American Jews are being asked to keep their heads on a swivel. Every act of anti-Jewish terror feels both random and overdetermined, and today’s attempted mass shooting at a Michigan synagogue during preschool hours is no different.
Whatever this particular terrorist’s motives turn out to be, these days anti-Jewish incitement is coming from all directions.
Perhaps the attempted shooter believed, like Candance Owens does, that Israel is a nation of Baal-worshipers (the nation of Israel is quite famously the opposite of Baal-worshipers; if only Candace would be a good Christian and read her Bible). Either way, says Owens, America simply follows Israel’s orders.
Graham Platner also thinks the Jewish state controls our government. And coincidentally, Platner just happens to have gotten—and laughed about for years—a large Nazi tattoo. Platner is a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate from Maine who thinks Israeli mind control is only one reason for the current war with Iran; the other, he believes, is that President Trump is trying to distract attention from the Epstein files.
Those Epstein files are public largely because of the efforts of folks like Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California, and Tom Massie, a Republican from Kentucky. Khanna and Massie have coined the phrase “the Epstein class” to refer to a wide variety of people who don’t include Ro Khanna and Tom Massie and their friends, though it has mostly just poured fuel on the fire of Epstein-related anti-Semitic conspiracy theories not too dissimilar from Owens’s idiotic “Baal-worshiping” stuff.
Khanna’s cynicism is the subject of an excellent column by James Kirchick in the Washington Post today. Khanna responded to Kirchick’s reporting by accusing Kirchick of protecting “the Epstein class” and being a shill for Israel’s government. Then he defended Pat Buchanan.
Ah, Pat Buchanan, trailblazing anti-Semitic populist. The old Republican hand and former presidential candidate is having a moment. A new generation of young right-wingers are discovering him and hoping to carve his face into Mount Rushmore. A couple of Republicans in the Senate want him to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
As should be clear from Khanna, Buchanan’s bipartisan appeal isn’t policy-based. Rather, it’s the insinuations that American Jews are disloyal citizens acting on behalf of the Israeli government. Platner sounds a bit like him but so does someone who once called out Buchanan’s anti-Semitism: Tucker Carlson. The influential conservative podcaster and former Fox News host has morphed into a Pat Buchanan cover band.
In addition to accusing Israel of controlling Washington, Carlson now also recites the classic pogrom-incitement propaganda of accusing the Jews of planning to conquer Al Aqsa, the old mosque at the Temple Mount complex. It’s an idea Tucker shares with his left-wing buddies in the Squad like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who goes back to the well of Al Aqsa incitement more than some Palestinian leaders do.
This is what is termed the horseshoe effect, where right and left go far enough to meet on the other side. When it comes to Israel and the Jews, the political horseshoe is more like a closed circle, dizzying and without exit.
And by the way, another possible motive for attacks on Jews these days all over the world is the activating of Iranian agents who are retaliating for Israel’s refusal to let the mullahs have a nuclear bomb. Iran’s terror regime has defenders on both sides of the aisle too, for what it’s worth.
The point is that in the past, knowing an anti-Semitic terrorist’s specific motivation was useful information, a knowledge trail that one could follow to see how to prepare for the next attack. But right now it feels like that trail would just send you around in a circle. America’s domestic radicalization problem is the new melting pot, where all the ingredients get mushed together into a one-bowl meal. If, somehow, you still have an appetite.
