Arnold writes an excellent tour of a complicated, historical tapestry weaving together elements of classic liberalism, new liberalism, new progressivism, and the role of anti-Semitism. I'd put more emphasis on the last of these threads.
Anti-Semitism in the U.S. historically appeared at both political extremes but, I would submit, more on the extreme right. In addition to Father Coughlin in the 20th Century were Henry Ford (who was sympathetic to the German Nazi party) and Senator Joe McCarthy. The Holocaust sealed the deal for much of American Jewry. I'd also suggest that Jews who were "anti-anti-Communist" were not pro-Communist but much more for free speech and civil rights, upon which Joe McCarthy and the Hollywood blacklists trampled. The Viet Nam War, ironically started and expanded by Democrats (JFK, LBJ) but expanded yet more by Nixon, coinciding with the MLK civil rights movement deepened Jewish ties to the left.
It wasn't until after the 1960s that matters got more complicated and classic liberalism, 1960s liberalism, and classic progressivism (a' la Teddy Roosevelt) morphed into what we see today - illiberal progressivism. But many Jews and others clung to the old political labels even though the meanings changed. In 2026, "liberals" and "progressives" are neither liberal nor progressive.
That so many prominent Jewish intellectuals were, and are, anti-Christian atheists, including Rand and many pro-Communist Jews, is a factor that makes it easy for Christians to hate Jews. With the smarter than average Jews feeling more sophisticated by being anti- anti-atheist.
I’m pretty sure the % of out-of-wedlock births of Jews is much lower than other races or religions. Still most “liberal” folk oppose shaming the women, and men, who are promiscuous before & during marriage. Both Liberal & the Left are euphemisms for the Democratic Party, and the political power & influence of US Jews has come thru voting for Dems. Jews have long been big supporters of legal abortion, yet with among the lowest rates of having abortions.
That Jews oppose discrimination is good. Yet up thru the 70s the rates of inter-marriage between Jews & non-Jews was quite small. Y-chromosome analysis showed that some 90%+ of male Jews had an Abrahamic Y, showing thousands of years of successful avoidance of genetic Diversity/ purity. [The Jewish father: I have many goy friends. But I wouldn’t let my daughter marry one of them.] Most secular US Jews have hugely relaxed on this. I might have married my Jewish HS girlfriend* had we not moved away to different colleges. She married a non-Jewish district attorney (but we’ve long lost contact since my move to Slovakia). Tevye’s abandoned third daughter shows that ethic in Fiddler on the Roof.
Why do Jews, today, vote for Democrats? Successful anti-Republican campaigns, the Dem Demonization Strategy. Tell half-truths, and lies, about the target. Until many disparate folk can unite on hating that target. Nixon, Reagan, Bush; Palin (more than McCain), Romney, Trump, Kavanaugh.
Krauthammer mislabeled it as Bush Derangement Syndrome, but it’s actually Dems who are Deranged, because of their Demonization. Many Jewish intellectuals are among the best at demonizing the Rep leader, target. The wall of mud slung makes it easy for those who want to believe that the Rep guy is terrible, so that the Dem guy is a lesser evil.
Our esteemed AK host should more honestly ask himself why he failed to vote for Trump—those are all reasons other Jews can use to support their Dem tribe. My guess is that support for Trump is too uncool, among the sophisticated luxury belief Anywhere cosmopolitan elite that so many college grads wannabe part of.
My other favorite blogger thenewNeo, also Jewish with most family & friends hating Trump, is a firm Trump supporter without overlooking Trump’s too big mouth or other faults.
*My girlfriend & I met in an LA county scholarship competition in Jan ‘74 talking about Malthus & oil shock. 1 student per school. I was impressed by her. In June we found out she was second, I was third.
Apparently, Woodrow Wilson was a hero to many Jews of his era because he was quite friendly to them. (https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/woodrow-wilson-was-a-hero-to-jews ) One wonders if this friendliness may have had roots in WIlson's childhood growing up in Staunton, Virginia where the Temple House of Israel synagogue had been around since 1876. ( https://thoi.org/about-us/ ). Staunton is far from the only small city with a synagogue. (https://www.shiva.com/find-a-synagogue/virginia ) and even though the number of small town Jews in the United States has declined to only about 1 million, at one time it was not at all uncommon for there to be thriving Jewish communities outside major cities.
