The dog whistle that's really a klaxon
When "globalist" is used to refer to a person of Jewish faith, it's not just a dog whistle, it's a 🚨
During the pandemic, I moved away from Greenwich, CT, where I’d lived for over 20 years. But I’ve been keeping up with what’s happening there, particularly the takeover of the RTC by more extreme elements of the Republican party.
I wrote about the concerning trends I saw starting in 2015, and in January 2021, after the insurrection at the Capitol, I wrote a piece called Being Silent is a Choice, linking to previous columns with all the times I’d begged my Republican political reps to speak out against antisemitism and they’d refused. Fred Camillo, then my state rep for the CT-151 district and now First Selectman in town, even went so far as to deny that a GOP flyer that photoshopped State Senator Matt Lesser’s nose larger, made his eyes crazy looking, and had him clutching a fistful of dollars wasn’t antisemitic, this despite me sending him side by side comparisons of the image with propaganda from Nazi Germany.
More recently, the Greenwich RTC promoted a far-right news source calling a Jewish candidate for the Board of Estimate and Taxation a “globalist.”
Calling a Jewish person a globalist, even if they have worked with the World Economic Forum, as did this particular candidate, is loaded with heavy antisemitic baggage.
It was quite something to read about the Greenwich RTC vice chair declaring that people complaining about this were making "false discrimination claims,” and that “The word ‘Globalist’ is not used by us as a reflection of someone's religion.”
He went on to make the some of my best friends are Jewish excuse.
It hearkens back the time the frequently-indicted former president, Donald Trump, said of departing Jewish cabinet minister Gary Cohn, “He may be a globalist, but I still like him. He is seriously a globalist. There’s no question. In his own way, but you know what, he’s a nationalist. He loves our country.”
There’s more to unpack in that quote, for example the idea that despite being a globalist, Cohn “loves our country,” which is a dogwhistle for the dual loyalty canard that we’ve heard from both the right and certain segments of the left. Trump went beyond the dog whistle to a blaring the antisemite siren when he accused Jews who voted for Democrats of being “disloyal.”
It’s interesting that Republicans are willing to call out the dual loyalty canard when it’s used by the left, but not when it’s being promoted by members of their own party.
When I was doing preliminary research for my last YA novel, Some Kind of Hate , I interviewed the young man whose mom wrote this piece for The Washingtonian. I asked, “You’re Jewish. Didn’t it bother you when they said antisemitic things?” His response gave me goosebumps, and it does every time I talk about it.
“They didn’t use the word Jew. They said ‘globalist.’”
Calling a Jewish person a globalist isn’t just a dogwhistle, especially in the current environment. It’s a siren call to the far-right. Those who try to justify its use are showing their true colors. Pay close attention. As for Jewish Republicans who defend its use, I can’t help wondering if they ever read the fable about the Frog and the Scorpion…
For more about Some Kind of Hate including an educator guide and additional resources, visit my website here.