(Jewish Group) When Racism and Antisemitism Collide: Charlottesville's Ugly Legacy Opinion

Five years ago this week, white nationalists trudged through the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, barking one phrase over and over again, "Jews will not replace us." The most prominent response from counter-protesters was a three-word chant now familiar to every American, "Black Lives Matter."

It's a mismatch that speaks to the larger question of how antisemitism connects to racism in contemporary America. In Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and beyond, each recent episode of white nationalist violence features anti-Jewish conspiracy theories deeply entwined with color-based racism. Yet, just as in the case of Charlottesville, Americans struggle to parse the relationship between race and religion in white supremacist ideology. Instead, we either pass over antisemitism in silence or divert into debates over Holocaust analogies and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even as white supremacy stalks American democracy, we find ourselves unable to agree on its origins and aims.

The truth is that contemporary white supremacy represents a fusion of two different American ideologies: a deeply rooted racial hierarchy derived from slavery and an age-old Christian messianism. The two are not the same. Nor have they impacted Jews, African Americans, and other minority communities in commensurate ways throughout American history. Yet they have long coexisted and periodically converged to shape moments of radical violence and anti-democratic politics.

Today it is precisely their cross-pollination that lends white supremacy its enormous potency far beyond the fringe. To check its spread into the center of American politics, then, we first need to decipher this puzzling grammar of hate. That task begins with decoding the strange slogan at the heart of Charlottesville.

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