The Jewish Journey: The People, The Land, The Evidence
Two Hatreds, One Target: Why Antisemitism Comes From Both Directions
In 2025, the two main drivers of antisemitism in America both fell sharply — and violent assaults hit a record high. The data behaves that way because it isn't one phenomenon. It's two. The usual explanation is horseshoe theory: the far left and far right curve around until they touch. But test it against what each side actually demands. The right demands removal — leave, you don't belong here. The left demands dissolution — assimilate, universalize, stop being a distinct people. Those aren't the same instruction arrived at from two directions. They're opposite instructions. One says get out of our house. The other says come all the way in, and erase your identity at the door. This episode traces both mechanisms through the record: Toledo's blood purity statutes in 1449, invented because mass conversion had proved insufficient, running in a straight line to Nuremberg in 1935. And on the other track, antisemitism built into the founding of French socialism — Fourier, Proudhon, Toussenel, Marx — through to the Soviet charge of "rootless cosmopolitan," the Slánský trial, and Poland expelling its remaining Jews in 1968, twenty-three years after Auschwitz. Two trajectories running in opposite directions, passing through the same fixed point. The question is what property of that point puts it on both paths — and why, once you see it, antisemitism turns out to be the most sensitive instrument we have for reading the health of a society.
