GOP's sinister flirtation points to something very dark for America

Today I want to talk to you about a difficult subject. Let me start with the Trump regime’s ongoing accusations of antisemitism to extort billions of dollars from American universities — while simultaneously disregarding antisemitism within its own ranks.

Exhibit A is Harmeet Dhillon, now Trump’s assistant attorney general for civil rights. For the last 10 months, Dhillon has condemned prestigious universities for allowing what she deems “antisemitic” protests — and withheld research funding unless they agree to explicit measures supposedly to prevent antisemitism.

I was a Dartmouth trustee in the 1980s when its president, James O. Freedman, who was Jewish, endured the antisemitic barbs of an ascendant right-wing student group that included Dhillon, along with Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D’Souza.

In 1988, as editor of The Dartmouth Review, Dhillon published a column depicting Freedman as Adolf Hitler under the headline “Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Freedmann” — a play on a Nazi slogan, “One Empire, One People, One Leader,” but substituting and misspelling Freedman’s name for “Fuhrer.”

Using the analogy of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, the column satirically described how “Der Freedmann” and his associates rid the campus of conservatives. The column referred to the “‘Final Solution’ of the Conservative Problem” and to “survivors” of the Dartmouth “holocaust” and described Dartmouth conservatives being “deported in cattle cars in the night.”

A drawing on the cover of the following issue also depicted Freedman, who had been critical of The Review, as Hitler.

I saw up close how much Dhillon’s publication hurt Freedman. As a Jew, he not only felt personally attacked but also worried about the effects of Dhillon’s publication on Jewish students at Dartmouth.

The student newspaper The Dartmouth took The Review to task, claiming that it “is anti-semitic; its impact rings through this community today and will remain long after its publishers have completed their stints in Hanover.”

Several faculty members wrote to outside advisers of The Review, asking them to reconsider allowing their names to be associated with the publication. The regional office of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, in Boston, condemned it.

It is possible, of course, that Dhillon’s undergraduate escapade into antisemitism caused her such remorse that she subsequently experienced a conversion of sorts and became committed to ridding universities of similar acts of bigotry.

But nothing in her history after Dartmouth or her official biography suggests such a conversion.

The most probable explanation for her turnaround is simple ambition. Dhillon grabbed the opportunity to become assistant attorney general in charge of civil rights and agreed to use the charge of antisemitism as a weapon to carry out the Trump regime’s war on prestigious universities — not because they’re hotbeds of antisemitism, but because the authoritarian right considers them hotbeds of leftist ideology.

As JD Vance said in a 2021 speech titled ‘The Universities are the Enemy,’ “we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.”

But the problem of antisemitism within the ranks of Trump Republicans runs much deeper than Dhillon.

Exhibit B is Kevin Roberts — president of the Heritage Foundation, creator of Trump’s Project 2025, and one of Trump’s most loyal supporters.

Roberts recently came to the defense of Tucker Carlson after Carlson’s friendly interview with Nick Fuentes, an ardent fan of Adolf Hitler, in which Carlson declined to challenge Fuentes’s bigoted beliefs or his remark about problems with “organized Jewry in America.”

Here’s what Roberts said:

“Tucker Carlson … always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation. The venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division. Conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington.”

To whom was Roberts referring when he spoke of “the venomous coalition” and “the globalist class”? These words are closely associated with antisemitism and are similar to those Fuentes has used.

Roberts went on to say:

“The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians, and we won’t start doing that now. My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and to America.”

But aren’t Jews as loyal to America as Christians? Again, Roberts seemed to be toying with an antisemitic trope, implicitly questioning the loyalty of American Jews to America.

When asked about the controversy, Trump refrained from criticizing Fuentes (with whom he has dined at Mar-a-Lago) and praised Carlson for having “said good things about me over the years” — adding “you can’t tell him who to interview” and “if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes — I don’t know much about him — but if he wants to do it, get the word out. People have to decide.”

Fuentes liked Trump’s response, posting “Thank you Mr. President!” on social media.

Fuentes’s influence is surely one test of whether Trump conservatives are willing to accommodate bigots in their coalition.

But the problem of antisemitism in the ranks of Trump Republicans runs deeper than one antisemitic crackpot. Indeed, it runs deeper than the apparent hypocrisies of Kevin Roberts or Harmeet Dhillon.

It touches on a central question that everyone inside the regime and all who support it must grapple with: When does Trump authoritarianism bleed into fascism — along with the antisemitism that has historically fueled it?

• Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
• Robert Reich's new memoir,Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.