It matters not whether any particular “Jew” is assimilated or not. Were a Nazi-type regime to take hold in America, all “Jews,” assimilated or not, would be rounded up as “Jewish” by reason of blood inheritance. They would all be labeled as enemies of the People. This blog is about persons of Jewish descent who single out other “Jews” as Bad Jews and as the enemy of all correctly thinking “moderate” conservatives (see https://clarespark.com/2010/11/16/good-jews-bad-jews-and-wandering-jews/). This at a time when global antisemitism and criticism of Israel seems to have achieved a crescendo that reminds some frightened Jews of the 1930s. My argument centers around two claims: 1. One strategy to take the heat off the comparatively few conservative Jews is to identify all other “Jews” with the crazy Left. The liberal elite I have identified in prior blogs is rarely nailed on the intellectual Right. 
2. Assimilated Jews who favor the Democratic Party as the route to upward mobility should be argued with, insofar as they concur with Obama and John Kerry’s unrealistic expectations for a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, but liberal Jews should not be held up to obloquy: they are probably unschooled in the magnitude of European and American antisemitism, the history of the Mid-East, and/or the founding of Israel in the late 1940s; moreover they believe they hold the moral high ground, like other liberals.
Notwithstanding attempts of some organic conservatives to paint the Left (both Leninist and liberal) as generically Jewish, the original PC contingent was devoid of Jews, but heavily populated by WASP liberal elites (following Christian Socialism in Britain), notwithstanding the efforts of some far Right antisemites to paint the [German “Jewish”] Frankfurt School of critical theory as instigators of political correctness and the thought police. (See https://clarespark.com/2011/10/21/did-frankfurters-kill-the-white-christian-west/.)
My opinion: It should surprise no one that one way for Eastern European Jews to escape murderous antisemitism was to support the antiracist communists, who promised an emancipating internationalism that would eliminate all forms of racism and antisemitism. Similarly, immigrant Jews in America would be attracted to purported antiracist movements in the US, along with the union movement that defended their garment worker parents. As Ralph Bunche reported to Gunnar Myrdal, it was primarily Jews who supported civil rights for blacks in the interwar period. (Bunche was at that time on the Left, and 1930s leftist factions opposed racism and antisemitism. See https://clarespark.com/2009/10/10/ralph-bunche-and-the-jewish-problem/. )
All attempts to polarize American society toward irrationalism should be resisted by Jews and their allies. There still exists a sizable group of rightists who are indeed white supremacists and incorrigible antisemites. Some, but not all, are in the South, and even those who are “friends of the Jews” may be adherents to apocalyptic, chiliastic fantasies such as the imminent “Rapture.” You probably will not find among this cohort support for the introduction of subjects in the schools that help students to identify the multiform manifestations of antisemitism throughout the history of the West. (See https://clarespark.com/2010/11/14/the-abcs-of-antisemitism/ .) 
I have written previously about assimilated Jews and their antagonists. Here is a sampling of relevant prior blogs, by no means exhausting this subject matter. https://clarespark.com/2013/12/07/ben-hecht-v-ben-urwand-the-un-jewish-left-and-assimilated-jews/ https://clarespark.com/2013/03/30/philip-roth-the-following-and-identification-with-the-aggressor/ https://clarespark.com/2012/02/24/malkin-dolan-and-the-empire-state-building/ https://clarespark.com/2013/09/15/authenticity-and-the-bottled-up/ https://clarespark.com/2013/07/21/minding-antisemitism/ https://clarespark.com/2011/06/03/neo-isolationists-and-the-jewish-problem/ https://clarespark.com/2010/04/03/liberals-and-jewish-racism/
The Clare Spark Blog 
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Pingback by Nazis/Skinheads: The Holocaust by Bullets and Modern Antisemitism in Ukraine (ντοκιμαντέρ) | OMADEON — February 25, 2014 @ 9:54 pm |
Excellent work, Clare. Clear, well put and interesting.
Thank you,
M
Comment by mmeric@rcn.com — February 25, 2014 @ 8:39 pm |