Growing up in Missouri, I spent a lot of time on my grandmother's farm where the closest synagogue was about 45 minutes away in Joplin. That may as well have been the moon. Needless to say the topic of Jews never arose. When my father started working in a factory on the south side of St. Louis, I may have been aware of there being synagogues in St. Louis, but it wouldn't have been until my teenage years that I ever ventured into University City, where the densest population of Jews was apparently in St. Louis, which, was not really an ethnic enclave as were so many other St. Louis neighborhoods (https://grokipedia.com/page/List_of_ethnic_enclaves_in_North_American_cities ) so needless to say Jews were never really a hot topic I thought of much at all. (https://grokipedia.com/page/history_of_the_jews_in_st_louis ). Ironically perhaps, the first Jew I ever got to know well was a small town Mid-Pennsylvania kid I was stationed with in Germany. Later I would get to know many Jews in the Washington DC area and my son had several Jewish friends with whom whose families we would frequently socialize and arrange adventures. I was somewhat taken aback by their attitudes towards rural Virginians and they would say things, like "No, we're Jews. those rednecks out in Winchester would kill us if we went to the drive in out there." I wondered where that came from. I also got the sense that many Jews seem to believe that non-Jews in general spend more time obsessing about Jews than might really be accurate, but then I never really had any basis to guess how much abuse non-Jews were directing their way. At any rate, I suspect that the increasing urbanization of the Jewish population in the United States might have something to do with their general political orientation.
The error is assuming that Jews are somehow ordained, by order of tribe or religion, to act in any way other than the rest of the population. Secular jews are usually left or moderate as they favor fairness and lack of harm as a guiding principle. Religious Jews skew right as their disposition for dogma and right-wing strongmen increases. The Mamdani cult are exactly that- group-think and Marxist ideology. There’s nothing unique about the Jews in this sense - a bell curve like everyone else.
We are, like any other people, often pushed further to the right as our security in Israel is threatened.
"The intellectual corruption of higher education is the heart of the matter. Jews played their part in that, and now they are feeling the consequences." Exactly.
"Educated people espouse the left-wing dogma. This makes it seem respectable to Jews, while making those who do not share the dogma seem uneducated."
Exactly. And Marjorie Garber, usually an astute analyst of Shakespeare's plays, just embarrassed herself by publishing a book--A Treacherous Secret Agent--that betrays that very attitude:
The thing that will save Jews, at least in the US, is that we don't do conversions. So unlike weird christian denominations our institutions reached peak woke and are receding. They are not captured completely, not zombies. They are now tacking away from the left as the left becomes increasingly hostile. The jews, who continue to identify as such will become more and more sober. You can't be jewish in left-spaces, we can't allow our children to continue to be discriminated against at colleges. The only thing left for jews, is the only thing that every mattered. Liberty and common sense. We should treat people the same, by law and custom. We should be critical of people telling us we are guilty or telling us we are absolved. We should look at evidence clearly and do what works. Jews need to lean into making the world better, just that better means richer, and that means capitalism and rule of law, and free speech, and spending money that aligns with our values. We need to reframe jewish values in a more let's do what works rather than what feels good in the moment direction, and since it works, it should feel good.
“So unlike weird christian denominations our institutions reached peak woke and are receding.”
Well, just as with the left overall, even as I agree we likely hit Peak Woke, it is far more likely than not that the recession from the peak is quite shallow.
And within academia and amongst Reconstructionist Jews, I’m unconvinced even that there will be any further pushback.
