I have been asked many times over the past few years why I have focused so often on the rise of antisemitism in my commentary, especially since this has increasingly become an unpopular topic on the Right. There are several answers to this question–a full answer would fill a medium-sized book–but one is a matter of historical memory. I believe that what we are seeing right now is the resurgence of one of Western civilization’s oldest and deadliest sins, and I believe it is a moral imperative for conservatives and Christians to speak out against it.
The rise of antisemitism comes at a time when conservatives have become allergic to demands that they “speak out” on behalf of this or that cause. Compulsory solidarity (Pride Month, Black Lives Matter) and calls for the denunciation of heterodox figures have been used as a bludgeon for so long that conservatives now rightly treat them as suspect. Many have also become suspicious of any accusations of prejudice; critical race theory and BLM, which collapsed in cloud of scandal, have created a “boy cries wolf” moment.
When Jewish people point out what is happening and what they are experiencing, many now automatically file it under the “critical race theory” category and move on. Identifying hateful tropes sounds too much like “microaggressions”; pointing to the growing fears of Jewish communities sounds too much like “lived experience”; the context of historic antisemitism sounds too much like an accusation of collective guilt.
Too many people have been told for too long that they are racist; warnings about deadly prejudice have lost their power. In fact, something like the opposite has taken hold. When someone is called a racist or a Nazi, many reflexively assume that person is perhaps more worth listening to. Thus the rise of antisemitism over the past several years has gone ignored by many conservatives, with figures as prominent as JD Vance cluelessly insisting that it is merely criticism of Israel rather than antisemitism that is on the rise.
But it is. What would Christians say if their schools and churches needed constant surveillance by men with guns, or if their institutions and places of worship were considered likely targets as a matter of course? Here, in the West, in the 21st century? That is a daily reality for Jewish people. They live under siege, and if they go online and peruse X or other platforms, they see a torrent of propaganda that Julius Streicher would have been proud to publish in Der Sturmer. Is some of this rhetoric iconoclastic posturing? Undoubtedly. But the thing about iconoclasm is that it begins with chants, becomes a mob, and suddenly glass is breaking before anybody knows how it got so bad.
Especially now, I believe it is important to stand with the Jewish people and to show solidarity with them in their suffering. I say we are seeing a resurgence of antisemitism because we have seen this before, and too few remember, or care to remember. And I say that because the resurgence we are seeing is not merely a matter of digital edgelords attempting to shock their elders with ugly words, but of real violence that I pray is not a harbinger of worse things to come. Those who know history have reason to fear.
Ignorance of history is one of the defining characteristics of the digital age. Many people are now trapped in the eternal present of the infinite scroll. Without a base of historical knowledge to draw from, people become an easy mark for ignorant influencers forking brain rot into empty skulls, triggering dopamine flickers with Holocaust revisionism, medieval blood libel, overt Nazi propaganda (Candace Owens recently plugged a book from a Nazi publisher that was a favorite of Julius Streicher, the antisemitic propagandist executed at Nuremburg), and wild, conspiratorial conjecture.
A population ignorant of history (Owens is but one prime example) is fertile ground for one of the oldest recurring hatreds in Western civilization. Jew-hatred has a long and bloody track record. This is not just about World War II and the Holocaust, although it has always struck me as wild that while the Holocaust is still in living memory, Jewish people are expected to “get over” the attempted annihilation of their people (and, often, the nearly successful obliteration of their personal family trees). Would you? Would I? I think not. Of the six million murdered, Yad Vashem has thus far recovered the names of five million.
Jewish people have been scapegoated for centuries. Their “otherness” as a distinct people has made them a convenient target for failing regimes, struggling leaders, and hatemongers alike. In the mind of the antisemite, of course, this very history (if they are aware of it) is evidence that antisemitism is valid. Why would we hate them, they ask, if there was not something to hate? Where there is smoke, there must be fire! As one writer noted recently, antisemitism is a shapeshifter. The Jews have been hated for being too poor, and for being too rich; for being too religious, and too secular; for being stateless, and for having a state. Antisemitism is a spiritual sickness.
