Trump Jr. Tries to Pit Jews and Muslims Against Each Other

Donald Trump, Jr. tried to capitalize on a widely-condemned tweet from New York City’s Mayor de Blasio, using the opportunity to pit Jews and Muslims against each other by suggesting that Mayor de Blasio favored Muslim New Yorkers over their Jewish counterparts.

Not only does this claim downplay the Islamophobic surveillance and police violence Muslim New Yorkers have been subjected to for decades, it is also part of the Republican Party’s antisemitic effort to use Jews as a political tool against progressives. Donald Trump, Jr. has engaged in numerous instances of antisemitism. His feigned concern about Jews receiving equal treatment is nothing more than a cynical ploy to distract from his own antisemitism and target his political opponents.

Trump Jr. is not the only right-wing figure who used Mayor de Blasio’s tweet to promote a false narrative about Muslim and Jewish New Yorkers. The following day, Katie Hopkins, a British white nationalist who has called for a “final solution” against Muslims and has compared immigrants to cockroaches, tweeted out the exact same images shared by Trump Jr., making the same inaccurate argument he did. White nationalist Fox News host Tucker Carlson echoed this argument on his show, prompting white nationalist and Forida Republican congressional candidate, Laura Loomer, to further amplify it:

Laura Loomer’s inflammatory and inaccurate social media post pitting Jews and Muslims against each other.

Some background:

Following a large funeral in one of Brooklyn’s Hasidic communities, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio singled out Jews in a tweet decrying large gatherings and threatening to arrest people who continued to do so. By singling out his Jewish constituents and lumping them together as one monolithic group, the Mayor scapegoated Jews as uniquely responsible for the spread of COVID-19. This was particularly alarming given the rise in antisemitic attacks against members of New York and New Jersey Hasidic Jewish communities.

The Mayor later followed up his statement with two more seemingly out of the GOP playbook: He tweeted in honor of Israeli Independence Day and then shared surveillance images of two young people of color accused by the NYPD of committing an antisemitic hate crime. Rather than apologizing for his own antisemitism, he sought to deflect attention away from it by “proving” his support for Israel — treating it as a stand-in for American Jews — and then by highlighting antisemitism from Black and Brown communities, presenting them as the “real” antisemites.