On Saturday, shortly after 10 a.m. on the West Coast, someone purporting to be John Earnest posted an anti-Semitic manifesto on the website 8chan, which defines itself as “the Darkest Reaches of the Internet.” In the six-page screed, the author celebrated Adolph Hitler and Robert Bowers, who murdered eleven people at the Tree of Life synagogue in October, and wrote that “Every Jew is responsible for the meticulously planned genocide of the European race.” Less than an hour and a half later, police say, a 19-year-old by the name of John Earnest entered the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in a San Diego suburb and murdered one woman while injuring three others, including Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein.

If, as suspected, the author and shooter were one and the same, the San Diego shooting is just the latest evidence that the singular source of violent anti-Semitism in North America is right-wing white supremacism. But the Republicans are loath to acknowledge as much. Instead, they have spent the past several months opportunistically attacking Democrats who criticize Israel. They’re doing this not only to distract from the GOP’s complicity in the rise of racist attacks, but to win over a key group of swing-state voters in the next election.



The American Jewish community has been embroiled in a debate—one fueled in no small part by cynical Republicans—over whether the Democratic Party is insufficiently opposed to anti-Semitism. The attention has focused on two new, outspoken Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives: Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar and Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib. Both politicians have made intemperate remarks about American Jewish support for the state of Israel, for which they have largely apologized. But it would be naïve to believe that Republicans have accused them of anti-Semitism simply out of concern for bigotry.

Omar, who is Muslim, and Tlaib, a Palestinian-American, are supporters of the BDS movement, which advocates boycotts, divestment, and sanctions to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud government to address the rights of Palestinians in territory occupied by Israel since 1967. The Anti-Defamation League, along with some other Jewish groups in the U.S., charge that the BDS movement effectively “rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state” and “is the most prominent effort to undermine Israel’s existence.” Many Republicans agree, pushing legislation to hobble the movement.

And yet, for all their apparent concern for the Jewish people, Republicans largely are mute on the question of how to stem rising anti-Semitic violence in America. After the shooting in San Diego, President Donald Trump offered only a pro forma expression of sympathy: “Our entire nation mourns the loss of life, prays for the wounded and stands in solidarity with the Jewish community. We forcefully condemn the evil of anti-Semitism and hate which must be defeated.” Weeks earlier, after the New Zealand mosque massacre, Trump was asked whether he sees white nationalism as a rising threat in the world. “I don’t really,” he said. “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.”