In 2017, torch-carrying neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil.” It was open, unapologetic antisemitism. No decoding required.
Recently, protesters have stood outside American synagogues chanting “Globalize the Intifada” and “We support Hamas.” Different slogans. Different political tribe. Same moral rot.
Which is worse?
Neither. Both.
Both are expressions of political extremism that normalize hostility toward Jews. Both use intimidation. Both test whether the broader political movements around them have the courage to draw lines.
When Charlottesville happened, mainstream conservatives were forced to confront the ugliness on their fringe. Many failed. Some succeeded. But the hatred was unmistakable and widely condemned.
What I have watched in recent months unsettled me more deeply: the hesitation — and in some quarters the open tolerance — within segments of the progressive left when antisemitic rhetoric shows up wrapped in activist language.
If you chant outside a synagogue in America and echo slogans of a terrorist organization whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, you don’t get to hide behind moral nuance. That’s intimidation. Period.
The final break for me wasn’t just about Gaza. It was about selective outrage.
We are told constantly that Gaza is a genocide. That word is used with moral thunder. But where is the sustained outrage over Iran’s repression of its own people? Where is the relentless campus mobilization over Kurdish persecution? Over Boko Haram’s violence? Over the industrial-scale destruction of Ukraine by Russia?
When human-rights language becomes selective — deployed ferociously in one case and cautiously in others — it stops looking universal. It starts looking tribal.
Civilian suffering in Gaza is tragic. So is civilian suffering in Tehran. So is civilian suffering in Kyiv. If you want to invoke genocide, liberation, colonialism, or resistance, then apply those principles consistently.
Instead, in too many progressive spaces, denunciations of Israel have become a loyalty test. In some local Democratic politics, candidates are pressured to declare Israel guilty of genocide or face political exile. That isn’t debate. That’s coercion.
And yes — I know the rebuttal. Criticizing Israel is not antisemitism. Of course it isn’t. Governments are not immune from criticism.
But when protests target synagogues instead of embassies, when chants mirror the language of groups committed to Jewish eradication, and when Jewish students are told they must renounce Zionism to feel safe on campus, something has gone very wrong.
That is why I left the Democratic Party.
Not because I drifted right. Not because I have forgotten January 6th. Not because I am blind to extremism on the Republican side.
I left because I refuse to belong to a coalition that cannot decisively confront antisemitism when it appears inside its own ranks.
At the same time, I am not a Republican. The nationalist right has its own flirtations with illiberalism, its own conspiracies, its own moral evasions.
Which leaves me politically homeless.
The greatest threats to global stability today are militant Islamist extremism and Vladimir Putin’s effort to rebuild Russian imperial power. Any movement that clearly and consistently opposes both — without apologetics, without selective outrage — would have my loyalty.
Until then, I will stand outside party lines.
I will support Ukraine’s defense against Russia.
I will support the people of Iran fighting a regime that brutalizes them.
I will oppose antisemitism whether it wears a swastika or waves a Hamas flag.
I do not belong to either party.
I belong to consistency in fighting hate.
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