President Donald Trump makes a statement on the violence in Charlottesville, Va., at the White House, Aug. 14, 2017. (Chris Kleponis-Pool\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Neo-Nazis and Klansmen marched on Charlottesville chanting \u201cBlood and soil!\u201d and \u201cJews will not replace us!\u201d But instead of using the power of his office to marginalize this bigotry, President Trump egged on these white supremacists, equating them with those protesting their racism by insisting there were \u201cvery fine people on both sides.\u201d <\/p>\n
Vice President Joe Biden\u2019s entire presidential campaign was ignited by Trump\u2019s dereliction of duty that day. Biden believes we are in a battle for the soul of our nation, which Jewish Americans understand all too well.<\/p>\n
Shortly after George Washington became America\u2019s first president, he undertook to reassure the young nation\u2019s religious minorities, including its Jewish citizens, that their rights would be safeguarded under this new republic. In his famous 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, he specifically pledged that the U.S. government \u201cgives to bigotry no sanction\u201d and, borrowing from the prophet Micah, swore that every citizen must enjoy genuine safety \u201cunder his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n
But isn\u2019t giving sanction to frightening bigotry exactly what Trump did before, during and after Charlottesville? It is why white supremacists gathered in Washington, D.C., in November 2016 to celebrate his election, railing against Jews and giving Nazi salutes. It is why white supremacists felt encouraged to converge on Charlottesville for their 2017 \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally, where Heather Heyer was murdered when a neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist demonstrators.<\/p>\n
Worshippers at Charlottesville\u2019s Congregation Beth Israel that day were terrified to discover men in combat fatigues with semi-automatic rifles loitering menacingly outside their synagogue. As synagogue president Alan Zimmerman wrote later, \u201cseveral times, parades of Nazis passed our building, shouting, there\u2019s the synagogue!\u2019 followed by chants of \u2018Sieg Heil.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump tried to backpedal two days later, reading off a teleprompter that \u201cracism is evil\u201d and white supremacists are \u201crepugnant.\u201d However, as Bob Woodward wrote in his 2018 expose of the Trump presidency, \u201cFear,\u201d Trump believes this apology was the \u201cworst speech I\u2019ve ever given\u201d and \u201cthe biggest f***ing mistake I\u2019ve made.\u201d <\/p>\n
Asked again by reporters only a year ago about his declaration that there were very fine people on both sides in Charlottesville, Trump insisted that he \u201canswered perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the harm caused by Trump\u2019s alarming rhetoric has been all too real, as Jews and many other communities who have felt the sting of the bigotry Trump sanctions can attest.<\/p>\n
For example, just a week before Charlottesville, supporters of his call to exclude many Muslims from America attacked an Islamic community center near Minneapolis with a pipe bomb. <\/p>\n
Barely one year after Charlottesville, a shooter animated by Trump\u2019s conspiracy theory about an immigrant invasion, and thought Jews were to blame, murdered 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the deadliest attack targeting Jews in America\u2019s history. That same week, a white gunman allegedly radicalized watching Trump\u2019s presidential campaign also murdered two African-American shoppers at a grocery store in Kentucky after trying to force his way into a predominantly African-American church. Then, six months to the day after Pittsburgh, that attack inspired another deadly synagogue attack in Poway, California.<\/p>\n
Sadly, we are also marking the one-year anniversary this month of the rampage in El Paso, the deadliest attack targeting the Latino community in America\u2019s history. The perpetrator of that attack said he killed those 23 innocent people and injured 23 others as \u201ca response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas\u201d and that he was specifically hoping to target Mexicans. <\/p>\n
We all know that Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015 based on the claim that Mexico is sending droves of immigrants into America, bringing \u201cdrugs,\u201d \u201ccrime\u201d and \u201crapists.\u201d More recently, in the wake of the historic, largely peaceful protests against systemic racism, Trump has jumped to the defense of Confederate generals and branded the Black Lives Matter slogan \u201ca symbol of hate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, researchers with the Huffington Post documented over 800 hate incidents since Trump launched his campaign where the perpetrators hurled some version of the phrase \u201cgo back\u201d or \u201cget out\u201d at their victims (absurdly, over 20 of these xenophobic incidents even targeted Native Americans). And in over 150 of these cases, the perpetrators even invoked Trump\u2019s name or one of his slogans. <\/p>\n
This year, hate crimes have skyrocketed against Asian Americans, exacerbated by Trump blaming the public health crisis on what he calls \u201cthe Chinese virus\u201d and \u201cKung Flu.\u201d Instead of uniting Americans around responsible public health precautions, the president failed the test of office yet again, defending heavily armed anti-government extremists who stormed the Michigan State Capitol as \u201cvery good people.\u201d That rally also included swastikas and other imagery trivializing Hitler\u2019s crimes.<\/p>\n
When demagogues look for someone to scapegoat, no one is safe. The moral contrast with Joe Biden, who denounces every form of hate and prejudice without hesitation, could not be clearer. Jewish Americans will overwhelmingly support Biden, an empathic, trustworthy and eminently qualified public servant who is determined to stand up to bigotry, to truly give it no sanction.<\/p>\n
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