Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press conference statements last month should raise concerns beyond his attacks on the “woke” and Mickey Mouse. DeSantis calls Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and others “Soros-funded prosecutors” and says “The Soros district attorneys are a menace to society.”
What does it mean?
Budapest 2017 visitors knew. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has screamed against George Soros like a KKK rally. “Let’s not allow George Soros to have the last laugh!” read billboards, metro walls, and tram floors during Hungary’s legislative elections that year. After Waterloo, the Rothschild libel was updated to call progressive donor Soros Satanic.
The Hungarian Trump is now Orban. He’s a favorite of Florida’s governor, Fox News commentators, and CPAC, which he opened in Dallas last year. Our nation and liberties are shamed by purportedly cognizant Americans’ attraction to a man who evokes 1930s Berlin. Soros-coding injects antisemitism like the interwar period. Soros, Jew, money, Satan.
The sad and terrible history of antisemitism is not limited to the infamous pogroms of Eastern Europe in the first quarter of the 20th century, when perhaps 1.75 million Jews emigrated to America, or the Holocaust, when 6 million perished and the world all but closed its doors and turned a blind eye. Jew-hatred dates back at least to 3rd-century BC Alexandrian riots. Anti-Jewish edicts, enslavement, forced conversion, banishment, and death occurred a millennium later.
Crusades were terrifying. The First Crusade killed hundreds of thousands of Jews in 1096 AD. This may be when Israel became necessary. During the Black Death in the 14th century, Jews were accused of conspiring to poison wells. Before the plague hit Strasbourg in 1348, conspiracy theorists burned 900 Jews. Jewish planning has a terrible history.
“On the Jews and their Lies” in 1543, preparing the Holocaust. Walt Whitman’s 1840s Brooklyn Eagle condemned Jews historically and culturally.
Antisemitism, subtle or overt, permeates our literary, philosophical, and theological history. “We are at fault in not slaying them,” Luther said in “On the Jews and their Lies” in 1543, setting the way for the Holocaust. Walt Whitman’s 1840s Brooklyn Eagle criticized Jews historically and culturally. The Dearborn Independent showed Henry Ford’s antisemitism by the 1920s. When war broke out in Europe, Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee claimed Jews were pressuring the U.S. to attack Germany. Ezra Pound’s antisemitic broadcasts from Mussolini’s Italy were four times a week. Jew-hatred persists.
History repeats. The Yale- and Harvard-educated DeSantis would not casually name-check George Soros. However, right-wing rhetoric seems to be race-baiting, sexism, and antisemitism. Trump encouraged defiance and mob-pleasing at any cost. How many egotistical presidents does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None—curse the light and shine.
One of the thorniest issues concerning antisemitism is separating it from anti-Zionism. Unfortunately, Israel’s far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sparked nationwide protests to weaken the courts. The divide between emotions for Jews and Israel is blurry at best. Some associate all Jews with Israel’s present administration as its policies become increasingly restrictive. Left, right, Arab, Muslim, and other organisations use the opportunity to disguise antisemitism as anti-Zionism. DeSantis-style “Soros” defamation follows.