They might not be jews in a generation. Either they will give up Israel, and with it Judaism, or they will become less reconstructed. There is no other path. You either stay jewish and your kids daycare/sleep-away camp has armed guards, and you know who your friends are, or you start being something else. Do your jewish academics have kids, how many? Are they married to jews? These people either won't be jewish, or they are going to get radicalized by the rising antisemitism and bigotry. Fortunately the bigots will help us maintain group cohesion. If your name is jewish, or you look jewish, you will still face antisemitism. If you pass, you'll still face anti-white discrimination for jobs in elite circles. So I'm hopeful the right Jewish response, is let's treat people equally and not discriminate. It's our only option, and it has the virtue of being right on the merits.
Sadly the large majority of American Jews are not.
And while a few, mostly males - think Bill Ackman, Alan Dershowitz - have seen the light post October 8th, most prefer to bury their heads in the sand and tell themselves they are making the correct choice, because Orange Man Bad.
A heretic who promises his followers 'salvation' is bound to have more mass appeal than the God who requires Jews to observe his commandments and prohibits them from eating bacon, lobster and cheeseburgers. Paul and the Apostles (most of whom were also heretic Jews) knew what they were doing.
The other evening in a campground laundry room, always host to a motley collection of books, my travel companion found a copy of “Parting the Waters”, and read at it for an hour.
He said it was an interesting book just because MLK was so interesting. But he thought it was pretty funny how often the Communists were referenced, always with the word “alleged” attached, as if unwillingly. He looked at the index and “Communist, alleged” had like 163 entries.
I can't find it, but Charles Murray had some data on elite opinion in the 80s or 90s or whatever. He found that non-Jewish elites were split about 50/50 left/right, but Jewish elites were like 10/90 or something like that, and they made up a significant chunk of the elite.
I discussed some of these questions at https://1000yearview.substack.com/p/the-jewish-plot-to-make-america-great and came to the following conclusion: "In part, modern American Jews may disproportionately vote Democrat due to the unique strength of the liberal Reform movement and support for the separation of church and state (ie, fear of the Christian right). But most secular Jews hold their political positions for the same reasons as their non-Jewish neighbors (and, increasingly, spouses and children). They are urban, well-educated, and professional, and vote like non-Jews who fit the same profile." American Jews are simply more likely to fit the demographic profile of a Democrat voter, and so, accordingly, vote more for the Democrats.
That being said, other diaspora Jewish communities (including in Canada and Britain) are more likely to support their country's conservative party, while about a third of American Jews voted for Trump in the last election. Orthodox, Russian-speaking, and non-Ashkenazi Jews are also typically right-wing, so "Jews = left-wing" is an oversimplification. The secular, multigenerational, assimilated Ashkenazi Jew in New York City does not represent Jews writ large.
Father Coughlin was an early supporter of FDR who eventually split with him, attacking the president from the left - accusing him of being cozy with bankers. Apparently, he got labeled as right wing because of his antisemitism and opposition to FDR.
Peer pressure, the desire to belong, the misguided assumption that liberalism is the same as being a Leftie, and the abandonment of all moral arguments for Zionism as a fundamental right of the Jews have resulted in a pitiful attempt at all cost to appease those who in return despise and shun them.
I haven't read Gad Saad's latest book, so I wouldn't know whether he applies what he terms 'suicidal empathy' to leftwing Jews, but I can't help but wonder whether Saad (a Lebanese Jew) had Ashkenazi Jews in mind when he coined the term 'suicidal empathy.' My family, especially my mother, fits the stereotype so well captured by AK in his review of Sargon's book. My mother worshipped FDR, and had a mindlessly knee-jerk loathing for the GOP, especially Nixon. Also, she used to attend lectures and courses at a JCC in the SF bay area, and I gathered from what she said that the Jewish lefties who presided over these courses were pushing the idea of the Palestinians being the 'oppressed victims' of Israeli oppressors decades ago. Naturally, my mother bought into this narrative, because it came from 'trusted' Jewish institutions.
Finally, I agree with AK that Sargon's version of Jewish-American history is romanticized. Americans aren't particularly adept at identifying Jews unless the Jews in question have a stereotypically Jewish surname (like Goldstein), and I know from personal experience and that of other Jews who 'pass' as non-Jews that slurs against Jews were a feature of American life long before October 7.
