One of my favorite pastimes is reading the Facebook feed of an extremely nice man I know who is both an ardent Democrat and an ardent Israel supporter. For several years now, he’s been trapped in a state of cognitive dissonance, trying to square the circle created by his preferred political party’s increasingly open hostility to Israel, as well as the rising anti-Semitism on the left. This struggle may escalate soon, as a recent poll shows that anti-Semitism is worst among two groups who have come to define the Democrat party: Young voters and Blacks.

Just The News summarizes the poll’s results:

Black Americans were the most likely demographic to agree with anti-Semitic stereotypes overall despite the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s tireless work fighting in support of the Jews.

When asked whether “Jews have too much power in the business world,” 31% of black Americans agreed. Additionally, 29% of black Americans agreed that “Jews think they are better than other people.”

[snip]

About a quarter of young adults, however, agreed that Jews talk too much about the Holocaust, have too much business power and think they are better than others.

The poll was conducted with YouGov from Jan. 5-Jan. 9 with 1,000 respondents and had a margin of error of 3.55%.

As a general matter, also, the poll showed that Democrats are more anti-Semitic than Republicans. These results were inevitable as the left gained ascendency in society and, specifically, in education, and as Islam made inroads into the Black community.

Image: YouTube screen grab.

What people too often forget is that the Nazis weren’t some bizarre right-wing animal called a “fascist.” That was a canard the socialists came up with after the war to tar their opponents. The Nazis were open socialists whose nickname came from their full identity: National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei).

In the 1920s and 1930s, the umbrella concept of “socialism” divided itself into two rival parties: the communists, who believed the state should own all the means of production, and the fascists, who believed the state should control all the means of production while allowing private ownership. That’s why in Britain, in the 1930s, so many upper-class people supported the Nazis. They assumed democracy would die and that the only choice would be socialism. Therefore, they preferred the version of socialism that would allow them to retain their property.

As for Hitler’s and Germany’s antisemitism, that was also baked into the leftist cake. It’s true that Germany, like all European countries, had a history of antisemitism going back to the Roman era. However, it was Marx, a Jew whose father converted the whole family to Christianity for pragmatic reasons when Marx was a child, who made antisemitism an integral part of socialism. He did this by arguing that Jews and capitalism were inextricably intertwined. And in typical self-loathing fashion, he hurled epithets at Jews that were indistinguishable from the things the Nazis later said.

It was, therefore, inevitable that, as the left indoctrinated young Americans in socialism, these same young people would be more open to antisemitism. The trajectory was to side with the “oppressed Palestinians,” then to hate Israel and, finally, to hate all Jews.

American Blacks have been getting antisemitism from two directions. The first is the Democrat party’s open embrace of socialism. The second is the rise of two antisemitic sects within the Black community.

American Black communities used to be very Christian. It was the Black Christian church that was the foundation for Martin Luther King’s bully pulpit. (Incidentally, King was hugely philosemitic and a big Israel supporter.)

That changed with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan is openly antisemitic, and his church reflects that. Although only 1% of American Blacks are Muslim, they account for 20% of the Muslim population in America, and they are a vocal minority. Given those numbers, the fact that Muslims have openly genocidal attitudes toward Jews is invariably going to help fertilize the growing antisemitism that leftism is bringing to the Black community.

It doesn’t help that the Black Hebrew Israelites (“BHI”), an openly antisemitic group that claims to be the true heir of the Biblical Jews, is also ragingly antisemitic and gaining traction.

With these vicious influences within the Black community (socialism, Islam, and the BHI), it’s not surprising that physical attacks against Jews tend to come from Blacks.

Jews understand that this rising antisemitism from the left carries the risk of turning into the same existential threat that almost wiped out Europe’s Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. Some of them are finally wising up enough to become conservatives. Let’s hope that my Facebook friend and his pro-Israel, Democrat followers eventually make the same choice.