Jewish Trump Voters and the ADL, I "Salute" Your Defense of Elon!

The GOP has a Third Reich problem that Jewish right wingers are desperately trying to pretend doesn't exist

The other day I found out what happens when you’re a powerful billionaire with a history of embracing virulent antisemitic conspiracy theories, but you’re a supporter of Trump and you make Third Reich salutes in front of a large crowd. Right-wing Jews and even the ADL will make excuses for you and tell the world not to believe their eyes.

According to them, Elon Musk didn’t really give a Third Reich salute the other day. It was some other kind of salute. Everyone, according to them, puts a hand to their heart and then lifts that arm upward just like the H-guy. Or he was being “awkward” because he is autistic.

I guess it’s not surprising that the same people who once told me that a horse medicine would cure a pandemic disease are now telling me that autism causes people to imitate the H-guy. These people are a true fountain of medical expertise.

I note that I once took one of those online autism tests and scored well beyond borderline autistic. I guess that means I can make Third Reich salutes in my synagogue and everyone will say, “Oh, that Stuart, poor guy is autistic and can’t help himself.” I can even write pro neo-Nazi party op-eds in German newspapers and be forgiven by my synagogue friends. Thanks, Elon!

The fact is that the GOP has a Third Reich problem that existed well before Elon lost his mind and became a ketamine-addled nutter who supports fascism throughout the world and is so antisemitic that he once felt a need to take a half-hearted public-relations-repairing trip to Israel and shake Netanyahu’s hand. Neo-Nazis love Donald Trump. They vote for him. Trump dined with one of them for votes, they filled the ranks of his January 6th coup crew, and he supported a rap artist with a love of the H-guy well beyond any reasonable this-makes-political-sense date.

Jewish voters for Trump know that the GOP has a Third Reich problem. But they’ll never admit it because they also know that the GOP is not a normal political party. It’s a cult that demands total fealty. If they state any criticism, they’ll be kicked out of the cult faster than you can say Mogen David.

So instead of dealing with the dangerous reality that Trump is beholden to and is being advised by a man, Elon Musk, who openly supports H-lovers in Germany, they rally in support of both Musk and Trump. It’s at best depressing to see Jewish people turn a blind eye to rabid antisemitism, especially when people like me with family who were murdered in the Holocaust do so.

Some Jewish Trump voters try to rationalize this embarrassing excuse-making and boot-licking by claiming that progressives did the same exact thing when they turned a blind eye to the antisemitism of the anti-Israel protests on campus in 2023-2024. Many progressives did indeed do this. They were as pitifully weak, craven, and self-destructive as Jewish Republicans today.

But many progressives also condemned those protests. Many left the progressive movement altogether in disgust. None of those Jews were viewed as pariahs in the Democratic Party for voicing their condemnation. That’s because the Democratic Party is a normal political party. It has its flaws aplenty, but it isn’t a cult.

I am an equal-opportunity detester of the left and right. They can both go rot. As for the Jewish progressives who made excuses for or actually supported the pro-Hamas protestors on campus and the Jewish right-wingers who make excuses for or actually support the antisemites in the GOP, I have one thing to say: With Jews like you, “mir darphin nisht ka’sonim.” We don’t need enemies.