There may partly be a social class conflict situation. The blue collar class has always much more willing to throw around ethnic slurs. They aim at everyone. It’s more descriptive than pejorative.
Your comment does not seem to violate any of my rules. So I don't know why it was censored. But my policy on his original comment is not to feed the trolls.
Sure they can. What's your definition of "Palestinian", anyway? Do you include the thugs who raped and murdered babies and grandmothers on Oct 7, and the Gazans who cheered them on as heroes? Surely they don't qualify as noble exemplars.
I wouldn't expect her book to be good. I recently heard her refer to "the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition," a term so stupid that I'll never respect her again.
They are all related, in fact, as described in the first few words of the Wikipedia article on Abrahamic religions:
"The Abrahamic religions are a set of monotheistic religions that respect or admire the religious figure Abraham as a patriarch and/or as a prophet, namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam ..."
Now if she'd thrown in Buddhism, you might have a point.
That all 3 are Abrahamic religions is of course beyond dispute.
That doesn’t make claims - at least in the last 600 years, and probably longer - that they have a shared “tradition” in the modern context correct or even reasonable.
Bud, it's a real simple contrast between the standard definition, of which Wikipedia is just one of many sites saying so, and your lonely assertion to the contrary. If you have to fall back on Brandolini for something so simple, you have abandoned the field and forfeited the debate.
As an outsider ... it's a mystery to me too. Unlike most bigotry, it's based on something invisible. Not immutable skin color or chosen and mutable religion, but on invisible ancestry. The best I've come up with is a history of sticking to their religion in the face of Egyptian slavery, Roman persecution for rejecting Roman gods, and Christian persecution for killing Christ.
The more they were persecuted, the more they stuck to their guns, and the more that led to other persecution, such as being relegated to handling money because it was too filthy for honest Christians, and then becoming lucrative targets for more persecution.
That same "money is filthy and only fit for the lowest of the low" attitude showed up in Japanese history too, and I bet in other societies. Middlemen have always seemed like parasites to producers and consumers who fantasize about farmer's markets and other direct transactions, no matter how inefficient once you get past farming villages.
But it's not a satisfying theory. All it does is push the cause back one level. It doesn't answer why they stuck to their religion more than others. All I can guess for that is that maybe a lot of other groups did stick to their religions and were massacred and lost to history, but the Jews were populous enough that they couldn't all be killed. That would increase the Jews' feeling like they were the chosen people, providing more reasons to stick to their religion, inflaming other people even more.
The ones who didn't stick to it converted and are no longer Jewish. Many survived and had kids--there are plenty of people who don't identify as Jewish and would never even think of doing so who have a few Jewish ancestors, as Paul Ryan found out.
How many Protestants were singled out for having Catholic grandparents, or vice versa? How many Jews insist that having a Jewish mother or grandmother means one is still Jewish, regardless of how they identify? That's part of what I mean about sticking to their religion more than Egyptians who accepted Roman gods.
I don't know the answers, but from reading lots of history, that kind of sticky religion (or culture, heritage, any word will do) seems more prevalent among Jews than other people. I have never heard anyone complain that third generation Japanese have betrayed Shintoism or Buddhism, or Chinese have betrayed Confucianism, or Indians have betrayed Hinduism.
Arnold writes an excellent tour of a complicated, historical tapestry weaving together elements of classic liberalism, new liberalism, new progressivism, and the role of anti-Semitism. I'd put more emphasis on the last of these threads.
Anti-Semitism in the U.S. historically appeared at both political extremes but, I would submit, more on the extreme right. In addition to Father Coughlin in the 20th Century were Henry Ford (who was sympathetic to the German Nazi party) and Senator Joe McCarthy. The Holocaust sealed the deal for much of American Jewry. I'd also suggest that Jews who were "anti-anti-Communist" were not pro-Communist but much more for free speech and civil rights, upon which Joe McCarthy and the Hollywood blacklists trampled. The Viet Nam War, ironically started and expanded by Democrats (JFK, LBJ) but expanded yet more by Nixon, coinciding with the MLK civil rights movement deepened Jewish ties to the left.
