Follow the Bouncing Antisemite

There is a book I can’t stop thinking about: Buried by the Times: How the New York Times Failed to Report the Holocaust by Laurel Leff, Professor Emeritus of Journalism at Northeastern University. I found Laurel while researching a law review article for my friend, Truth on Trial: Media Malpractice in Israel/Gaza Coverage.

We’re not here to discuss the Holocaust, nor am I suggesting it’s happening again—yet.

But the fear is being stoked by radical Islamists, the comparisons are being made daily on social media, and the downright plethora of Jewish ignorami who are actively supporting the Democratic Socialists of America—a movement within the Democratic Party whose stated goal is to fundamentally transform American society in favor of democratic socialism—are enough to drive any well-meaning Jew into an alcoholic rage.

These DSA Jews are like the Hungarian Jews whose heads were in the sand until it was too late, circa 1944.

I guess they’re pogrom-horny.

SIDEBAR: We no longer live in the Golden Age of Jewish Life—the America I grew up in, where my Holocaust-survivor parents led me to believe they/we were safe here. Sad to say, I am grateful they are not here to bear witness again to the vile human nature we see pouring into our streets, where swastikas and keffiyehs are stinking up the landscape.

Which brings me to the title: “Follow the Bouncing Antisemite,” as I lay out what I believe are the dots to follow that led us to this moment.

1942: The Jewish-Owned NY Times & the Holocaust

Laurel’s book is disturbing not because the “paper of record” ignored the Holocaust—it didn’t. The question is what it did with what it knew: what made the front page, what was buried, and how language shaped public understanding. A newspaper doesn’t have to suppress a story to bury it; it can bury it simply by how it tells the story. The Times becomes an unreliable court stenographer—recording the proceedings while selectively deciding which testimony gets pages, which gets paragraphs, and ultimately helping shape the verdict.

2010: Citizens United

When the Supreme Court handed down Citizens United, it marked a critical turning point in American democracy—we suffered what I consider a mortal wound. Money became speech, and corporations gained greater ability to spend independently in political campaigns.

It gave the far left a grievance to cling to, while making it dangerously easy to villainize Jews for having money and influence.

Our political discourse will never be the same.

Toothpaste—tube.

2015: The Bernie Bros Phenomenon

Bernie Sanders, the self-hating, occasional Jew, didn’t birth the progressive movement, but his presidential campaign injected—and infected—a radical ideology and new vocabulary into the political mainstream, redefining debates on capitalism, inequality, Israel, the oligarchy, and American power.

The crucial media question isn’t whether his rhetoric went too far, but what happens when fringe ideas move to the center.

2017: Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville

White nationalists marching with tiki torches screaming, “Jews will not replace us.”

Here, antisemitism was unmistakable. It was ugly.

And yet that raised another question: Why did antisemitism seem so much easier to recognize when it came from the political right than when it appeared somewhere else?

2017–2019: The Fall of the Women’s March

The 2017 Women’s March was one of the most brilliant political experiences I had ever witnessed—a moment when hope rang eternal and millions demanded to be heard.

But by 2018, the movement had fractured. The refusal of leaders Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory to distance themselves from Louis Farrakhan exposed a deep-seated antisemitism that split the organization and ultimately contributed to the leadership changes that followed in 2019.

In hindsight, it served as a stark warning: What happens when a movement decides that protecting one group requires excluding another?

2018: Pittsburgh Massacre

Eleven Jews were murdered while attending services at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh—the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history.

There was no ambiguity, no euphemism, no complicated political theory required.

Just dead Jews.

And yet, in the pre-social-media-as-we-know-it era, the story seemed to go out with a whimper.

2022: Kanye West

Antisemitism moved from the political fringe into mainstream celebrity culture when Kanye West used his enormous platform to make a series of explicit antisemitic statements, songs, and merchandise.

An old hatred suddenly had a massive new megaphone.

October 7, 2023: The Attack

Hamas attacked Israel, and what had been simmering beneath the surface suddenly exploded into the open.

October 8, 2023: The Jewish/Zionist Awakening

For many Jews, the day after October 7 was a day of reckoning. The question was no longer simply what had happened in Israel; it was who stood with Jews when the unthinkable happened, and who didn’t.

Antisemitism that had been metastasizing across celebrity culture, social media, the far right, and the progressive left suddenly exploded. The political and media response exposed the very architecture Laurel Leff warned about in Buried by the Times: who gets believed, who gets questioned, and which facts are reduced to footnotes.

“Zionist” became the new N-word, and the world was sent hurling out of control—and unfortunately, not out in space.

Fact: Until we learn to fight back, things will continue to disintegrate for us.

2024: Kamala the Loser

Yes, another woman, seemingly poised to trounce Donald Trump, gets spanked and tossed into the political toilet.

I firmly attribute her staggering $1.5 billion campaign loss, at least in part, to the vindictive, antisemitic, pro-Palestine propagandists and lunatics who helped make the Democratic Party increasingly toxic to Jewish voters.

2026: DSA, Mamdani and the Foreshadowing of Horror

The Democratic Socialists of America have moved further from the protest margins toward electoral power, with Zohran Mamdani giving the movement a national face. What once seemed fringe is now entering the political mainstream.

The recent primary wins by people who’d sooner see us Jews thrown on cattle cars have made me think more and more about Laurel’s book.

Here in LA, we have several DSA candidates running in Los Angeles County, which, if elected, will bring this already-failing city to its knees.

It’s “vote for the devil you know” this election cycle.

My takeaway from watching how shamefully the media mishandled the truth in the 1940s—and how egregiously, especially the legacy media, it is mishandling it today—is why I have said for years:

“The media is not our friend—just the opposite.”

Its desperation for clicks and views has turned tried-and-true journalists into “political influencers”—a title none of them can be proud of.

“Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” I guess.