GOP Senate primary campaign ad against frontrunner Josh Mandel implying that he as a Jew is a liar and a charlatan (which he is, but having a Jewish background is not a requirement for a Republican politician to be a piece of shit). Last month the Virginia GOP campaign mailer depicting a Jewish Democratic state lawmaker as a hook-nosed shylock, a phenomenon that is not new. Not new at all. Not even close. Congressman Paul Gosar is in hot water over that insane “Attack on Titan” video depicting him killing colossal mutant versions of AOC and Biden, but far worse in our opinion was his July campaign event with Anti-Semite and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, leader of the far right “Groypers” movement. The Texas nationalist woman who hosted a campaign event for Ted Cruz after her widely-shared Facebook post blaming “corporations owned by Jews” for every culture war battle – “LGBTQ, gambling, media, news, movies, etc” – she and her fellow Karens had to fight.

These are just handy examples of what the institutional Republican Party, as in politicians and candidates, have gotten themselves associated with, forget the actual terroristic acts against Jewish Americans committed by their supporters, of which there are a very troubling growing body of on the record in National Zero’s article archive. Also forget about the moronic “Now I know how the Jews must’ve felt during the Holocaust, because I had to wear a mask and/or get a vaccine“. Awful as it is in its own right to minimize the worst act of genocide in human history, at least it definitionally acknowledges that the Holocaust was not a good thing. Wearing a Judenstern badge to an anti-vax protest to paint yourself as a victim of an evil regime is fucking stupid and indefensible. However, we’re at the point where we can honestly say that’s preferable to the “6MWE” (“Six Million Wasn’t Enough”) shirts some members of the Proud Boys like to wear.

All four of these campaign ads were paid for by Republicans

It’s worth noting that all four of the GOP candidates whose campaigns created the images above did end up losing. But Former Georgia Senator David “Chickenshit” Perdue barely lost (and there’s a strong argument that was Trump’s fault more than his) and is currently very much a viable candidate for Georgia Governor. Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan did not lose re-election however.

Sullivan campaign ad altered to show 2020 Dem opponent Al Gross, a Jew, clutching money.

Now could you picture Lindsey Graham surviving a campaign ad where he depicted his opponent Jamie Harrison holding fried chicken and a slice of watermelon? Would he be a viable candidate for any office ever again after that? Could you picture him even being allowed to stay in the Senate if he’d won? He’d be destroyed. Not even today’s GOP would tolerate that, because they do what they can to make sure Black voters to mostly stay home on election day. Any smaller numbers peeled off from the Dems to support them are just icing on the cake. You can’t say the same about Jewish voters in Alaska, estimated to be 6,000 in number, less than 1% of the state’s population.

What about the Right Wing support for Israel, you might ask. Well, what about it? Can anyone put forward a sincerely convincing argument that it’s rooted in anything beyond simple transactional nihilism? Are there any examples of left-wing anti-semitism besides liberal Muslim Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib making some statements implying that Jewish political donors are more loyal to Israel than the United States? Is there any way to have a good faith argument about that with someone who wants to pretend Trump himself didn’t also repeatedly say essentially the exact same fucking thing on numerous occasions? If your answer is that a lot of Evangelical Christians support Israel because they believe its the fulfillment of a Biblical prophecy then sure, fine (Not actually fine but that’s something far too complex and dicey to get into the weeds with in an already overlong essay, especially as it’s not really all that friendly of a doctrine to Israel).

Everyone else on the right who complains about “anti-semitism” on the left is far more likely than not to be full of shit, not least of which because they do nothing to condemn the already very numerous examples of real, actual anti-semitism rising within their party, but as mentioned it’s more of a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” situation. What MAGA troll doesn’t enjoy suffering wrought upon Palestinian “terrorists” even if it’s a Jew’s hand pressing the button?

Beyond that however, it’s hard to argue that they’re getting anything other than increasingly comfortable with trafficking in anti-semitism. It’s not the moderate centrists who are ascendant in the Republican Party right now. It’s the extremists. The party’s already began its divorce from big business, who’s to say the Israel lobby isn’t next? What happens then?

This clip is an extreme example of a fictional US government policy towards Jews depicted in the HBO alternate history miniseries “The Plot Against America”, adapted from Philip Roth’s novel about his family’s (obviously fake) experience dealing with changes when Republican Charles Lindbergh defeats FDR in the 1940 presidential election (The name of this essay is taken from the depression-era song played during the opening credits). Actor John Tuturro plays Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf, a Southern-born cleric who works with the Lindbergh administration to “assimilate” his fellow tribespeople until he realizes far too late that Lindbergh wants to subtly encourage and allow a nationwide pogrom to erupt against Jews, which it does, tragically.

It’s hard not to think of Bengelsdorf when seeing Josh Mandel:

https://twitter.com/JoshMandelOhio/status/1461112113087356938

But maybe what Mandel is saying is less important than what he isn’t saying.

Notably, the Jewish Republican candidate completely backed away from this attack because he knew it was a loser for him with his party’s base.

— L O L G O P (@LOLGOP) November 12, 2021

Black Americans face all manner of threats from the GOP’s extremist turn these days, and this is not to minimize them in anyway whatsoever. However, that gets thrown in our faces every single day in the news in one way or another. We know the Byzantine structure to their defense of systemic racism is key to winning for them. What’s less readily apparent is how well the ground has been laid out for an outright explosion of anti-semitism on the right.

The road is wide open.