It wasn't until after the 1960s that matters got more complicated and classic liberalism, 1960s liberalism, and classic progressivism (a' la Teddy Roosevelt) morphed into what we see today - illiberal progressivism. But many Jews and others clung to the old political labels even though the meanings changed. In 2026, "liberals" and "progressives" are neither liberal nor progressive.
That so many prominent Jewish intellectuals were, and are, anti-Christian atheists, including Rand and many pro-Communist Jews, is a factor that makes it easy for Christians to hate Jews. With the smarter than average Jews feeling more sophisticated by being anti- anti-atheist.
I’m pretty sure the % of out-of-wedlock births of Jews is much lower than other races or religions. Still most “liberal” folk oppose shaming the women, and men, who are promiscuous before & during marriage. Both Liberal & the Left are euphemisms for the Democratic Party, and the political power & influence of US Jews has come thru voting for Dems. Jews have long been big supporters of legal abortion, yet with among the lowest rates of having abortions.
That Jews oppose discrimination is good. Yet up thru the 70s the rates of inter-marriage between Jews & non-Jews was quite small. Y-chromosome analysis showed that some 90%+ of male Jews had an Abrahamic Y, showing thousands of years of successful avoidance of genetic Diversity/ purity. [The Jewish father: I have many goy friends. But I wouldn’t let my daughter marry one of them.] Most secular US Jews have hugely relaxed on this. I might have married my Jewish HS girlfriend* had we not moved away to different colleges. She married a non-Jewish district attorney (but we’ve long lost contact since my move to Slovakia). Tevye’s abandoned third daughter shows that ethic in Fiddler on the Roof.
Why do Jews, today, vote for Democrats? Successful anti-Republican campaigns, the Dem Demonization Strategy. Tell half-truths, and lies, about the target. Until many disparate folk can unite on hating that target. Nixon, Reagan, Bush; Palin (more than McCain), Romney, Trump, Kavanaugh.
Krauthammer mislabeled it as Bush Derangement Syndrome, but it’s actually Dems who are Deranged, because of their Demonization. Many Jewish intellectuals are among the best at demonizing the Rep leader, target. The wall of mud slung makes it easy for those who want to believe that the Rep guy is terrible, so that the Dem guy is a lesser evil.
Our esteemed AK host should more honestly ask himself why he failed to vote for Trump—those are all reasons other Jews can use to support their Dem tribe. My guess is that support for Trump is too uncool, among the sophisticated luxury belief Anywhere cosmopolitan elite that so many college grads wannabe part of.
My other favorite blogger thenewNeo, also Jewish with most family & friends hating Trump, is a firm Trump supporter without overlooking Trump’s too big mouth or other faults.
*My girlfriend & I met in an LA county scholarship competition in Jan ‘74 talking about Malthus & oil shock. 1 student per school. I was impressed by her. In June we found out she was second, I was third.
Apparently, Woodrow Wilson was a hero to many Jews of his era because he was quite friendly to them. (https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/woodrow-wilson-was-a-hero-to-jews ) One wonders if this friendliness may have had roots in WIlson's childhood growing up in Staunton, Virginia where the Temple House of Israel synagogue had been around since 1876. ( https://thoi.org/about-us/ ). Staunton is far from the only small city with a synagogue. (https://www.shiva.com/find-a-synagogue/virginia ) and even though the number of small town Jews in the United States has declined to only about 1 million, at one time it was not at all uncommon for there to be thriving Jewish communities outside major cities.
