Washington (CNN) Earlier this week, Bernie Sanders wrote an article for the magazine Jewish Currents under the headline "How to Fight Antisemitism." It is, in a word, powerful -- not only because it movingly melds the personal with the political as it charts the scourge of antisemitic violence, but also because it lays bare the subtler workings of oppression.

"I am a proud Jewish American. My father emigrated from Poland to the United States in 1921 at the age of 17 to escape the poverty and widespread antisemitism of his home country," Sanders writes. "Those in his family who remained in Poland after Hitler came to power were murdered by the Nazis. I know very well where white supremacist politics leads, and what can happen when people do not speak up against it."

As with much of the Vermont senator's rhetoric, "How to Fight Antisemitism" is stirring in part because of its unsparing language: murderer, twisted, nefarious, vicious, hate. Via prose that's pointed rather than soft -- shorn of politesse that can be misleading in its fuzziness -- Sanders confronts bigotry with an ethic that tends to elude the political moment: honesty.

But the article is perhaps more notable for something else: its nuanced grappling with America's antagonisms and how one form of hatred finds easy accomplices in other forms.

"We have to be clear that while antisemitism is a threat to Jews everywhere, it is also a threat to democratic governance itself. The antisemites who marched in Charlottesville don't just hate Jews," Sanders writes, referring to the 2017 rally where Heather Heyer was killed. "They hate the idea of multiracial democracy. They hate the idea of political equality. They hate immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ people, women, and anyone else who stands in the way of a whites-only America. They accuse Jews of coordinating a massive attack on white people worldwide, using people of color and other marginalized groups to do their dirty work."