Are American Jews an Oppressed People?

Benjamin’s new book, Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto, is now available at Amazon via Wicked Son Books and the Z3 Project.

Historically speaking, the Jews have always and everywhere been an oppressed people, at least over most of the last two millennia. Even the existence of Israel has not entirely changed this—since while Jews are not oppressed in Israel—Israel itself is most certainly oppressed on the world stage.

The one exception, we are always told, is the United States.

There is a reason the United States has often been referred to in Yiddish as the Goldene Medinah, the “Golden Land.” Born an American Jew, I was taught, along with the rest of us, that the United States was the great exception to Jewish history. From the beginning, it embraced the Jews, granted us our rights and freedoms, and provided us the space to build the most successful Diaspora community in history. This, it was implied, would never change. It can’t happen here.

For this reason, to deem American Jews as an oppressed people, and especially for American Jews to think of themselves as oppressed, has always been deemed an absurdity hardly worth mentioning. Even the stern warnings of a few, sounded over the last 20 years, that such a thing might be coming were laughed off or simply ignored.

I do think it is premature to declare that American Jews are now, in toto, an oppressed people. What is clear, however, is that things have changed. Not only can it happen here, it is happening here. Not officially and not by law, since on paper, Jews still retain their rights, and American society is still open to them. In reality, however, on the ground, this is increasingly not the case.

The proof is the evidence of our eyes. We see that a new ghettoization is underway. A kind of de facto apartheid is under construction that, while still nascent, could indeed condemn American Jews to oppression.

Jewish civil rights, for example, are slowly and silently being abrogated. On college campuses, Jewish freedom of speech and movement are essentially nonexistent, destroyed by mob terror and intimidation with the collaboration of malicious authorities. The recent hate rallies outside synagogues are, by definition, violations of the Jewish right to freedom of religion and assembly, yet they are encouraged and defended by high officials such as New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. Both are the result of a conscious campaign, and without militant action by American Jewish leaders—which seems unlikely—the situation will only worsen.

Moreover, as these violations increase, the walls of an invisible ghetto are going up. As antisemitic violence both rhetorical and physical increases, Jewish life is being truncated. There is an atmosphere of constant violence that, by terrible inevitability, reduces the space in which Jewish life can be lived. I have heard numerous stories of Jews afraid to go to synagogue or gather with other Jews for fear of attack. Each holiday comes with the anticipation that a new atrocity will somewhere be committed. Jewish symbols are being concealed or not worn at all. Certain neighborhoods are avoided and entire cities, such as New York, may soon become unlivable for all but the most aggressively deracinated.

By slow degrees—like the frog in the frying pan—the Jews are being boiled, ghettoized by entirely justified fear.

Then, above all, there is the purge. Once again by silent means, Jews are being pushed out of politics, the professions, academic institutions high and low, and cultural spaces in which they once thrived. The purge may be unofficial, no order has come down from on high, but it is very real, and little has been done to interdict it.

Perhaps nothing defines the purge better than the current state of the Democratic Party.

For decades if not a century, American Jews have given everything to the Democrats: Money, votes, passionate support, undying loyalty. The old joke that Reform Judaism is the Democratic Party platform with holidays is an exaggeration, but as I can testify, there is some truth in it. Indeed, there can be no doubt that Jewish loyalty to the Democrats has been, for the most part, of a religious quality.

That loyalty has now been utterly betrayed. Faced with a revolt by its progressive and Muslim oligarchs, the Democratic Party leadership, with the aid of collaborationist Jews like Bernie Sanders, has completely abandoned its Jewish constituents. The party has consciously chosen to become what is, for all intents and purposes, an antisemitic political and social movement, dedicated to the aid and comfort of American Jews’ worst enemies. Whether American Jews like it or not, Mamdani and his minions are the future of the Democratic Party, and it is by no means impossible that, in 2028, America will have its first openly antisemitic president as a result.

There is anecdotal evidence that Jewish Democrats are acting accordingly. According to writer-activist Elissa Wald, they are leaving the party “in droves.” I do not know if this is true, and if it is, whether American Jews will join the Republicans or remain liberal independents is unknown. If her assessment is true, however, then it constitutes not an “exodus” but a purge, one of the most hideous political betrayals in the history of the United States, and it may be that the Democrats will pay dearly for it, though its oligarchs will not care in the least.

All of this does indeed constitute a form of oppression, but whether it means that American Jews are now an “oppressed people” is open to question. There is no question, however, that the “golden land” is no longer as golden as it once was, things have indeed changed, and it can happen here.

We know it can happen here because we have seen this all before: the formation of an antisemitic mass movement, the cultivation of terror, abrogation of civil rights, universal injustice, political and social betrayal, demonization, de facto ghettoization, and a pervasive atmosphere of violence.

If there is a difference, however, it is that the thing can still be stopped. There is no room for delusions, but also no need for despair. If the Jews take effective action, if they defend themselves in a new and more militant way, if their leaders are replaced with those willing to fight rather than immediately and unconditionally surrender, the trend can be reversed and American Jews liberated from the invisible ghetto now under construction.

The terrible question before us is whether American Jews will act before the ultimate purge arrives, and they will be forced to dismantle their community and decamp elsewhere—probably to Israel. This would be a great boon to the Jewish state, but a world-historical trauma for the Jewish people on the scale of the expulsion from Spain.

It is not too late. The golden land can be rebuilt and the walls of the ghetto torn down. It is clear, however, that if they do not want to become an oppressed people, American Jews must fight, because if they do not, it will happen here.

Find more written by Benjamin Kerstein over at No Delusions, No Despair. You can also follow him on X/Twitter.