Growing up in Missouri, I spent a lot of time on my grandmother's farm where the closest synagogue was about 45 minutes away in Joplin. That may as well have been the moon. Needless to say the topic of Jews never arose. When my father started working in a factory on the south side of St. Louis, I may have been aware of there being synagogues in St. Louis, but it wouldn't have been until my teenage years that I ever ventured into University City, where the densest population of Jews was apparently in St. Louis, which, was not really an ethnic enclave as were so many other St. Louis neighborhoods (https://grokipedia.com/page/List_of_ethnic_enclaves_in_North_American_cities ) so needless to say Jews were never really a hot topic I thought of much at all. (https://grokipedia.com/page/history_of_the_jews_in_st_louis ). Ironically perhaps, the first Jew I ever got to know well was a small town Mid-Pennsylvania kid I was stationed with in Germany. Later I would get to know many Jews in the Washington DC area and my son had several Jewish friends with whom whose families we would frequently socialize and arrange adventures. I was somewhat taken aback by their attitudes towards rural Virginians and they would say things, like "No, we're Jews. those rednecks out in Winchester would kill us if we went to the drive in out there." I wondered where that came from. I also got the sense that many Jews seem to believe that non-Jews in general spend more time obsessing about Jews than might really be accurate, but then I never really had any basis to guess how much abuse non-Jews were directing their way. At any rate, I suspect that the increasing urbanization of the Jewish population in the United States might have something to do with their general political orientation.
The error is assuming that Jews are somehow ordained, by order of tribe or religion, to act in any way other than the rest of the population. Secular jews are usually left or moderate as they favor fairness and lack of harm as a guiding principle. Religious Jews skew right as their disposition for dogma and right-wing strongmen increases. The Mamdani cult are exactly that- group-think and Marxist ideology. There’s nothing unique about the Jews in this sense - a bell curve like everyone else.
We are, like any other people, often pushed further to the right as our security in Israel is threatened.
It’s tangential but explains it: I wrote a political psychology piece in November 2020 predicting Trump's return, increasing polarization, and Tucker Carlson's 2028 positioning - Originally entitled, 'The Case for Compassion.' It aged well. https://thesocialdisinfluencer.substack.com/p/told-you-so-trump-is-back-and-carlson?r=az08k&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
"The intellectual corruption of higher education is the heart of the matter. Jews played their part in that, and now they are feeling the consequences." Exactly.
"Educated people espouse the left-wing dogma. This makes it seem respectable to Jews, while making those who do not share the dogma seem uneducated."
Exactly. And Marjorie Garber, usually an astute analyst of Shakespeare's plays, just embarrassed herself by publishing a book--A Treacherous Secret Agent--that betrays that very attitude:
https://www.amazon.com/Treacherous-Secret-Agent-Literature-During/dp/0300282826
The thing that will save Jews, at least in the US, is that we don't do conversions. So unlike weird christian denominations our institutions reached peak woke and are receding. They are not captured completely, not zombies. They are now tacking away from the left as the left becomes increasingly hostile. The jews, who continue to identify as such will become more and more sober. You can't be jewish in left-spaces, we can't allow our children to continue to be discriminated against at colleges. The only thing left for jews, is the only thing that every mattered. Liberty and common sense. We should treat people the same, by law and custom. We should be critical of people telling us we are guilty or telling us we are absolved. We should look at evidence clearly and do what works. Jews need to lean into making the world better, just that better means richer, and that means capitalism and rule of law, and free speech, and spending money that aligns with our values. We need to reframe jewish values in a more let's do what works rather than what feels good in the moment direction, and since it works, it should feel good.
“So unlike weird christian denominations our institutions reached peak woke and are receding.”
Well, just as with the left overall, even as I agree we likely hit Peak Woke, it is far more likely than not that the recession from the peak is quite shallow.
And within academia and amongst Reconstructionist Jews, I’m unconvinced even that there will be any further pushback.
They might not be jews in a generation. Either they will give up Israel, and with it Judaism, or they will become less reconstructed. There is no other path. You either stay jewish and your kids daycare/sleep-away camp has armed guards, and you know who your friends are, or you start being something else. Do your jewish academics have kids, how many? Are they married to jews? These people either won't be jewish, or they are going to get radicalized by the rising antisemitism and bigotry. Fortunately the bigots will help us maintain group cohesion. If your name is jewish, or you look jewish, you will still face antisemitism. If you pass, you'll still face anti-white discrimination for jobs in elite circles. So I'm hopeful the right Jewish response, is let's treat people equally and not discriminate. It's our only option, and it has the virtue of being right on the merits.
