Biden Antisemitism Envoy: In Past Weeks, We’ve Seen Antisemitism ‘Comes from Every Place on the Political Spectrum’

On Thursday’s “PBS NewsHour,” Deborah Lipstadt, the Biden administration’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, stated that “antisemitism is ubiquitous. It comes from every place on the political spectrum, as we’ve seen in the past couple of weeks, and, as I said in my confirmation hearings before the Senate.”

Co-host Geoff Bennett asked, “Is there a difference between right-wing antisemitism and left-wing antisemitism? Does the political ideology warrant different approaches to combating it?”

Lipstadt responded, “I think — it’s ironic, antisemitism is ubiquitous. It comes from every place on the political spectrum, as we’ve seen in the past couple of weeks, and, as I said in my confirmation hearings before the Senate. It can come from Christians. It can come from Muslims. It can come from atheists. It can come from Jews. It comes from everywhere. And, on some level, the far, far right and the far, far left often meet on the issue of antisemitism. You need different tactics to address these groups, but I don’t know if you can really change those people on the extremes. The people I want to reach when I’m going overseas, when I’m speaking to different groups, to different governments, civil society, are the people who might say, well, there’s something to this. I want to expose them to what this hatred can do. No genocide ever began with people picking up guns or machetes or creating gas. It begins with words, and it escalates from there. And words, death to the Jews, Jews should die, we need a Jew-free society, which you hear in this country and you hear abroad, are just fodder for that hatred, and it doesn’t go away. It just builds and builds.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett