For Jews (And All Of Us), This Election Is A “Then They Came For Me” Moment

Donald Trump Should Be Judged By The Anti-Semitic, And Otherwise Deplorable, Company He Keeps

There’s an old saying that a man is known by the company he keeps. Try as we might, we’re often defined by the people who surround us. We’ve all had moments growing up where we’ve chosen the wrong friends or found ourselves in the wrong crowd. For whatever reason, many of us are drawn to people who don’t help us to become our best selves. Some of us outgrow that need quickly while others take a bit more time. 

Donald Trump needs more time. 

A few months ago I wrote about the scary familiarity of Donald Trump’s rhetoric. His words and his policies sparked all kinds of comparisons to despotic world leaders of past days. At the time, we thought we were making hyperbolic statements to prove a point. In hindsight, that seems quaint.  

If you’ve been anywhere near Twitter these days, you’ve seen the anti-Semitic tweets that many Jewish reporters have gotten after covering the Trump campaign. They’re sending us email, they’re tracking us down, and they’re not letting go. 

Trump is incredibly popular with anti-Semitic people. He loves their attention. He even likes to make coded anti-Semitic statements himself and somehow wound up participating in some odd display of cultural appropriation while at a church.

It’s certainly not helping that Trump’s own son is helping bring most of these folks into the mainstream. (You’ll remember his gas chamber/Holocaust “joke” from the other week and of course his offensive Skittles analogy.)

It’s not hard to draw conclusions between these Trump supporters and Trump himself. It would be one thing if he were actively working to stop their influence and deny their legitimacy, but that’s exactly the opposite of what’s happening. Trump is playing right into their hands and he’s allowing their messages to move into the mainstream. 

This is the company he keeps.

I’m certainly not the only one to see it. Bend the Arc Jewish Action, a national Jewish organization aimed at “bringing together Jews from across the country to advocate for a more just and equal society,” has been working on a campaign called, “We’ve Seen This Before.”  

Among the centerpieces of the campaign is this video, “A Message from Grandma and Grandpa”:

In any other case, I’d agree with the many who say that a political candidate has no control over what his followers say and do. Yes, there are many folks who follow liberal politicians who are atrocious and disgusting. But here’s the difference: They’re usually the fringe. They’re the outsiders. They’re the folks who are so removed from the mainstream it’s beyond obvious they’re not worth noticing.

And it’s not like these folks are simply being acknowledged and disavowed — on the contrary, they’re being elevated by those in the innermost circle of the Trump campaign, like his chief advisor — who’s also his son. 

As long as Trump and his campaign continue to lift up these voices instead of working to tamp them down, a vote for Trump is a vote for anti-Semitism, in addition to many other bad things.

The news isn’t all bad, though. Longtime GOP-supporting Jews are backing (running?) away from Trump because of his distaste for religious liberty and his racism. FiveThirtyEight reports that the GOP’s Jewish donors are abandoning Trump.  

But it’s not enough for just the Jews to walk away — just like it’s not enough for any one group that’s being attacked to fight back. This is one of those times where what’s bad for some of us is bad for all of us. This is a “then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me” moment.

If a man is known by the company he keeps, then it’s not only true for Donald Trump, it’s true for all of us. Our vote is how we decide the company we keep. Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. It’s up to us to decide how we want to be known. 

Robbie Medwed is an Atlanta-based LGBT activist and educator. (He’s also one of them Jew-boys the people on Twitter like to harass so much.) You can harass him, too: @rjmedwed

 

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