This is way more than 500 words, but I have a lot to say about anti-Semitism and its brethren. Google “anti-Semitism” and you’ll learn that it first appeared in the late 19th Century as an attempt to re-brand Judenhass (i.e., hatred of Jews in German), presumably to recast such vulgar views in more politically scientific terms. In 1879, a German journalist who helped give anti-Semitism currency, Wilhelm Marr, wrote a pamphlet called “The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism,” in which he accused Jews of being liberals and a people without roots who had Judaized Germans beyond salvation.
Nearly 140 years later, the front page of Sunday’s Washington Post featured a lead story of how the Netherlands’ far-right Freedom Party and its leader, Geert Wilders, could wind up the top vote-getter (that doesn’t mean he’d necessarily become Prime Minister) in this week’s national elections. Wilders, who was recently convicted of hate speech, wants to totally ban Muslims from living in Holland and routinely refers to Moroccans living in the country as scum. According to the Post, and despite Holland’s wealth, prosperity and humming economy, his message is resonating with the Dutch across all sectors of society; these are the same people who hid Anne Frank and her family while suffering greatly under the Nazis. Similar campaign strategies are playing well in France and Germany as we speak.
Two weeks ago, at a fintech conference on faster payments in Atlanta, I sat next to a London lawyer who tried to explain to me why so many people in England had voted for Brexit. He claimed that the open borders of the European Union had made it too easy for citizens from poorer member EU states to come to the United Kingdom and take good-paying jobs away from Her Majesty’s “native” subjects. Because immigrants were willing to work for less, the solicitor explained, all these maids from Poland had overrun the British hotel housekeeping business. Somehow, I had missed that the powerful British economy had been brought to its knees by an invasion of tidy Polish women.
Much like our own Trump-up, there are striking parallels in each of these alarming narratives. A common yet dangerously potent message underlies all nationalistic playbooks, whether from today or 1879. Voters are ramped up beyond any connection to fact or reality with the dangerous rhetoric of “us first,” which is to say that native, majority, white Christian people are under attack from within their own borders by minorities who look different or pray differently or speak differently. Everyone who is different is an enemy or a potential enemy. Whether at a Trump rally in Florida or in a village in Yorkshire or on the streets of Amsterdam, this populist message is frustratingly and frighteningly (to me) effective at stoking our fears against each other.
But, I still don’t get why? First and most importantly, I don’t think it works – at least in terms of improving the lives of those who buy into this bigotry. Now, I suppose one could point to China as a repressive, nationalist society that works, but I assume most of us in the United States still think a free market economy is the way to go. Assuming that, the numbers never add up. I’ve worked in Washington for nearly 20 years and I can say that no native-born American has ever been let go from cleaning the offices in which I work. Where are all these “real Americans” being forced out of long hours, low pay and physically demanding labor? They don’t exist is the answer. Perhaps people are looking for any assurances to the fears that plague them. And, logic and fact seem to play no part. Case in point, a hell of a lot of the estimated 24 million Americans who stand to lose health insurance if and when the Republicans repeal the Affordable Care Act voted for that very thing when they cast their ballot for this President. Their sole reason for wanting to repeal Obamacare seems to be, drum roll, their hatred of the nation’s first black President.
Could the appeal lie in its tribalism? Surely, that must play a part; we are naturally drawn to people who are like us in some way. Still, the fact that I love visiting Ireland and happily recall the first time I walked the streets of the Castro in San Francisco doesn’t mean my existence is threatened by standing next to a woman in a hijab on the Metro. Economic insecurity? Of course, I get that fear of one’s own future can make more tantalizing the appeal of anti-Semitism, xenophobia, nativism and any other strain of racism.
Even so, and quite apart from the fact that these campaigns are morally reprehensible, history shows pretty definitively that a movement built on racial superiority (in whatever form) is doomed to fail. Every time. So, why does this demagoguery continue to work?
The answer must lie with the politicians and their quest for naked power and wealth. These “leaders” and their advisors stand to gain much – politically and financially – through hate-filled campaigns while the voters stand to lose much (more). It’s patently obvious that this Republican administration doesn’t care about the economic struggles of Americans any more than Geert Wilders or Marine LePen are looking out for struggling Dutch and French families, respectively. Rather, these politicians see nationalism, in all its anti-Semitic, xenophobic, racist glory, as their path to unchecked power and a financial windfall. In consolidating power while demonizing everyone who is different, these strong-men and -women want to silence any discord or protest, raking in the dough and deluding their followers into believing that only they, these would-be dictators, can save the “true” people from the infidels among them.
In the end, many will suffer as a result of the hatred and prejudice brought by these campaigns while their supporters will only end up broke. Not to mention morally bankrupt.
History does bear repeating. This is a lose-lose proposition if ever there was.
