Rejecting the Ideologies of Antisemitism

As we await the final report of the White House Religious Liberty Commission (RLC), the storm  continues around its February 9 hearing and the aftermath. Providence, Juicy Ecumenism, and, more generally, IRD have followed and analyzed the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sarah Stewart helpfully highlighted accurate comments on X from Bishop Robert Barron, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Winona-Rochester, about inaccurate comments from former RLC commissioner Carrie Prejean Boller. A current commissioner, Barron was unable to attend the February hearing. Nor was another commissioner Cardinal Timothy Dolan, recently retired as the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York. Dolan publicly agreed with Barron’s statement.

Lost in the storm—even after the RLC’s April 13 final hearing and with ongoing legal resistance from the Interfaith Alliance and other progressive critics—has been the fullest conversation that needs to and could be had on the sources of antisemitism.

The long history of antisemitism should be just that—history—but it is not. As evidenced by the persistent chatter of certain online pundits and social media influencers, historical or conventional antisemitism is still with us, at home and abroad. Every American should speak out against it.

Little of the coverage of that fateful February RLC hearing has addressed the substance presented by the witnesses for all three panels. Readers are encouraged to watch the full testimonies, all available on YouTube. The third panel, especially, should be watched in its entirety, in order to see the manner and lack of facts and standing from Boller, as well as the content from longtime American civil rights attorney Leo Terrell, Father Thomas Ferguson (pastor of Good Shepherd Roman Catholic Parish in Alexandria, VA, and a member of the RLC Advisory Board of Religious Leaders), and Babylon Bee founder Seth Dillon. As a subject matter expert on comparative ideologies as well as American politics and religion, I was a witness on this same panel, seated between Terrell and Fr. Ferguson.

For the RLC hearing, I was tasked with a specific purpose: to help Americans understand the ideologies—or parts thereof—of antisemitism that negatively affect U.S. politics and higher education and undermine our freedoms, including religious liberty.

First, it is essential to define an often misunderstood term. Ideology is not just an idea or set of ideas. It is not religious faith. It is not a political, economic, or social point of view. It is not a political party or movement, although either can be, or become, the vehicle of an ideology. What, then, is ideology? It is a fixed political worldview that holds within it a plan for fundamental societal change. Ideology is characterized by the belief that man’s nature and thus society are malleable and can be remade and restructured (both repeatedly, if necessary). Ideology is based in “truth” as defined and therefore relativized by itself, rather than permanent truth discovered through the harmony of reason and revelation (e.g., as expressed in the American Founding).

Born during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, ideology fully formed in the modern era. The twentieth century is the most destructive in human history in terms of war, tyranny, and injustice—much of that due to ideology. Not every “-ism” is an ideology, and not all ideologies are totalitarian. But all ideologies are extreme in their agenda for fundamental societal change, whether they employ violence. While not technically needed, it can be helpful to place the modifier radical before the worst cases of ideology.

Second, it is necessary to explain how ideologies of antisemitism have made their way—at least, in part—to the United States, influencing almost a century of higher education and politics. Communism and Nazism have exerted the most impact. For these ideologies, think extremist in terms of intent and effects, rather than “far left” or “far right.” By way of either Karl Marx and his heirs or Adolf Hitler and his adherents, these ideologies reject the God of revealed religion and are antisemitic. Historical or conventional prejudices against Jews on religious, racial, or other grounds may still be present. If so, these prejudices are exacerbated by ideology.

In U.S. higher education, critical theory and its various offspring from the 1930s to the present benefited from following Progressivism; through a highly adaptable cultural Marxism, they have entrenched themselves in the humanities, law, and social sciences. In this environment, increased polarization in contemporary America has manifested on campuses in viewpoint discrimination (political, religious, and/or philosophical), “wokeism,” and other extremism. As an inflection point, October 7 exposed antisemitism—pre-existing and new, intellectual as well as activist—especially at elite universities.

This academic ideology of antisemitism deriving from communism is also present in elements of our body politic. Intellectual and activist agendas are sometimes mutually reinforcing. Since the 1960s, a porousness between higher education and politics has spread the effects, and effectiveness, of ideology that is also antisemitic. Intellectually, cultural Marxism has co-opted identity—a word with concrete meaning for Jews; in activism, cultural Marxist ideology serves as justification for, and its tools are used in, antisemitic demonstrations and attacks.

Nazism’s effects on U.S. politics and higher education are less intellectual and more scattered. They reach smaller populations, with young, disaffected men—and some women—on everyone’s minds these days. Such groups view Jews and other minorities as the impediment to their standing, if not supremacy. For visceral more than academic reasons, young white supremacists have absorbed the identity distortion of cultural Marxism and joined it with prejudice, discontent, insecurity, and loneliness to “prove” their “superiority.” While the world is not their stage, they have access to and use mouthpieces and megaphones on social media.

How should Americans respond to, reduce, and prevent ideologies of antisemitism in politics and higher education?

1. Correct information and non-ideological education are needed at all levels, K-12 through graduate school. Nazism internalized and ideologized antisemitism. Communism is atheistic and antisemitic. We must reject and undo the ideologizing. In tandem, we need a renaissance in “hard news”—i.e., just the facts.
2. A robust defense of religious liberty and respect for faith traditions are necessary. Like the RLC commissioners themselves, all Americans should be involved in this endeavor.
3. Freedom of speech and civil discourse are essential in and of themselves and as supports of religious liberty.

My testimony ended on a personal note, as I shared my background as a “Three F”—faith, family, freedom—American, specifically a Catholic and native Washingtonian who came of age under Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan. In the D.C. area, at that time, Holocaust survivors visited schools and witnessed. At the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), our Witness Project tells the stories of victims who have resisted and survived communism. Too many in the past, including Soviet refuseniks and other Jews, were twice victimized by the Nazis and the Communists. Americans should not make this past part of their present. Now more than ever, we need witnesses—in schools, on campuses, and throughout the public square—as part of the solution to combat ideologies of antisemitism in the United States.

Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, PhD, is Senior Fellow at Pepperdine University School of Public Policy and Chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC). She is a member of the Institute on Religion & Democracy Board of Directors.

More from IRD:

Post-Liberal Catholicism and Anti-‘Zionism’

Catholic Influencers’ Antisemitism Problem

Catholic Mean Girl Carrie Prejean Boller in Twitter Fight with Bishop Robert Barron