If today’s antisemitism is defined by anything, it is hypocrisy. By and large—a few of its more radical Muslim factions excepted—the progressive/Muslim “Red-Green Alliance” that spearheads the first antisemitic mass movement in American history portrays itself as a caste of saints, the finest and most moral people in the entire history of the known universe. They make their case for annihilating Israel and, if we are to believe their slogans (and we should), world Jewry itself, on the basis of human rights, compassion, liberation, empathy, and a deep and abiding concern and love for all mankind.
That all of this is nonsense and conclusively disproven by their incitement, physical violence and acts of murder is beside the point, because hypocrisy, as the saying goes, is always the deference vice pays to virtue.
This hypocrisy is self-serving, to say the least, but also essential to the antisemites themselves.
It is not impossible that today’s antisemites know quite well that they are evil, and this may be precisely why they do what they do. Human beings have a strong streak of sadomasochism in them, and thus evil can certainly be vertiginously thrilling. To admit to this, however, would destroy the antisemites’ pretensions of rectitude, and—except in moments of ultimate ecstasy and immunity—must be occluded by hypocrisy. Vice must defer to virtue to make virtue impossible. Antisemites, after all, always tell themselves that they are good people doing a good thing.
Last week, this was illustrated by an incident and an initiative.
The incident occurred in Texas, where a man was arrested for planning to attack the state capitol building. Buried below the lede in many media reports was the fact that the perpetrator was motivated by murderous antisemitism, specifically citing the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. He reportedly told a friend, “These people have to be exterminated.” One could be forgiven for assuming that such a sweeping statement referred not just to AIPAC, but to all the Jews.
The initiative was a plan to fight antisemitism proposed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an open antisemite who has referred to AIPAC as “monsters.” He did so alongside numerous other hypocrisies, such as saying the Jewish state has no right to exist (he said no such thing of Muslim states); refusing to condemn the genocidal slogan “globalize the intifada”; and immediately after Oct. 7 saying, “I mourn the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours,” which must by definition include the Hamas terrorists who committed the atrocity.
In a supreme act of hypocrisy, he has done all this while claiming to oppose antisemitism based on his allegedly progressive values. That antisemitism is perhaps the most reactionary ideology in the world today appears not to occur to him.
Given this ubiquity of the hypocritical, it is perhaps not surprising to see an antisemite proposing a plan to fight antisemitism, and indeed, the press release on the plan underlines this better than any outside criticism could do.
We must name the enemy and the monsters, even if the enemy and the monster is the mayor of New York City.
The hypocrisy begins with Mamdani himself, who is quoted as noting that “Jewish New Yorkers face a disproportionate share of hate crimes in the city” without mentioning his own role in inciting these hate crimes. More to the point, he does not cite the fact that these crimes have overwhelmingly been committed by members of the Red-Green Alliance like himself. This should not be surprising, because to genuinely fight antisemitism, Mamdani and his movement would have to do some soul-searching and contend with their own moral arrogance, and for self-appointed saints, this is impossible.
It is not surprising that the hypocrisy extends to the endorsers of the plan, who are overwhelmingly cadres of the Red-Green Alliance, alongside the usual Red-Green Alliance Jewish groups who consistently run interference and serve as sword and shield for Mamdani’s antisemitic movement. It is no coincidence that not a single mainstream Jewish group was included, and certainly no genuinely effective Jewish organization like End Jew Hatred, the Lawfare Project, or StandWithUs.
There is, for example, IfNotNow, whose incitement is well known, including blood-libeling Israel with the false charge of “genocide.” Unsurprisingly, in its statement, IfNotNow attacks its favorite bête noire: the Jews themselves. They claim, “Establishment Jewish institutions have often tried to separate Jewish safety from that of other targeted groups—ultimately leaving us all more vulnerable.” In fact, the establishment organizations have done precisely the opposite, with disastrous results, as those “other targeted groups” have almost all betrayed their pretentions of “allyship” and embraced antisemitism.
Fortunately, and at long last, the usually quiescent “establishment Jewish institutions” were having none of it and spoke truth to antisemitic power. The ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, for example, said, “Security grants do not substitute for moral clarity. A mayor who will not define antisemitism, will not confront terror flags being marched around in Jewish neighborhoods and terror sympathizers at the doorstep of a synagogue and will not put his own politics aside is not fighting this crisis. He is managing around it. The mayor’s actions or inactions only serve to help fuel antisemitism in NYC.”
Indeed, the hypocrisy that defines today’s antisemitism is ubiquitous throughout the press release, and this should not be a surprise. The plan’s real intention is clear: to protect the antisemites. In other words, the plan is not a plan, but a cover-up, a misdirection, a refusal to even contemplate genuine action, because if the real enemy cannot be named, then you cannot fight him.
But to name the enemy is impossible, because it would involve terrible consequences. It would mean the acknowledgement that those proposing to solve the problem are the problem. By hypocritically protecting themselves while claiming to protect the Jews, the composers of the plan are effectively claiming that antisemitism does not exist, a remarkably convenient hypocrisy, but essential for genuine “monsters,” because the monster always believes that he is not a monster.
In the face of this, we must do as Greenblatt did: We must name the enemy and the monsters, even if the enemy and the monster is the mayor of New York City himself and his movement. We must puncture their moral arrogance and declare their hypocrisy before the world. We must interfere, force them to squirm and make good trouble while there is still trouble to be made.
But the Jews also need more than this: They require their own civil-rights movement and a network of self-defense organizations to effectively defend themselves against the hypocrites, especially when the hypocrites declare themselves our friends and allies. This, and this alone, will save us from the Red-Green Alliance oligarchy now rising to considerable political power and from all the Mamdanis of the world.
