The Anti-DEI Movement and the Jewish Right | Political Research Associates

Weaponizing Antisemitism to Defend White Supremacy

“For at least two decades, defenders of Israel’s unjust policies have sought to repress the growing movement for Palestinian rights, especially on college campuses, by alleging antisemitism and cracking down on free speech. Their campaigns have often dovetailed with the U.S. Right’s longstanding attacks on public and higher education. This alliance has been on full display since October 7, as the Right has blamed DEI programs and antiracist pedagogy for a supposed epidemic of campus antisemitism, cynically weaponizing their loud but selective concern to shore up White supremacy.

Members of the U.S. Jewish Right have joined this authoritarian coalition of White Christian nationalists and anti-democracy ideologues, which takes advantage of tensions and contradictions involving antisemitism and American Jews’ relationship to Whiteness. By stoking fears of antisemitism and mobilizing racial resentment, the Right seeks to draw pro-Israel American Jews into its ranks, delegitimize racial justice movements, divide progressive coalitions, and neutralize its opposition as it moves closer to power.

Today’s authoritarian Right articulates a vision of national belonging shaped around the normative contours of White Christian America. But as the Jewish Right’s participation in the anti-DEI movement shows, this vision’s boundaries can be made porous and flexible, allowing the Right to strategically conscript some members of minoritized groups into its authoritarian coalition. As we navigate profound challenges to our rights and the future of a multiracial democracy that we can’t take for granted, it’s essential for progressives to understand these divide-and-conquer strategies to effectively counter them.”

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