Trump and the Jews

An old friend and colleague sent me a recent article by David Frum, published in The Atlantic, in which Frum asks, "What if they are not coming for the Jews this time?" Frum acknowledges that "[the] Trump presidency seethes with hostility toward many different minority and subordinated groups. But Jews have been elevated to a special protected category, exempt from the lines of attack deployed against Muslims, non-Norwegian immigrants, women Trump deems unattractive, and so on and on." His title alludes to the famous poem by Martin Niemöller, which castigates the moral failure of passivity in the face of injustice done to others, including (from Niemöller's perspective), the Jews.

Jews have ever since viewed this poem as both a warning and a calling. A warning, because it foretells that whenever the oppression of marginalized groups begins, the malignant bigotry will eventually seek out the Jews (as Frum quotes Chris Rock saying, "That train is never late!"). A calling, because knowing what it means to be on the receiving end of such oppression, Jews have a special responsibility to speak out when it is doled out to others.

The question Frum is effectively asking is, "If the warning is no longer in effect, will the calling hold?" He enumerates evidence to show that Trump has repudiated antisemitism and that his movement accords Jews "insider" status. If this is the case, he wonders, what will Jews do in the face of the moral test the situation poses? If Jews are not in the way of the train this time, will they come to the aid of those who are?

Frum's exercise is (at least in some part) rhetorical, and the challenge he poses philosophically abstract. He is speaking to individual Jews as much to the "Jewish community" writ large, and laying the situation out as a moral conundrum understood in logical terms. As a thought experiment I cannot fault his message. I take his meaning (which is ever implicit rather than explicitly stated in his essay) to be that Jews do, individually and collectively, have a duty imposed by history to stand with those who are being victimized, a duty that will be abrogated if we give our support to Trump's bigotry. In this his formulations are unmistakably persuasive.

But as a matter of political pragmatics, the situation is more complicated than Frum's philosophical abstractions allow. By this I do not mean to begin an apology for Jewish Trump supporters. Trump's support among Jews is equivalent to what has been enjoyed by past Republican presidents. Jews as a group typically skew Democratic, but there has always been a "conservative wing" of the American Jewish community that votes for and donates to the Republican party, representing as many as 30% of American Jews. David Frum himself was, until recently, a member of this group.

Indeed, it is really to his former co-partisans that Frum is speaking. Trump has won the support of conservative Jews through traditional inducements. His tax cuts and deregulation are perennially appealing to fiscal conservatives, and his (largely symbolic but nonetheless ostentatious) acts of support for Israel are radically gratifying to traditional Jewish "defense conservatives". Frum is pleading with conservative Jews that, under Trump, these benefits come at a steep moral cost. To be sure, the appeal to history may be somewhat tendentious. Is it really fair to expect individual Jews to come under a greater moral onus than anyone else to stand with the oppressed, simply because other Jews were oppressed in the past? That kind of argument could be critiqued as "identitarian" and as imposing a double standard.

But Frum is right that the moral hazard is real, and entails practical detriments, even from the perspective of conservative Jews themselves. The issue about which defense Jewish conservatives care most dearly- the security of Israel- hinges on a moral argument that is undermined by Trumpist bigotry. Zionism is founded on the proposition that the world owes the Jews special protection against malignant racism. If conservative Jews, not merely as individuals but as representatives of Jewish religious and civil institutions, lend their support to Trump's politics of white nationalist grievance, how can the special plea at the heart of Zionist messaging fail to lose moral force?

Moreover, the hypothetical posed by Frum's title is almost certainly false. Chris Rock may not be completely right in this case: the train has been delayed. But no Jews; liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican; should be in any doubt, if it gets far enough the Trump train will come for us eventually. Trump's alliance with the Jews at the current moment is (like all of his relationships) one of convenience. He draws legitimacy and support from the friendship of figures like Sheldon Adelson and Benjamin Netanyahu, not only with Jews but with American evangelical Christians, among whom "Christian Zionism" is a powerful movement. Even Trump's most racist supporters, such as the self-avowed "white nationalist" Richard Spencer, profess a kind of twisted "Zionism." For Spencer's ilk, Israel presents a model of a mono-ethnic state, and stands as a convenient repository for Jews pending a final solution. Jews should never confuse gestures of friendship toward Israel with signs of tolerance or "philosemitism." The two are quite distinct.

The kind of legitimacy that Trump garners from his support of Israel and the friendship of prominent Jewish leaders are only useful to him while America's democratic institutions remain effective. As he leads the nation further down the path of white-nationalist oligarchy, association with Jews and Jewish interests will become progressively less useful to Trump and his administration. The culture of antisemitism among Trump's core supporters is very intense, as Frum himself acknowledges. If and when the MAGA community no longer needs to share power with those who  are not of like mind, support of Jews will become a liability for Trump rather than an asset. Anyone who does not believe that Trump will abandon the Jews at that point (even his daughter and her family, who could of course be deported to Israel) has not been paying attention to his behavior up to the present moment.

To my fellow Jews I say this: be warned. The train may be a bit late this time. But it is coming.