Republicans attack Jewish candidates across the U.S. with an age-old caricature: Fistfuls of cash by Eli Rosenberg
Scott Kendall, the chief of staff to Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I), said the week after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was not easy for him.
A Jewish Republican, Kendall had just spoken to his 7-year-old son about why it was important to continue to go to synagogue, so the “bad guys” wouldn’t win. Kendall had been to memorials at synagogues in Juneau and Anchorage, where he lives, in a state that is home to a Jewish population numbering in the couple of thousands.
And then he saw the mailer from a local Republican group attacking Jewish state Senate candidate Jesse Kiehl with the image of a man stuffing a fat stack of hundred dollar bills into his suit.
“I was revolted,” Kendall recalled in a phone interview, saying he believed the ad was blatantly anti-Semitic. “Jesse is proudly and prominently a member of Juneau’s Jewish community… . It is tough for me to process through that and not see an ill intent.”
…In North Carolina, the state Republican Party depicted Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) with what appeared to be a stack of bills in his hand.
In a hotly contested race outside Seattle, Republicans illustrated Kim Schrier, a Democratic candidate for Congress who is Jewish, with a wad of $20 bills fanned out in her hands.
…In Pennsylvania, a Republican state representative ran an ad that painted Democratic challenger Sara Johnson Rothman with money in her hands. It also dropped Johnson, her maiden name, from the graphic while leaving the one she took from her Jewish husband, Scott Rothman.
And national outcry ensued last week after a Republican state senate candidate’s ad against his Jewish challenger in Connecticut was digitally altered in a way to play off classic anti-Semitic tropes. Democratic state Rep. Matthew Lesser was depicted holding a wad of cash in front of him, with a crazed look in his eyes.
…“What’s stunning is that these are old images that are very similar to those from other eras and other places,” said Pamela Nadell, a history professor at American University and the director of its Jewish Studies program. “But I will say I have not seen images like this in 21st-century America before.”
Nadell sent The Washington Post an unflattering image from a 13th-century Spanish manuscript that depicted Jewish money lenders handing over bags of coins to unhappy loan seekers.
…“There’s some famous Nazi posters that have exactly the same images but with different people,” Omer Bartov, a professor of European history at Brown University and the author of a book examining Jewish stereotypes, said of the recent crop of ads.
…Kendall, the Alaska governor’s chief of staff, said he phoned the group that created the flier, the Republican Women of Juneau, and asked what they were thinking after he was flooded with calls and emails.
“I’d like to believe it wasn’t intentional,” Kendall said he told them. “But whatever you do, you need to put out a statement that you condemn anti-Semitism.”
The group, which did not return messages The Post left for its president and another member, has not put out such a statement, Kendall said.
Seth Klayman, a North Carolina resident who has a doctorate in Jewish studies from Duke, flagged the Schumer ad when it appeared in the middle of a news article he was reading online.
…Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, dismissed questions about the Schumer ad in an email.
“The question itself, not the mailer, is a racist anti-Semitic smear,” he wrote. “It is just one more final disgusting attempt to Kavanaugh Republican candidates and activities. We don’t track people’s religion here or lack thereof.”
He called questions about the ad “the single dumbest and most outrageous inquiry I’ve ever had from a member of the media” but did not answer questions about whether the state party had ever run ads against any other candidates with money in their hands.
Kyle Fischer, a spokesman for the Washington State Republican Party, which sponsored the Schrier ad, said that the ad was meant to highlight her support for costly government policies.
…Schrier spokeswoman Katie Rodihan said Republican ads for other candidates in Washington did not feature the same imagery. (Fischer did not answer a question about whether the party had run ads that showed any other candidates with cash in their hands.)
“It’s an outrageous characterization of a candidate that draws on centuries old anti-Semitic stereotypes,” she said. “Kim’s whole platform is focused on lowering costs for families. This is a complete mischaracterization.”
…Bartov, the Brown professor, said that these narratives echoed classic Nazi propaganda that tried to paint Jews as both capitalists and revolutionaries seeking to subvert the social order.
“Much of the rhetoric is about how the left is going to destroy everything, destroy the economy, bring this invasion of barbarians — all of this was very much part of fascist and Nazi xenophobia,” he said. “It’s this combination of things: speaking about them undermining order on the one hand, bringing in hordes of invaders, and on the other hand, manipulating the economy.”
…Bartov said he didn’t believe that the ads could be blamed on naivete.
“It’s not by chance that they’re showing people showing money. It’s not by chance that these people happen to be Jews, and it’s not by chance that there’s more talk about people’s Jewish identity in politics,” he said…
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