“It represents, therefore, a safety valve for the owning classes, who encourage it and thus substitute for a dangerous hate against their regime a beneficent hate against particular people,” Jean-Paul Sartre wrote of antisemitism in his classic analysis, Anti-Semite and Jew.

Sartre’s observation is particularly insightful because it understands what many analysts tend to miss: Antisemitism is often a class issue and a class phenomenon. It is how an elite class that knows it is hated transmutes this hatred into a “beneficent” loathing of the Jews.

Sadly, America today provides a somewhat different but nonetheless suitable case study in class-based antisemitism because we find ourselves in a rather remarkable situation: Contrary to the expectations of generations of American Jewish activists and leaders, current antisemitism is not an ideology of the poor and lower-middle classes. It has emerged, instead, as the ruling passion of many members of the most privileged, educated and elite sector in the United States.

One of the reasons for this is the strange phenomenon of the lumpen elite. That is, America’s upper-middle class is now beset by terrors and discontents because it is already beginning to dissolve as a dominating class, and it knows it. To this, a solution must be found—a “safety valve” for that class’s fear and resentment. The preferred solution appears to be hating the Jews.

There are numerous reasons for this fear and resentment. The upper-middle class has always put its faith in the higher education industry, which has proved to be a scam that fleeced generations and left them unable to retain the elite status they thought they had earned. Technology, such as AI, is slowly taking over the professional occupations the upper-middle class covets and will continue to do so with ever-increasing speed. Decades of bad urban governance, coupled with restrictive laws and regulations, have made many of the gentrified areas of major cities, which the upper-middle class regards as theirs by birthright, unaffordable even to them.

The upper-middle class, in other words, which always wants to be more upper than before despite its current socialist pretensions, has found itself downwardly mobile.

Worst of all, the reign of the upper-middle class messiah, former President Barack Obama, gave way to the Trump era.

Whatever U.S. President Donald Trump’s flaws may be—and they are many—he is unquestionably a tribune of the working- and lower-middle classes that the upper-middle class regards as its inferiors. The rise to political influence of the lower classes is a galling development to their ostensible betters. In turn, this has fostered an ethos of fanatical loathing that, in some ways, is free-floating and threatens to fall not only upon Trump but upon any figure or group who is found wanting at any given moment.

It shouldn’t be surprising that so much of this seething hatred has fallen upon the Jews. It is a cliché that economic and class discontent wildly exacerbates antisemitism, though it is unquestionably true.

The most famous example, of course, is Weimar Germany, when, beset by the collapse of their status due to inflation and general economic crisis, much of the lower-middle and middle classes turned to Nazism and its anti-Jewish ideology as a solution. A decisive percentage of America’s lumpen upper-middle class appears to have done something very similar.

This process is commonly known as “scapegoating.” It is, but in the very literal sense: The Jews have become the thing upon which all the upper-middle class’s sins are laid in hopes of expiation. They are being made to pay for what the lumpen upper-middle class secretly knows: its collapse is due to nothing but its own sins of weakness, decadence, lack of talent, gullibility, poor decisions and personal failure. These are terrible things to face, and to avoid facing them, the upper-middle class has chosen to hate the Jews.

Some view the lumpen upper-middle class’s discontents as legitimate and, therefore, their antisemitism as in some way understandable. I do not. These discontents are the fault of the upper-middle class and its own failings. Rather than work to improve themselves, they prefer to declare war on innocents.

Antisemitism is a choice. No one held a gun to the lumpens’ heads and forced them to adopt it. This is not a case of inevitable resentment, but of malice aforethought.

Others believe, as is often the case with those who do not understand antisemitism, that “it will pass,” perhaps if the antisemites’ socioeconomic discontents are salved by giving them everything they want.

This won’t happen. Too many people have an interest in maintaining those discontents: The academic establishment will never give up its absurdly lucrative con game. Politicians like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani have risen to power on the back of upper-middle class resentment and will do everything possible to exacerbate it. The forward thrust of technology, despite the efforts of professional luddites like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), is irresistible. The upper-middle class’s solution to all this—antisemitism—will remain because people want it to remain.

Moreover, antisemitism is an intoxicating ideology. It enthuses its adherents, explains the world to them and provides the perfect “safety valve,” as Sartre aptly puts it, for their seething rage and resentment. The upper-middle class, beset by incontinent rage and innumerable resentments, will not give up antisemitism without a fight, and we cannot rely on false hopes that it will.

Sartre observed, “A destroyer in function, a sadist with a pure heart, the anti‐Semite is, in the very depths of his heart, a criminal.” We must face what this means: a large swathe of the American elite, its ruling and prospective ruling class, has become a criminal class.

Facing this is the first step toward action. One can debate possible solutions endlessly. My recommendation is for American Jews, especially those defined as upper-middle class, to reassess their loyalties and values, and then join the class war on the side of the working- and lower-middle classes.

American Jews ought to take a populist turn and attempt to cultivate the support not of those who, due to forces well beyond the Jews’ control, hate them with a passion, but rather of the Silent Majority that may yet prove to be the Jewish community’s salvation.

   | Read More JNS.org – Jerusalem News Syndicate