This piece looks at how extremist politics have reinvented antisemitism and turned it into a political weapon. It traces the long sweep from ancient theological hostility to modern campaigns that use Jewish people as proxies to attack Western institutions. The analysis highlights statistics, real-world examples, and the strange alliances that have formed between radical movements. The point is blunt: antisemitism today is adaptive, organized, and dangerous to our civic order.
Antisemitism has been with us for millennia, shifting to fit the fears of each era. What began as religious prejudice in ancient times mutated into economic slanders in the Middle Ages and then into racialized hatred in the 19th and 20th centuries. That escalation culminated in the Holocaust, when ideology moved from exclusion to attempted extermination.
In our time antisemitism is once again reshaping itself to serve political ends. Whether the source is the “accelerationist” far right or the “deconstructionist” far left, both sides weaponize Jews and Jewish identity to advance broader agendas. Each movement dresses up its attack with different language, but the result is the same: Jews become stand-ins for a larger fight over the character of Western democracy.
The scale of the problem is alarming and not theoretical. Roughly 46% of adults worldwide now hold elevated antisemitic beliefs, a dramatic jump over the last decade. In the United States, reported incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault reached record highs, and college campuses saw steep year-over-year rises that leave many Jewish students hiding their identities for safety. These figures reflect an erosion of civic norms and an emboldening of hateful behavior.
Local politics illustrate how this trend takes hold on the ground. In Chicago, leaders who refuse to clearly condemn bigotry have allowed anti-Israel and anti-Jewish protests to gain traction without meaningful pushback. Organized groups, including influential unions and activist coalitions, have at times framed protests in ways that blur legitimate policy debate with outright hostility toward Jewish people and the Jewish state.
The contemporary radical left often frames everything through a moral binary of “oppressor vs. oppressed,” and that framing can be weaponized. By recasting Israel as a colonial project, activists erase the region’s complex history and the diversity of Jewish identity. That simplification lets antisemitic tropes slip into mainstream protest rhetoric where they appear justified under the banner of social justice.
At the same time, parts of radical Islamism feed into the same currents, producing what analysts call a “functional alignment” between two movements that otherwise disagree on many things. Their immediate objective is shared: weaken public trust in Western institutions and delegitimize allies of liberal democracy. The result is a dangerous coalition that masks hostile intent behind moral language.
That convergence has concrete consequences. Demonizing Israel becomes a proxy attack on Western values and institutions, and treating all Jews as agents of the Israeli state normalizes prejudice in public debate. Progressive coalitions have sometimes tolerated or excused violent and repressive actors when it suits a political narrative, and at times explanations for terror have been framed as responses to historical grievances rather than as crimes against civilians.
Progressive activists have even reacted to international events with rhetoric that blurs accountability, calling certain violent acts “” from Israel and the U.S. while ignoring brutal repression elsewhere. When western progressives refuse to call out authoritarian brutality consistently, they weaken moral clarity and strengthen those who seek to divide our society along identity lines. Institutions that value liberty must resist double standards and defend people, not political narratives.
Antisemitism today is not a relic; it is a strategic tool used by competing extremists to erode the institutions that protect freedom. Confronting it requires courage from political leaders, civic institutions, and everyday citizens who refuse to let cynicism and opportunism normalize hatred. The alternative is a slow drift toward a public square where prejudice is acceptable if it advances a cause, and that is a risk no free society should accept.
https://x.com/jasonhickel/status/2027670644490432887?s=20