I am entirely on your side.
Sadly the large majority of American Jews are not.
And while a few, mostly males - think Bill Ackman, Alan Dershowitz - have seen the light post October 8th, most prefer to bury their heads in the sand and tell themselves they are making the correct choice, because Orange Man Bad.
Christians pray to a heretic prophet (Jesus Christ). How does the Jewish god compare?
A heretic who promises his followers 'salvation' is bound to have more mass appeal than the God who requires Jews to observe his commandments and prohibits them from eating bacon, lobster and cheeseburgers. Paul and the Apostles (most of whom were also heretic Jews) knew what they were doing.
The other evening in a campground laundry room, always host to a motley collection of books, my travel companion found a copy of “Parting the Waters”, and read at it for an hour.
He said it was an interesting book just because MLK was so interesting. But he thought it was pretty funny how often the Communists were referenced, always with the word “alleged” attached, as if unwillingly. He looked at the index and “Communist, alleged” had like 163 entries.
These things cannot be disentangled.
I can't find it, but Charles Murray had some data on elite opinion in the 80s or 90s or whatever. He found that non-Jewish elites were split about 50/50 left/right, but Jewish elites were like 10/90 or something like that, and they made up a significant chunk of the elite.
Would that it were so simple.
I discussed some of these questions at https://1000yearview.substack.com/p/the-jewish-plot-to-make-america-great and came to the following conclusion: "In part, modern American Jews may disproportionately vote Democrat due to the unique strength of the liberal Reform movement and support for the separation of church and state (ie, fear of the Christian right). But most secular Jews hold their political positions for the same reasons as their non-Jewish neighbors (and, increasingly, spouses and children). They are urban, well-educated, and professional, and vote like non-Jews who fit the same profile." American Jews are simply more likely to fit the demographic profile of a Democrat voter, and so, accordingly, vote more for the Democrats.
That being said, other diaspora Jewish communities (including in Canada and Britain) are more likely to support their country's conservative party, while about a third of American Jews voted for Trump in the last election. Orthodox, Russian-speaking, and non-Ashkenazi Jews are also typically right-wing, so "Jews = left-wing" is an oversimplification. The secular, multigenerational, assimilated Ashkenazi Jew in New York City does not represent Jews writ large.
Correct
"The secular, multigenerational, assimilated Ashkenazi Jew in New York City does not represent Jews writ large."
Sure, but they are what someone thinks of when you say "Jew" and he's got like 1000x more clout that some random orthodox in a hat.
Father Coughlin was an early supporter of FDR who eventually split with him, attacking the president from the left - accusing him of being cozy with bankers. Apparently, he got labeled as right wing because of his antisemitism and opposition to FDR.
Peer pressure, the desire to belong, the misguided assumption that liberalism is the same as being a Leftie, and the abandonment of all moral arguments for Zionism as a fundamental right of the Jews have resulted in a pitiful attempt at all cost to appease those who in return despise and shun them.
I haven't read Gad Saad's latest book, so I wouldn't know whether he applies what he terms 'suicidal empathy' to leftwing Jews, but I can't help but wonder whether Saad (a Lebanese Jew) had Ashkenazi Jews in mind when he coined the term 'suicidal empathy.' My family, especially my mother, fits the stereotype so well captured by AK in his review of Sargon's book. My mother worshipped FDR, and had a mindlessly knee-jerk loathing for the GOP, especially Nixon. Also, she used to attend lectures and courses at a JCC in the SF bay area, and I gathered from what she said that the Jewish lefties who presided over these courses were pushing the idea of the Palestinians being the 'oppressed victims' of Israeli oppressors decades ago. Naturally, my mother bought into this narrative, because it came from 'trusted' Jewish institutions.
Finally, I agree with AK that Sargon's version of Jewish-American history is romanticized. Americans aren't particularly adept at identifying Jews unless the Jews in question have a stereotypically Jewish surname (like Goldstein), and I know from personal experience and that of other Jews who 'pass' as non-Jews that slurs against Jews were a feature of American life long before October 7.
