Thread by @TheJewishVote

Thread.

Trump accused Jewish Democrats of “disloyalty” this week. Many have pointed out how dangerous this centuries-old accusation has been, leading to violence and expulsion.

It also destroys movements. Here's a story from US history of the disloyalty accusation against Jews.

Just 8 years after the Holocaust, in 1953, Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, members of the Communist Party, were the first civilians in American history to be executed for espionage.

Many Leftist Jews were terrified about what might happen next.

A little context: It was the Red Scare. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 revoked citizenship from Leftist recent immigrants. The Dennis trials convicted community organizers of treason. Jews, seen as foreign, radical, and conspiratorially powerful, were often targeted.

Leftist Jews mass organizing with allies helped win the first workers’ rights protections in American history.

They then spent decades being disproportionately accused of being “Un-American,” targeted by blacklisting, losing jobs, suffering arrest, & attacks by their neighbors.

Shortly after the Rosenbergs were executed, the US Supreme Court upheld the verdict that the IWO of NY was a “Communist front," and “constitutes a hazard to the public,” and that its assets be liquidated and seized by NY State.

Its so-called “hazardous” activities included:

*A mutual aid insurance policy for working-class members
*A strike fund to support striking workers, including non-members
*Picketing white supremacist trade unionists to advocate for PoC workers’ rights
*Defended The Scottsboro Boys in court
*A children’s summer camp
*A magazine

The largest chapter of the IWO was its Jewish one, the JPFO. It had 50,000 members (For comparison, a year ago, all of DSA had 50,000 members).

The JPFO was banned in Dec. 1953. Those 50,000 working class Jews lost their health insurance, & their political organizing community.

But they managed to save some parts:

--The magazine, now known as “@JewishCurrents,” may it live to 120.
--And the summer camp, “Kinderland.”

The FBI wouldn’t leave Kinderland alone.

The FBI posted cars outside Kinderland’s gates on opening day of 1954 to take down license numbers.

Families were afraid of losing their jobs, and the Rosenbergs had been executed just a year before. The camp shrunk from over 500 campers to 158 campers, in just one year.

Many Jewish communities decided over the next decade to spurn the Communists and anything that might seem as un-American & un-capitalist. This moment, coinciding with light-skinned Jews accessing whiteness & its privileges, was a major turning point in Jewish-American politics.

The broader Left is still a shadow of itself from before the Red Scare. Many communities fighting for freedom, Black, Arab, Muslim, People of Color, have long histories of being targeted as "outsiders." It's a tactic that destroys lives, careers, and our democracy.

So while Jews prepare for the impact of Trump's latest antisemitic dog whistles, we keep our eyes firmly on the prize, organizing with all people facing unrelenting attacks.

History teaches we can't only be #DisloyalToTrump. We must fiercely grow our loyalty to each other.

More history here: digital.library.cornell.edu/docs/iwo-jpfo/…

& a broad review of antisemitism here: jfrej.org/understanding-…