“Donald Trump’s Argument for America” — the GOP candidate’s “closing argument advertisement— is a skillful distillation of every Trump speech we’ve heard for the last year and a half. In it he denounces the country’s political establishment as corrupt and claims global financial forces have “bled our country dry.” He says his movement represents the only chance for the “American people” to reclaim their country from these malevolent forces. That’s why the ad has drawn fire for what some critics claim are anti-Semitic themes and imagery.
Yet, as has been the case with similar discussions earlier in the campaign, the problem is not that Trump is personally prejudiced. It’s that a campaign predicated on themes that resemble traditional stereotypes about global conspiracies about Jews inevitably generates such concerns.
Much is being made that at key points throughout the Trump video, images of well-known Jews punctuate its points about global special interests manipulating and robbing the American people. Jews such as liberal financier George Soros, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein all make appearances. The fact that they are the only individuals other than foreign leaders that are singled out in this way is questionable. But all three are controversial figures and should be considered fair game for criticism. By itself, their images are not proof of anti-Semitism. Moreover, as much as Trump has been justly criticized for a variety of prejudiced remarks, there is no proof that he is personally biased against Jews.
Yet the salient point here isn’t how we feel about Soros, Yellen or Goldman Sachs. It is the way Trump has fed paranoia about global conspiracies that have served as dog whistles to alt-right anti-Semites and white nationalist extremists that deserves condemnation.
The genius of the Trump campaign has been his ability to capitalize on widespread angst by those displaced by a changing economy, disillusionment with the failures of government and distress about the country’s changing demographics and culture. Moreover, there is nothing particularly new or even necessarily toxic about political rhetoric that pits the interests of “the people” against the rich, the powerful or the incumbent party, a card that is often played the left. The notion that international trade is anything but a net positive for our economy is a myth. Most of the manufacturing jobs that have been lost in this country are due to automation, not outsourcing or Trump’s mantra about bad trade deals. One can dispute those facts without being an anti-Semite. The same is true about his not unreasonable argument that his opponent is corrupt.
The problem is that when you declare that the failures of the establishment are not merely a function of bad ideas or bad people but a conspiracy of globalist forces, you are treading on dangerous territory. As I’ve noted before, Trump’s language about conspiracies as well as his “America First” slogan has troubling historical baggage associated with anti-Semitism. But the reason why extremists have treated his rhetoric as a dog whistles that encourage their hate is that once you head down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, there’s really no going back. If you also combine that with a campaign that is rooted in blood and soil rhetoric about immigrants and religious minorities, you can’t be surprised or claim innocence when hate groups cheer.
Donald Trump is not a replay of Adolf Hitler and his critics who make such claims are allowing him to play the victim of political correctness. Some of those who blast Trump for anti-Semitism have also been remarkably silent about the way the political left — whose influence is growing in the Democratic Party — has been unmoved by the growth of an anti-Semitic BDS movement to boycott Israel and Jews. Too many contemporary liberals only seem to get worked about Jew hatred when it can be blamed on Trump.
Yet whatever it is that Trump thinks he’s doing, a major party presidential candidate’s embrace of conspiratorial politics in this manner at a time when a rising tide of anti-Semitism has already spread over Europe and looks to establish new beachheads on American shores, is troubling. Trump may not believe that it is the Jews who are robbing the American people. But some of his supporters listen to his rhetoric, look at the images and draw different conclusions. That’s something that should worry everyone.