Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer argued in his new e-book that the Jan. 6 riot on the Capitol Constructing is a main instance of the “hazard of proper‑wing antisemitism” – extra so than lethal shootings focusing on Jewish synagogues.
“For our complete lives, American Jews of my era have identified that if somebody was going to stroll into our properties or synagogues with a gun, it was extra more likely to be somebody from the far proper,” Schumer (D-NY) wrote in his e-book “Antisemitism in America: A Warning” which hit bookshelves Tuesday and was obtained by The Publish.
Schumer, 74, pointed to the 2018 mass taking pictures on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh – the deadliest assault on the Jewish neighborhood in US historical past, which killed 11 individuals – and the 2019 Chabad of Poway taking pictures in San Diego, which left one individual useless, as examples of the “real-world influence” of “the far proper connecting Jews to malicious plots.”
However the senator, who’s Jewish, defined that these assaults didn’t open his eyes to antisemitism as a lot because the storming of the Capitol by supporters of President Trump.
“The occasion, nonetheless, that almost all opened my eyes to the hazard of right-wing antisemitism and shook my soul was one which I lived by myself: January 6, 2021,” Schumer wrote, including that he doesn’t suppose the president himself shares the views of the antisemites.
The senator recalled how he was trying ahead to certifying former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win and turning into the highest-ranking elected Jewish official in US historical past, after two Democratic wins in Georgia Senate races the night time earlier than, when he felt a “a yank across the neck” from a police officer that he described as “jarring.”
As he was being whisked away to security by Capitol Law enforcement officials, Schumer recounted seeing “a mob of individuals in entrance of us, lower than thirty ft away” within the Capitol’s central hall.
“There’s the massive Jew. Let’s get him,” Schumer claims he heard one of many rioters shout.
The alleged incident was considered one of “a number of” situations of antisemitism displayed on Jan. 6, 2021, Schumer stated.
These exhibits of hate – together with stories of rioters making Nazi salutes, holding flags with swastikas and sporting clothes with antisemitic messages – function a “reminder that whereas the principle driver of the riots wasn’t antisemitism, it at all times appears to journey in excessive proper‑wing circles,” Schumer argued.
“I believed instantly of these twenty‑two thousand American Nazis at Madison Sq. Backyard,” the senator wrote, after seeing {a photograph} of a rioter in a “Camp Auschwitz” sweater. “In the event that they have been alive in the present day, I knew they’d be the type of individuals to storm the Capitol.”
“For me and for a lot of others, January 6 was a searing reminder of the results of political extremism, of what occurs when conspiracy theories, ultranationalism, and bigotry are allowed to flourish and given a route and a goal,” he continued.
“[T]he identical forces that impressed the rioters on January 6 are those that gas antisemitism.”
Regardless of this view, Schumer doesn’t imagine Trump, 78, is antisemitic.
“Let me state unequivocally: I don’t imagine Donald Trump is an antisemite,” the New York Democrat wrote. “However he all too continuously has created the sensation of secure harbor for much‑proper components who unabashedly or in coded language categorical antisemitic sentiments.”
The senator additionally charged that Trump – who’s threatening to strip federal funding from universities that enable antisemitic discrimination and harassment on campus and deport “pro-Hamas” activists – hasn’t “tried to counteract” or “communicate out in opposition to” antisemitism in the identical approach his predecessors have.
“Antisemitism itself is just not, and has by no means been, an invention of the correct,” Schumer wrote earlier than he argued that “sure ideological actions on the correct latch on to antisemitism and – inadvertently or by design – assist unfold it.”
“That’s the reason it’s not the remoted gunman we worry most, as fearful as that individual could also be,” he added. “Greater than the person along with his finger on the set off, we worry the concepts that may drive him to drag it.”
“Simply as many on the correct justifiably really feel that Democrats have an obligation to shout down antisemitism on the left, Republicans have an obligation to shout down antisemitism coming from the correct.”
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