If I’d told you in 2015 that the focal point of antisemitic sentiment in the U.S. in 2026 would be inside the Democratic Party, you would have thought I was insane. Hell, I would have thought I was insane, and I’d spent decades warning about creeping anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment on the left.
But what I saw in 2015 was this: In the months following Donald Trump’s entry into politics, nationally known Jewish conservatives (like Ben Shapiro) and others known for their presence online (like Bethany Mandel) found themselves under mind-bending assault from the right. Right-wing social media accounts sent millions of threatening messages—often suggesting they be sent to concentration camps and shoved into ovens, accompanied by the most nightmarish images imaginable.
Two years later, a group of self-described “white nationalists” encouraged by Trump’s presidential victory marched on Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting, “The Jews will not replace us.” The ultimate suggestion was that the emergence of Donald Trump had caused a very heavy and very deeply embedded rock on the right to shake itself free of the earth and let loose heretofore buried demonic forces.