The Holocaust, in all its scale and horror, is the best evidence of this because it was antisemitism in its purest form. The road to the death camps was paved with propaganda about predatory bankers and revolutionaries and fifth columns, but all distinctions ended in the gas chambers. Religious Jews and nonreligious Jews; Jews who worshipped at synagogues, and Jews who converted to Christianity; Jews who clung to their ancient identity, and Jews who saw themselves as fully German—all were murdered because they were Jews, and nothing more. 100,000 German Jews served in World War I, 80% of them on the front lines. Not even that display of ultimate patriotism spared them.
We are seeing a revival of many antisemitic tropes, and many of them are being fused with social conservatism, making them far more dangerous to Christian audiences. There is the debunked trope that Jewish people run the porn industry in order to destroy Christian civilization (even Ben Shapiro has been accused of this, despite being one of the most prominent public opponents of pornography and having authored a book titled The Porn Generation). There is the myth of “Judeo-Bolshevism”—the idea that the Bolshevik revolution was perpetrated primarily by Jews against Christian civilization. Those interested in the pervasiveness and perniciousness of these theories would do well to read Norman Cohn’s classic 1966 essay in Commentary magazine.
A knowledge of history should prime us to see warning signs of this malevolent evil, which can lie dormant but is never dead, stirring once again. Consider:
Gunshots have been fired at a Jewish girls’ school in Canada multiple times, and many Jewish Canadians are leaving the country as a wave of antisemitism continues to escalate. Many Jewish people have taken to disguising their identity in public to avoid being targeted for harassment and violence.
In the Netherlands, public antisemitism—insults, threats, and intimidation—increased by 45% in 2024, with vandalism against Jewish targets spiking by 44%, including the defacement of Jewish cemeteries. In November 2024, Israeli soccer fans were brutally assaulted in what DeTelegraafreferred to as a pre-planned attack referred to on one chat as a “Jew hunt.”
In April 2024 in Gennevilliers, France, a young Jewish woman was kidnapped and raped by a man who said he did it to “avenge Palestine.” In June, in Paris, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was gang-raped and abused while her attackers called her a “dirty Jew” and condemned Israel. There were at least 1,570 incidents of antisemitic acts that year, 10% of which included acts of violence. Two synagogues were also torched.
The UK has averaged 250 to 300 incidents a month since 2023. The Community Security Trust recorded hundreds of physical assaults, swastikas painted on Jewish buildings, the vandalization of the Wiener Holocaust Library, death and rape threats to the family of a Jewish chaplain at the University of Leeds, and an attack on a Manchester synagogue in October that resulted in two dead and several wounded.
There have also been high-profile killings. The brutal murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim in Washington, D.C. last May—Sarah was shot to death as she tried to crawl away from the terrorist. Fifteen people were gunned down at a Jewish festival on Australia’s Bondi Beach in December; mere days after the October 7 attacks, cries of “gas the Jews” were chanted in front of the Sydney Opera House. A 69-year-old Jewish man was killed in California after being struck in the head by a pro-Palestinian protestor.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Antisemitic speech—including explicit references celebrating the Holocaust—has become normative. For years, this has been happening in areas where Islamist immigration has been on the rise. Now, we are seeing a coalition metastasizing between leftists who have longed loathed Israel as a “colonial state” (and celebrated the orgy of murder on October 7 before Israel had even responded) and Online Right influencers who are performing CPR on ancient hatreds. Many of the largest podcasters on the Right now routinely platform Nazi sympathizers.
I say all of that to say this: There is an imperative to speak up and show solidarity before it gets worse, and while it still matters. Our population is losing its historical memory, but the Jewish people cannot afford to lose theirs. When they tell us what is happening, we should listen. The least I can do now (and I fully understand how pitifully small a contribution it is), as I see this happening around me, is to tell the truth. The least I can do is call out the figures on “my side” (they are not) and highlight the wickedness of what they are doing, and their historical and spiritual ancestors. The least I can do is to say that I stand with the Jewish people.
