Israeli academic and philosopher “Ari Ben Canaan” blogs:
In the past week, two articles have appeared in the Jewish publication Forward that are principally concerned with the question whether or not Jews are White. One, by Karen Brodkin, contends that Ashkenazi American Jews have ‘become’ White, but stand in danger of ceasing to be White; the other, by Micha Danzig, contends for a variety of reasons that Jews are not and have never been White. Both pieces, my arguments shall show, are seriously confused, and their confusion only obscures the nuances of what is today a very important question. The principal target of my essay, however, is Brodkin’s article, as it is her article that best exemplifies the disingenuity and hostility of liberal Jewish attacks on White Identity, although much of my response to her shall address the errors in Danzig’s.
The central thesis of Brodkin’s essay is this: after being discriminated against for decades, American Jews in the middle of the 20th century managed to ‘become’ White; although, in the wake of Trump’s election, Jews stand in danger of losing their privileged White status. The evidence for this danger, Brodkin claims, consists of certain “chilling parallels” between Trump and early 20th-century eugenicists – in particular, Trump’s suggestion that his success is a result of good genetics, various ‘dog-whistles’ to certain undesirables on the part of his supporters, and the apparent re-emergence of the swastika as a prominent symbol in American life.
Obviously, this supposed evidence is nothing but the smoke and mirrors of paranoia and hysteria. To suggest that someone’s success is a result of their good genes is no more to create a parallel with eugenicists than it is to create a parallel with the majority of Jewish mothers in this country (whose children, as science confirms and most Jews silently acknowledge, are genetically predisposed to have those traits most conducive to success). Moreover, to imply that our evaluation of Trump ought to take into account the ‘dog-whistles’ of his supporters is equivalent to saying that we ought to attribute to Trump views that certain people he has never met are merely suspected of having – and this is surely ridiculous. “Trump’s plan to impose a compulsory registry for all Muslims echoes Hitler and yellow stars,” claims Brodkin, but it echoes this no more than Brodkin’s own claim that it echoes this echoes the ‘echoes’ used by online anti-Semites to identify Jews. Just as I would not, on this basis, accuse Brodkin of ‘dog-whistling’ to anti-Semites, so no one ought to accuse Trump of the same. There is simply nothing that Trump has said or done that might warrant any fear that Trump is anti-Semite….
