The New Anti-Semites Are Evil—and Boring

The New Center: A Newsletter From Sohrab Ahmari

By now, I’ve grown accustomed to the incredulous or annoyed looks, the eyes that say, Oh, here he goes again. I’m talking about the ferocious anti-Semitic and racialist tendency roiling the American right, but many of my fellow writers and editors—including not a few Jewish ones and even some progressives—remain unperturbed. Meh, what can you do? “X” is just like that now.

It’s true that this tendency is still blessedly far from the centers of power. But if it ever comes close, our world would not only be morally darkened—but also rendered crushingly boring. For a world without “Jewish influence”—the world the new haters dream of—is a tedious world, unfit for habitation for the human soul blessed with reason and religious yearning, not to mention a sense of humor.

For the right, it’s simply inconvenient to raise this problem: a sickness in our own camp. It’s just a few online knuckleheads. It’s probably only 15 percent sincere and 85 percent youthful bravado. We have bigger fish to fry. For the left, meanwhile, the right as such has always been fascistic and racist and unhealthily obsessed with Jews, so they can’t quite see what’s new or notable about some online anon ranting that “stupid Jew golem have persecuted Christians for too long to play dumb” (an actual X reply directed at me recently, among thousands more of the kind).