Left-wing antisemitism is swiftly surpassing the right

Miami Herald

a day ago

With the smoke still in the air from an Egyptian Muslim's terror attack that set non-violent Jewish protesters on fire in Boulder, Colorado, there's finally a critical mass of concern about growing violent antisemitic hate in America from somewhere other than conservatives.
For my whole life antisemitism has been a fact of life for conservatives like me. Cranky retirees and bald-headed young people alike espoused conspiracy theories and hatred of Jews from the fringes of our political world. People like William F. Buckley fought to keep them out of the mainstream, but millions of conservatives voted for vile anti-Jewish haters like Pat Buchanan.
So in 2018 it didn't come as a surprise that the man nearly my age who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh was a right-wing crank who frequented Nazi-friendly social media sites like Gab and idolized the fringey Proud Boys.
A couple years later when the Biden administration targeted the right for special attention from the Justice Department and the FBI for the potential violence of homegrown extremists, I didn't really object. Yes, there was left-wing violence like the 2017 attack on Republican congressmen at a bipartisan baseball game by a loopy old Bernie Sanders supporter, but it didn't seem like there was the same cesspool of violent hate on the left as there was on the right.
That is changing. It turns out that while the Biden administration was on its politically convenient crusade against right-wing haters, they (and I) missed a parallel antisemitic culture of hate growing and metastasizing on the left.
Left-wing extremism
The Combat Hate Foundation, which takes reports of antisemitic incidents and categorizes them according to ideological motivation, found more than a 320% increase in left-wing antisemitic incidents from 2023 to 2024. 'The left-wing antisemitic movement has evolved into a global force,' the group writes. 'Radicalized social movements, media disinformation campaigns, and efforts to target Jewish communities under the guise of anti-Israel activism have primarily fueled this increase,' the group said.
The recent murder of a soon-to-be engaged couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum is an example of such left-wing antisemitism. The alleged killer, who shouted 'Free, free Palestine!' after his attack, has ties to left-wing socialist, anti-war and anti-racist groups.
Most of the nearly 4,329 incidents of left-wing antisemitism in 2024 were not so brutal, primarily involving hate speech or vandalism and not violence.
Combat Hate Foundation
The Combat Hate Foundation, which is funded by a donor who also funds Republican political campaigns, has a record of calling out antisemitism on both the right and the left. Indeed, the latest report says violence is more common in right-wing attacks, but the number of such events fell by half in 2024 to 461 as left-wing incidents exploded into view with campus chants of 'Globalize the intifada,' a common refrain that implies a tolerance for violence.
The Combat Hate Foundation is not alone in its concern. The more-traditional and left-leaning Anti-Defamation League also raised alarms in a 2020 email about antisemitism on the left, including among Black Lives Matter leaders.
The most recent attack in Boulder stems from the third font of antisemitism, radical Islam. The Egyptian-born attacker, who allegedly planned his atrocity for more than a year, carried his hatred for Jews from the Middle East, where it is both common and government-backed, to a new home in America where he overstayed a visa and then sought refugee status. This source of antisemitism, too, is rising, according to the Combat Hate Foundation.
America has been a safe home for Jews for centuries. It is tragic that they now face the old threat from the right along with rising threats on the left and from Islamists who benefit from very American religious tolerance that they refuse to share with Jews.