The American far-right's desire to destroy Jews ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, April 02, 2025

The American far-right's desire to destroy Jews

America has never had the same level of antisemitism as Europe and the Middle East. For the most part, America has really been the "goldeneh medina" for Jews. However, like everywhere else, there has always been an undercurrent of antisemitism. In 1654, New Amsterdam (later New York) governor Peter Stuyvesant wrote to Dutch West India Company that Jews should not be allowed in the New World: “The deceitful race, — such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ, — be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony,” referring to Jews as a “repugnant race” and “usurers." Jews did not receive full rights in many states until the 19th century.

The original Ku Klux Klan, founded after the Civil War, was primarily fixated on was on suppressing Black political and social advancement, particularly in the South during Reconstruction. Their hatred was deeply rooted in white supremacy and the desire to maintain the racial and social hierarchy of the antebellum South. There were very few Jews in the South at the time and they were not the primary targets of the group.

Towards the end of the 19th century, massive amounts of European Jews came to take refuge in America. Stereotypes of Jews as shifty, dishonest cheaters were a constant theme in newspapers. Popular jokes of the day accused Jewish shopkeepers of engaging in insurance fraud like burning down their own businesses. Yet there was similar bigotry against all immigrants.

The KKK was relaunched in 1915. While it was still primarily a white supremacist group, this time it was also heavily influenced by nativism, Protestant fundamentalism, pseudo-scientific racial theories and the newly popular Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This KKK saw itself as promoting a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America, while Jews were seen as scheming internationalists undermining Christian values. A popular 1928 pro-KKK book by Alma Bridwell White, "Heroes of the Fiery Cross," includes accusations of the Jews wanting to dominate the world, of poor Protestant girls working for Jewish rapists in clothing factories and movie studios. A plan by the New York branch of the Klan in 1921 endeavored to force all Jews to leave the country: "The Jew patronizes only the Jew unless it is impossible to do so. Therefore, we, the only real Americans (Klansmen) must, by the same methods, protect ourselves and practice by actual application the teachings of klannishness. With the policy faithfully adhered to, it will not be long before the Jew will be forced out of business by our practice of his own business methods, for when the time comes when klansmen trade only with klansmen, then the days of the Jews success in business will be numbered and the invisible emplre can drive them from the shores of our own America.

Over time, the KKK as well as other white supremacists became more and more obsessed with Jews to the point that they now spend more time on antisemitic arguments than on racial issues. They feel that Jews' influence is the major factor endangering the white Christian America they want; their previous anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic focus have faded to the background. By the 1950s, neo-Nazi concepts became popular: George Lincoln Rockwell founded the American Nazi Party in 1959.

The Institute for Historical Review was a pseudo-scholarly organization created in 1978 that questioned the Holocaust in the name of historical research. Its leader, Willis Carto, was a well-known white supremacist in the 1950s but he pivoted to heading the IHR, which was linked to various hate groups and even hosted a leading Palestinian politician, Issa Nakhleh, in one of their conferences. The IHR even created an academic style journal to give its noxious lies credibility.

The IHR may have been the first far-Right group to recognize the power of the Internet. In the 1990s it spammed dozens of Usenet newsgroups (bulletin boards on many topics) with its claims that there were no gas chambers, Anne Frank's diary was a hoax, and Jews were not systematically killed. As people argued with them the IHR modified their arguments to avoid the most egregious lies and double down on the more obscure, difficult to debunk theories.

Since then, the Internet has become a major recruiting tool for the antisemites of the Right. Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer spreads his bile online in a snarky manner to be able to claim that he is only joking. The only thing that united the abhorrent "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville in 2017 was the speakers' antisemitism. Most recently, in the wake of the October 7 Gaza war, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories have been spreading among more mainstream "America First"-style influencers. White supremacists like David Duke have embraced the "anti-Zionist" narrative in their broadcasts and books.

More outspoken white supremacists are even more explicit in their desire to murder Jews. James Wickstrom, a Christian Identity minister, said he wants to see Jews beaten to death with chairs and "throw 'em in the wood chipper! And from the wood chipper let the remains go into a big incinerary [sic] truck, which is right behind the wood chipper, and give them the holocaust they rightly deserve!"

The heavy reliance on spreading hate online adds a disturbing dimension to modern antisemitism. Alt-Right groups like the ‘Goyim Defense League’ (using GoyimTV to livestream antisemitic content) and far-Left groups like ‘Within Our Lifetime’ (organizing protests via online flyers to shut down Grand Central Terminal) can coordinate remotely, often evading watchdogs like the SPLC and ADL. Literature and posters can be distributed electronically and printed on personal printers, and they share tactics to provoke Jews—such as GDL’s spreading of antisemitic literature on people's lawns or WOL’s ‘Long live the Intifada!’ chants—while avoiding prosecution under free speech laws.

The styles and the media and the arguments of the Right morph to whatever is most palatable to the target audience. There is little consistent ideology or positions among the American far-Right outside of simple hate of Jews - Jews are greedy capitalists and scheming communists, they are spreaders of immorality yet impose their own morality on others, a clannish people who don't integrate into America and clever schemers who infiltrate and control American institutions, atheistic and religious fanatics. The Holocaust never happened but the Jews deserved it.

The only consistency is that Jews are a mortal threat to their vision of a white, Christian America that must be ethnically cleansed and removed.

As we have seen, this is a common theme across all modern antisemites, no matter what their political preferences.