This Was The Week The Right Finally Admitted It Has An Antisemitism Problem

There's no gray area here about which side of the political divide this animal nests on.

by Justin Rosario

After a title like that, you'd expect to read something about how Republican leaders, in the wake of yet another terrorist attack against Jews on American soil by a white nationalist, stood together to denounce the hate speech rampant in their base. That is, after all, what a responsible political party would do.

But this is the Republican Party. They are anything but responsible.

Another violent white supremacist has violently attacked Jewish worshipers in their house of prayer, and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., once again finds herself fending off bad-faith attacks from her Republican colleagues in Congress. The GOP’s grotesque response to another anti-Semitic murder committed by a white supremacist is, of course, not to examine the far-right ideology they have enabled but ito blame a Somali-American Muslim woman.

Hours after a gunman opened fire Saturday at the Chabad of Poway synagogue near San Diego, killing one person and injuring the congregation's rabbi, several Republicans who had remained silent about the the rise of domestic terrorism from radicalized white supremacists in the Trump era rushed to point a finger at the freshman representative ( for stoking the latest violent attack.

Some of them managed to launch their mindless screeds before they even bothered to send their even more mindless "thoughts and prayers" to the victims. That's how eager they were to blame the left for America's rapidly growing problem with antisemitic violence.

Mind you, we knew pretty quickly that this latest shooter was a rabid white nationalist. And that he was inspired by the hate speech that comprises so much of the right these days. There's no gray area here about which side of the political divide this animal nests on. So why are Republicans rushing to blame Rep. Omar?

The obvious answer is that as a progressive Muslim woman of color, she is almost everything the right despises. The right's loathing of her can be seen mirrored in the ongoing epic meltdown on Fox News over the very existence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It's not the wrong answer but it's not the only one, either.

The less obvious answer is that after years of pretending they have nothing to do with antisemitism and white nationalism, the American right wing sees the spray-painted swastika on the wall. And they know damn well who put it there.

While the really nasty racism was relegated to the fringes, the right was able to use dog whistles and coded language to feign innocence. Everyone knew who they were talking about but it was "rude" to call them on it because, hey, they weren't really saying it, right?

The media enforced this nauseating paradigm with a steel fist because the second they admitted the right trafficked in blatant racism, they would have to admit the right was the problem. That is not allowed in the hallowed halls of the Beltway media. It must always be "both sides" even if one side is holding a book of matches and an empty gas can and the other is frantically trying to put out the fire that seems to have spontaneously started all by itself.

But once Trump told the right that they could be as openly racist as they wanted because he was going to make America White Again, this farcical dance around the truth started to falter and stumble. It's hard to say the right isn't overflowing with bigots when day after day, a parade of them announce how much they hate blacks/Latinos/Muslims/etc. and love Trump while proudly stand in front of a cell phone camera in a Walmart parking lot.

It's gets even harder to pretend the right isn't motivated by racism when Republicans start openly using white nationalist language to the point where Steve King (R-KKK) actually said, out loud:

"White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?"

It becomes literally impossible to pretend the right is not poisoned by jaw-dropping antisemitism when Trump continues to defend actual Nazis marching in the street chanting his name and a series of white nationalist terrorists begin murdering Jews. The inspiration for the terrorism? The hate speech of the right.

With no fig leaf left to hide behind and even the complicit media struggling to turn a blind eye, the right has moved to its next line of defense: Projection.

Why, we're not the Jew-hating Nazis! The left is! Sure, our members literally wear swastikas and seig heil to picture of Hitler while screaming about how they want to kill all the Jews, but the left criticizes AIPAC and, clearly, that is pure antisemitic hate speech! We of the right are deeply offended by this unprecedented attack against the Jewish people! It's this hate speech that keeps forcing these lone wolves to go out and kill Jewish people!

If that sounds like completely lunacy to you, you'd be correct. It is off-the-walls, bat shit insane. But this is, quite literally, what Republicans are saying.

And this is how we know the right is deeply worried about its antisemitism problem.

The lack of subtlety is key here. Their attempts to create a "both sides" narrative is so gross and artificial that it reeking of desperation. The media tried, briefly, to play along back when Rep. Omar first criticized AIPAC but it was such a stretch that they couldn't sustain it.

The most recent "antisemitic" follow up fell flat instantly. No one outside of the Fox News bubble is buying that white nationalists are inspired by a black progressive Muslim woman to kill Jews. And it's not even really clear how much of the bubble is buying it, either. They might as well be claiming that rapists are being inspired by Pete Buttigieg because he's gay. It just doesn't have any kind of rational or emotional flow from one to the other. It's gibberish.

That, however, will not stop the right from screaming it at every opportunity. They know, just as surely as the rest of us do (even those who are trying very hard to ignore reality), that these attacks will continue to occur at a quickening pace. White nationalists are both emboldened and terrified.

On the one hand, Trump is telling them that this is their time. Now is when they need to "Make America Great Again" by getting rid of their enemies. And everyone is an enemy to white nationalists. Especially the Jews. Always the Jews. With Trump in office, they'll never have a better time to run rampant and maybe even have the law look the other way while they live out their darkest fantasies.

But on the other, the less dense among them know that Trump's time is coming to an end. If he manages to make it to the 2020 election without being arrested, he won't be president come February 2021. The long-dreamed of civil war simply is not happening and Republicans do not appear anxious (yet) to try openly stealing the election.

The chances of Republicans putting another open white nationalist on the ballot are not good and that means the white nationalist dream of purging America ends. What comes next? White genocide, of course!

Not really, but that's what they'll believe. And that will motivate them to turn to terrorism and the persecution of minorities. Especially the Jews. Always the Jews.

White nationalism will become an albatross around the neck of the conservative movement. They won't be able to embrace it because the right will be, correctly, accused of "palling around with terrorists." But they also won't be able to condemn it because, let's be honest, white nationalism is the engine that gets the right moving in the morning.

The only way out is to convince the public that "both sides" are to blame for the violence of white nationalists and that is exactly what we are seeing them try to do right now. It's the crassest political manipulation imaginable and in a sane world, there would be no conceivable way for it to work.

But we do not live in a sane world. We live in a world where the press uses phrases like "revived an inaccurate refrain" when a Republican president lies about doctors murdering babies. Why do they do this? Because even after Trump told 10,000 lies in a little over two years, they cannot bring themselves to call him a pathological liar.

So Republicans will lie and lie and lie some more about where the antisemitism of the white nationalists comes from and the media will uncritically report "both sides" of the story without bothering to point out the obvious bullshit. It may not convince the inattentive public that liberals and progressives are the "real" Jew-haters but it might muddy the waters enough for them to tune it all out. And that's exactly what the right wants.

Then they can continue to blow their dog whistles and let the body count rack up because, hey, it's not their fault, right? "Both sides" are guilty and when everyone is to blame, no one is to blame.

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