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Raffael Singer

Diaspora Jews must be liberals…

Donald Trump at the New Hampshire Town Hall at Pinkerton Academy, August 19th, 2015 (Michael Vadon / CC BY-SA 2.0)

… and other reasons not to support Donald Trump.

Whichever country we are living in, diaspora Jews are a small minority constituency. That means freedom of expression, freedom of religion, rule of law and equal rights for minorities are quintessential for a thriving Jewish community. Together with an elected government these are the defining characteristics of a liberal democracy (although the latter arguably is a necessary consequence of freedom of expression since no autocracy can long survive public criticism and political opposition).

Sure enough Jews, still to this day everyone’s favourite scapegoat, have historically not fared well in authoritarian regimes be they imperial, communist or fascist. And yet in this drawn-out moment of crisis the illiberal populist right enjoys an unprecedented level of Jewish support, largely due to the right’s defence of Israel. But make no mistake: this is not an expression of appreciation for Israel as an ally or the enrichment Jews bring to their communities so much as it is an expression of anti-left and anti-Muslim sentiment. War in the Middle East is a wedge issue, something over which to attack the political opponent just like the left used to relentlessly prosecute right-wing antisemitism only to merrily abandon Jewish friends at the first opportune moment.

And yet, according to the latest polls Donald Trump enjoys overwhelming favourability among Israelis to become the next president of the United States. He shouldn’t.

Donald Trump is an autocrat in the making. To know this, we need not rely on practically every former Trump administration employee calling him a fascist – including his former Chief of Staff John Kelly, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, two former Defense Secretaries (James Mattis and Mark Esper), and former Vice President Mike Pence. Nor do we need to rely on his current running mate JD Vance who compared Trump to Hitler in 2016 before he decided he wanted a career in Republican politics after all and began courting Trump’s endorsement. Nor do we even need to rely on Trump himself who says he wants to be a dictator “on day one”.

We may simply look at his actions: calling the free press “the enemy of the people”, purging the Republican Party of internal opposition, attacking the judiciary when they rule against him, attacking Congress (including members of his own party) when it does not do his bidding, refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, refusing to this day to acknowledge the legitimate outcome of the 2020 election, and finally attempting to steal the election by lying about voter fraud, dispatching fraudulent slates of electors and inciting a violent protest to pressure the Vice President to delay the certification of the vote.

All of these are textbook autocrat moves. Were it not for Republicans like Pence who refused to break the law for Trump, the US democracy might have fallen already. But there is no guarantee the guardrails will hold in a second term, particularly since Trump in the past 4 years worked tirelessly to populate Republican ranks with loyalists. Vance has repeatedly announced that unlike Pence he would have refused to certify the 2020 election.

Trump, of course, is no Hitler in his antisemitism or vision for the world. If anything good can be said about his personality, it is that he is too narcissistic to be ideological. Trump will likely never build concentration camps or endeavour to entirely eradicate any ethnic groups.

On the other hand, this narcissism also implies there are no ideological red lines and political influence is bestowed on whomever he gets along with best, meaning whoever most skilfully strokes his ego. That is why he never disavowed the white supremacist elements of the extreme right nor antisemitic conspiracy theorists like Republican rising star Marjorie Taylor Greene. He has no issues having dinner with virulent antisemites like Kanye West and Nick Fuentes. At the Republican National Convention Tucker Carlson sat practically next to Donald Trump. Carlson is one of the most influential right-wing pundits and has made headlines in recent years for becoming a pro-Russian propagandist and platforming yet more antisemitic right-wing figures like Candace Owens and Darryl Cooper.

Trump has no strong Jewish voter base and therefore no counterweight to a potential antisemitic drift. Thus, his entire claim to championship of the Jewish cause is based on his pro-Israel record.

True, on the surface Trump looks like an unwavering supporter of Israel. In 2017 he moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in 2018 he pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, in 2019 he recognised the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, in 2020 Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani and oversaw normalisation agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that marked the initiation of the Abraham Accords.

But none of these actions demonstrate a principled attachment to Israeli interests. The moving of the embassy was a campaign promise in 2016 to Trump’s Evangelical voter base. Recognising the Golan Heights came as reassurance after his announcement to withdraw US troops from Syria. The Abraham Accords began as an Arab initiative, partly to avert Israeli annexation of West Bank territory and partly out of shared enmity towards Iran, which presumably would have been supported by any US president. Pulling out of the nuclear deal and the assassination of Soleimani were part of Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran, which was welcomed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE at least as much as by Israel.

The only currency with Trump is ingratiation through business ties or flattery and there is no reason why Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should be unable in principle to play this game. His geopolitical allies Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un have already lulled Trump into admiration. And while unlikely to result in a 180-degree turnaround in foreign policy towards Iran or Israel in the near future, I hesitate to imagine what might happen should Israeli and Saudi regional interests come to diverge.

Trump has a track record of swiftly abandoning US allies. He abandoned Kurdish allies in Syria in 2019, he abandoned Afghan allies in 2020 when he signed the Doha Accord with the Taliban without even involving the Kabul government in negotiations, and he has made it very clear that one of his primary foreign policy goals would be to quickly end the war in Ukraine – presumably by abandoning Ukrainian allies. Even a Russian attack on NATO member states may not be off-limits under a Trump presidency.

With the choice of Vance as his running mate and prominent placement of Tucker Carlson at Republican campaign events, Trump has fully endorsed the isolationist wing of the Republican Party. Vance has already signalled that US and Israeli interests will not always align and all but said that a Trump administration would not support Israel militarily in a war against Iran.

Trump is not a reliable ally and certainly no bulwark against antisemitism. Despite lacklustre support for Israel, antisemitic incidents in the US as recorded by the Anti-Defamation League were declining under Barack Obama. This trend reversed sharply right around the time Trump began conquering the political scene in 2016. This does not mean he alone is to blame, there are many contributing factors not least events in the Middle East and the rise of increasingly radical ideologies on both ends of the political spectrum.

But insofar as antisemitism is a symptom of a polarised and ailing society as well as liberalism on the retreat, Trump impersonates this decay like no other politician in the past decade.

About the Author
Raffael Singer is an Austrian financial risk consultant and economic researcher at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. He holds a master's degree in Mathematics & Philosophy from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Mathematics from Imperial College London.
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