We Must Stand our Ground against Anti-American and Anti-Humanist, Social-Darwinian Rhetoric.: When Anti-Discrimination Becomes Exclusion

For those of us who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s, the moral compass of the public square felt remarkably consistent. We grew up watching iconic television public service announcements designed to root out bigotry, like the classic anti-prejudice PSA where a grandfather gently but firmly corrects his grandson for referring to his classmate as his "Jewish friend Jimmy," explaining that separating him by his identity means he isn't seeing him simply as a friend. In our classrooms, we were surrounded by posters preaching the virtue of "judging by the content of character," a direct inheritance from the Civil Rights movement. We were taught that discrimination was an ancient, corrosive poison and that the ultimate goal of a liberal society was to move past identity-based animus toward a universalist ideal of equality. We believed that prejudice was inherently right-wing, reactionary, and intellectually lazy. Today, however, the intellectual landscape has shifted. As a political moderate, I have watched with growing concern as the far left, the very segment of the political spectrum that claims the mantle of anti-discrimination, has developed a significant, and often ignored, blind spot regarding antisemitism. The core of this problem lies in the rise of a rigid, binary "oppressor vs. oppressed" framework. While often treated as a modern academic development, this framework inherits a dark lineage: the foundational intellectual ancestor of modern leftist critical thought, Karl Marx, wrote deeply antisemitic polemics (specifically his 1844 essay On the Jewish Question), which equated Jewishness with huckstering and money. Historically, 19th-century socialists frequently used antisemitism as a shortcut to anti-capitalism, what was termed the "socialism of fools." Today, in this updated worldview, identity is everything, and history is reduced to a zero-sum game of power dynamics. Within this structure, Jewish people have been increasingly stripped of their status as a historically persecuted minority. Instead, they are frequently racialized as "white" or "privileged," which, in the lexicon of modern intersectionality, effectively disqualifies them from victimhood. This is not merely an academic exercise; it has real-world consequences for political representation and public safety. The most telling recent example of this friction was the selection process for the 2024 Vice Presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket. When Governor Josh Shapiro was passed over, the discourse surrounding the decision was deeply revealing. While political pundits focused on electoral math, many voices within the progressive base openly signaled that Shapiro’s identity and his vocal, unapologetic stance on Israel made him a liability. The sentiment was not that he was unqualified, he was, by most metrics, the most popular and politically savvy choice, but that his Jewish identity, specifically his connection to the Jewish state, was "baggage" that a significant portion of the far-left base would not tolerate. This calculation tacitly endorsed the idea that Jewishness itself is a disqualifying factor in the pursuit of high office. This is not an isolated event; it is a pattern. We have seen it manifest on college campuses, where the line between political critique of Israel and overt antisemitism has been aggressively erased. At Columbia University, for instance, a prominent student protest leader, Khymani James, was recorded stating that "Zionists don’t deserve to live" and that people should be "grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists." Meanwhile, at UCLA, activists enforced what was effectively a "Jew Exclusion Zone" around key campus areas like Royce Quad, requiring students to disavow Israel before passing. This egregious civil rights violation led U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi to issue a sharp preliminary injunction, noting with disbelief: "Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. UCLA does not dispute this." When campus activists begin to categorize Jews as "colonialists" and physically block them from public spaces regardless of their personal politics, they are engaging in the same dehumanizing tropes that we were taught to abhor forty years ago. The irony is profound. The far left, which prides itself on its vigilance against racism, has constructed a framework where antisemitism is not only tolerated but occasionally rebranded as "resistance." By focusing so heavily on group identity, the movement has lost sight of the individual. They have traded the promise of a universalist, anti-discriminatory society for a new form of identity politics that creates a hierarchy of suffering, and places Jews at the bottom. As a moderate, my critique is not of the goal of justice, but of the current method of achieving it. If we allow "anti-discrimination" to become a tool for excluding specific groups based on their ethnicity, religion, or historical ties, we are not making progress. We are simply looping back to the old, ugly habits of the past, merely dressed in new, academic language. To move forward, we must reclaim the idea that prejudice is wrong, regardless of who is perpetuating it, and that a truly fair society must be able to recognize bigotry even, and especially, when it comes from within one's own ideological house.  We must stand our ground against such anti-American and anti-humanist, social-darwinian rhetoric. "Never again" must truly mean "never again," and true Americans need to speak up and take direct, vocal action in denouncing such ugly prejudice. Too many millions upon millions of people died in overt, direct military action to defeat these very evils; we must learn our history, our true history, and meet the challenge of living up to the great, foundational ideals of American Exceptionalism. Hello, and thanks for listening to my podcast For years, my mission has been to foster a community around engagement, unique takes on interesting stories, and conversation. If you value what I do, please consider supporting me. I've started a GoFundMe to cover my production and operational costs, including those pesky social media fees. If you can’t contribute to my GoFundMe, I get it, but you can help me by subscribing to my account or sharing this particular story with friends and family that you think would appreciate it. Your contribution, big or small, helps me keep going. Thank you. 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