There may partly be a social class conflict situation. The blue collar class has always much more willing to throw around ethnic slurs. They aim at everyone. It’s more descriptive than pejorative.
"..and Israel ended up regarded as a settler colonial project"
& it isn't? Passive voice, much?
300,000 dead Palestinians can't be wrong.
And now the censorship has begun.
The woke Substack auto-censor hid my sarcastic reply to this woke message.
To see what I wrote, you’ll have to either scroll to the hidden comments at the very bottom, or click this link:
https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/jews-and-the-left/comment/277301015
But of course most people will not, and so the censorship is successful.
Your comment does not seem to violate any of my rules. So I don't know why it was censored. But my policy on his original comment is not to feed the trolls.
It was censored because Substack implemented auto-censoring about a week ago.
Josh Slocum explains it well:
https://substack.com/@andyg2/note/c-272913278
Your personal policy on said trolls is no doubt wiser than mine. But mine is more personally satisfying.
The population of Gaza is currently 2.1 million. If there's a genocide going on, the IDF is doing a really poor job.
Sure they can. What's your definition of "Palestinian", anyway? Do you include the thugs who raped and murdered babies and grandmothers on Oct 7, and the Gazans who cheered them on as heroes? Surely they don't qualify as noble exemplars.
I wouldn't expect her book to be good. I recently heard her refer to "the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition," a term so stupid that I'll never respect her again.
They are all related, in fact, as described in the first few words of the Wikipedia article on Abrahamic religions:
"The Abrahamic religions are a set of monotheistic religions that respect or admire the religious figure Abraham as a patriarch and/or as a prophet, namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam ..."
Now if she'd thrown in Buddhism, you might have a point.
That all 3 are Abrahamic religions is of course beyond dispute.
That doesn’t make claims - at least in the last 600 years, and probably longer - that they have a shared “tradition” in the modern context correct or even reasonable.
Any sufficient reply would have to operate under Brandolini's law, and I lack the time today.
Bud, it's a real simple contrast between the standard definition, of which Wikipedia is just one of many sites saying so, and your lonely assertion to the contrary. If you have to fall back on Brandolini for something so simple, you have abandoned the field and forfeited the debate.
As an outsider ... it's a mystery to me too. Unlike most bigotry, it's based on something invisible. Not immutable skin color or chosen and mutable religion, but on invisible ancestry. The best I've come up with is a history of sticking to their religion in the face of Egyptian slavery, Roman persecution for rejecting Roman gods, and Christian persecution for killing Christ.
The more they were persecuted, the more they stuck to their guns, and the more that led to other persecution, such as being relegated to handling money because it was too filthy for honest Christians, and then becoming lucrative targets for more persecution.
That same "money is filthy and only fit for the lowest of the low" attitude showed up in Japanese history too, and I bet in other societies. Middlemen have always seemed like parasites to producers and consumers who fantasize about farmer's markets and other direct transactions, no matter how inefficient once you get past farming villages.
But it's not a satisfying theory. All it does is push the cause back one level. It doesn't answer why they stuck to their religion more than others. All I can guess for that is that maybe a lot of other groups did stick to their religions and were massacred and lost to history, but the Jews were populous enough that they couldn't all be killed. That would increase the Jews' feeling like they were the chosen people, providing more reasons to stick to their religion, inflaming other people even more.
The ones who didn't stick to it converted and are no longer Jewish. Many survived and had kids--there are plenty of people who don't identify as Jewish and would never even think of doing so who have a few Jewish ancestors, as Paul Ryan found out.
How many Protestants were singled out for having Catholic grandparents, or vice versa? How many Jews insist that having a Jewish mother or grandmother means one is still Jewish, regardless of how they identify? That's part of what I mean about sticking to their religion more than Egyptians who accepted Roman gods.
I don't know the answers, but from reading lots of history, that kind of sticky religion (or culture, heritage, any word will do) seems more prevalent among Jews than other people. I have never heard anyone complain that third generation Japanese have betrayed Shintoism or Buddhism, or Chinese have betrayed Confucianism, or Indians have betrayed Hinduism.