The Vanishing Middle: How Jews Are Being Squeezed from Left, Right, and Center ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, November 05, 2025

The Vanishing Middle: How Jews Are Being Squeezed from Left, Right, and Center

For most of modern history, Jews could find shelter in at least one ideological home. When the Right turned against them, the liberal Left offered refuge. When the Left radicalized, conservatives defended Israel as a moral cause. Even amid hostility, there was usually a countercurrent of empathy somewhere—a political camp that saw antisemitism as civilizational decay.

That equilibrium has broken.

Antisemitism now thrives simultaneously on the Left, the Right, and, most disturbingly, in the exhausted center. It no longer needs ideology; it functions as a universal solvent, binding otherwise incompatible movements and manipulating moderates through fear and shame. Each faction rationalizes its version differently, yet all converge on the same outcome: Jews are once again isolated, and defending them has become a thankless act across the political spectrum.

The modern Left built its moral identity on solidarity with the oppressed. But in a political culture obsessed with oppressor–oppressed binaries, complexity is betrayal. Israel’s success as a democratic, self-defending Jewish state violates the purity test.

For the activist Left, the answer is to recast Jews as oppressors. For the moderate Left, the temptation is to avoid conflict in the name of unity. “Yes, globalizing the Intifada sounds extreme,” they say, “but they come from righteous anger.” Confronting antisemitism would fracture the coalition, so it is rationalized away.

This dynamic gives the extremists power far beyond their numbers. They set the moral tone; the moderates absorb it. In the name of keeping the Big Tent intact, progressives surrender control of the conversation to their most radical members. The antisemites set the agenda for the entire movement. And every time they do, the boundaries shift further leftward.

Opposing antisemitism becomes a mark of disloyalty—a signal that one is “not truly progressive.” The result is ideological capture: a movement once grounded in empathy now treats Jewish self-defense as heresy.

On the populist or nationalist far-Right, antisemitism satisfies a different need. Conspiracy offers coherence amid cultural upheaval. Jews become symbols of global manipulation, moral decay, or elite cosmopolitanism—everything that threatens the imagined purity of the nation.

Here too, the extremists drive the conversation. Their numbers are small, but their passion—and their willingness to police purity—give them disproportionate influence. Many moderate conservatives, fearful of dividing their base, learn the same survival instinct as the Left: don’t challenge your own radicals. We saw this only this week with the Heritage Foundation defending platforming neo-Nazi antisemites with the excuse that the Left is a worse enemy.

Thus antisemitism becomes not just tolerated, but useful. It serves as an identity signal: who is “with us” and who is “with them.” To denounce it is to side with the media, academia, or “global elites”—all enemies in the populist imagination.

Like their counterparts on the Left, the moderate Right has been captured by the logic of fear. They justify silence as pragmatism, but every silence moves the Overton window closer to the abyss.

What we haven't been discussing is the Center.

If the Left moralizes antisemitism and the Right mythologizes it, the center normalizes it through paralysis. Centrist antisemitism isn’t driven by hate, but by terror of being seen as partisan.

In a polarized world, defending Jews has been redefined as taking sides. Condemn Leftist antisemitism and you’re branded a right-wing Zionist. Condemn far-Right antisemitism and you’re demonized as an enemy power-hungry globalist.

Both poles exploit this dynamic deliberately. Antisemitism becomes a bipartisan trap—a loyalty test that drags the center toward silence. Each side accuses defenders of Jews of being agents of the other. And so the most ethical act—standing up for truth and decency—becomes politically suicidal in each camp.

But it is worse than that. Otherwise principled centrists are exhausted by the battles that they want to fight. The battle against antisemitism is not considered as important as the others, and they don't want to waste political capital on it. And, latent antisemitism prompts them to think that the Jews are powerful and can defend themselves - they don't need the Centrists to defend them, better to use limited outrage at things that they think are truly outrageous.

The result is a moral vacuum filled by noise. The extremists dominate the conversation, moderates retreat, and the algorithms reward the screamers. It isn’t a steady process - it is logarithmic. Each cycle of cowardice makes the next outburst of hatred louder and more normalized.

Across the spectrum, antisemitism now functions as a moral tollbooth: you can oppose it only by paying a reputational price. To speak out is to invite accusations of betrayal—from your allies, not your enemies.

This inversion is new. In earlier eras, antisemitism discredited the extremist; today, it defending Jews discredits the moderate. The reward structure has reversed: the less you say, the safer you are.

That is why the worst may not be behind us but ahead. As extremists continue to set the agenda, polarization deepens, institutions bend to intimidation, and moral fatigue becomes apathy. The slope steepens with every news cycle.

We are no longer watching a slow march of antisemitism. We are living through its acceleration phase. The catastrophe is much closer than we realize.

Antisemitism was once the measure of a society’s sanity. Now it is the glue of its madness, and in fact has become a political force on its own that transcends the slogans and pseudo-principles that each side spouts. It is a useful tool not only against Jews but a weapon against anyone who opposes antisemitism.

The Left wields it to prove anti-imperialist authenticity. The Right brandishes it to prove nationalist loyalty. The Center treats it as something to be strategically ignored, not a danger to be confronted.

The Jews, as ever, are the first to feel the tremors—but not the last to be buried by the coming earthquake.