their hate list often includes another minority group:
The Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh
which left 11 worshippers dead reminded Americans that hatred of Jews
is not simply a problem of the past or only one in Europe.
actually has a long and often violent history in the U.S.
It's also frequently been used by white nationalists and other right-wingers
to rally support against social and progressive change
You have white supremacists who are once again rising to
remove Jews from America.
In his statements on social media the Pittsburgh synagogue killer
connected his hatred of Jews with his hatred for Muslims and refugees.
So where exactly does all this hate come from?
American anti-Semitism doesn't exist in a vacuum and actually finds its way
to the U.S. from Europe where Jews have been persecuted for centuries.
Jews along with Muslims were deemed a threat by politically powerful churches and
persecuted by authoritarian rulers looking for scapegoats on which to
blame social and economic problems.
But in America virulent anti-semitism didn't really take off until
immigrated here in the early 20th century.
This migration also happened as part of a much larger wave of migration of some twenty million people from
Eastern and Southern Europe to the Americas. And so Jews were part of that too, just looking for
and so on.
Many Jews were escaping
stoked by the monarchies of Eastern Europe, often as a diversion from challenges to their own power
There was massive pogroms that took place in the
there was one in
And then with the 1905 attempt at a revolution in Russia Jews had invested themselves very fully
Like other immigrants at the time Jewish immigrants face xenophobic, racist, and anti-Semitic
hostility both in their neighborhoods and in the U.S. press.
And so you began to see anti-semitic images of Jews as capitalists
So you have pictures of Jews and top hats carrying bags of money.
Anti-semitic incidents were frequent during this era,
including the lynching of Leo Frank by a mob in Marietta, Georgia -
a violent tactic commonly used to terrorize African Americans in the U.S. South.
He had come from the North to manage a pencil factory.
A young white girl was found murdered and sexually assaulted in the factory
And he was blamed with the thinnest bits of evidence.
He was tried and convicted. And while his sentence was being appealed a mob broke him out of prison,
dragged him to Marietta and hanged him.
But anti-Semitism during this era went far beyond what happened to Leo Frank.
Remember the Jewish participation and Russian revolutions mentioned earlier?
Jewish involvement in these uprisings against the tyranny
of Russian monarchs spurred a new theme in right-wing propaganda.
That Jewish revolutionaries were conspiring with Jewish bankers to take over the world
Accusations that Jewish revolutionaries and bankers were behind movements for social change
became a rallying cry for white nationalists to suppress campaigns for workers rights and black civil rights.
You have figures like Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky
who are very active in left-wing communist governments and movements,
and so you begin to see images of Jews as sort of the bomb-throwing radical.
So you have these contradictory images that exist at the same time.
Which brings us the Father Coughlin, a Catholic priest who, in the 1930s,
was notorious for railing against Jewish bankers in many of his radio addresses -
something that white nationalists and the alt-right continue to peddle.
Coughlin's vehement opposition to communism
and was a part of his conspiracy theories about a
And today, Jews are being accused of doing the same thing,
as being part of an international global conspiracy through organizations such as
White nationalist sentiments had prompted the U.S. government
in the 1920s to adopt
As a result, the U.S.
That's very much the same rhetoric that we hear against
who are escaping religious persecution.
This is the same rhetoric that our President Trump is using right now
against migrants who are coming up from Central America and hoping to find
sanctuary in the United States.
And a younger generation of Jewish Americans have become
more vocal about calling out attacks on marginalized communities.
Rachael Goldstein of IfNotNow, a Jewish activist group which opposes Israel's
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza,
is calling for
When there's anti-Semitism, when there are anti-Semitic
attacks, that's not just an attack on Jews.
It's really an attack on
In the decades since the Holocaust, however,
the white American mainstream has largely integrated Jewish Americans.
A Pew study from 2017 found that more than half of Americans
rated Jews very warmly, higher than any other religious group
I've been really fortunate to grow up without
experiencing a ton of anti-Semitism,
especially not it's in its most vicious form.
But I know that my grandparents
experienced things that were much different than what I am.
Even my parents.
And to be a fourth-generation American Jew
is a really different experience.
All of this violence is interconnected.
And I have to say, as a scholar of Jewish history and someone who's part of the Jewish community,
it seems incumbent upon Jewish Americans to recognize that
Meanwhile, the recent rise of white nationalists and alt-right groups
has seen them unafraid to espouse bigoted views towards Muslims, Latinos, African Americans, the
LGBT community and Jews.
Before and after Pittsburgh activists in many of these targeted communities have
Here is Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour addressing Jewish Americans
in front of the White House at a vigil for the victims in Pittsburgh,
I'm here today with my
Arab American and Muslim family who came out here to send a very loud and clear message
to all of you that we love you.
We stand with you.
We are willing to risk everything so that you too can have a right to practice your religion
freely in these United States of America.
And remember what happened at Charlottesville?
This now famous moment was actually an echo of a traditional white nationalist rallying cry suggesting
And at this time, with the political climate
that were in right now, with the rhetoric that Donald Trump is sharing with his base,
it has sort of allowed for anti-Semitism to come up to the surface,
to make it more acceptable for white nationalists to
explicitly say things like "Jews will not replace us."
The alt-right and white nationalists consistently use terminology that can only be described as
not-so-subtle attacks on Jews.
So, the term,
that's being widely used today to attack George Soros and other Jews
is another variant of the term
which was used in anti-Semitic documents.
The Jewish billionaire and philanthropist George Soros is today's incarnation
of the Jew that white nationalists love to hate.
For decades he's funded the progressive causes and groups that
nationalists in both Eastern Europe and in the United States cannot stand and seek to discredit,
often as foreign menaces.
This belief that there are wealthy Jews who are controlling world events
with a goal to destabilize Western countries -
Trump is not only sounding an anti-Semitic dog whistle
to cue other people,
he's making straight-up anti-Semitic arguments himself now.
President Trump has come under heavy criticism for his response to Pittsburgh and Charlottesville.
He's been accused of fanning the flames by targeting specific groups through racist policies and rhetoric
He has opened the door and given legitimacy to a group of people
that have been sidelined and marginalized.
and he has just
Robert Bowers, the killer at Tree of Life synagogue,
had said online that he was targeting Jews because
and named a Jewish charity helping to resettle Muslim refugees in America.
Unsurprisingly, he had also ranted about the caravan of asylum seekers from Central America
Well, for some it's about recognizing the
I am a young American Jew who hasn't had to experience
quite the amount of pain that some of the older folks in the American Jewish
community have.
So as a young person,
and the future of other people who are being targeted by white nationalism.
Jews need to make, I think, a decision
I think we're at a crossroads in some ways about
how we're going to approach this. Are we going to reassert our place within a white society
and align ourselves with the state? Align ourselves with authority
Or are we going to see that