There is something quaint and even amusing about the perennial suggestion that liberal Jews have at last roused themselves from decades of deceit, empty promises, and betrayals at the hands of the Democratic Party. To the average observer, this strained hope is something like the expectation that a fish will suddenly take to walking on land—not beyond the realm of evolutionary possibilities, but not exactly a probable outcome in the short term.

As one might expect, these sorts of predictions are resurfacing in the context of the 2024 presidential election, given the glaring failures of the Biden-Harris administration following the events of Oct. 7, 2023 in Israel. Whether one notes the administration’s failure to stage a rescue for American hostages or the curious indifference to jihadis pitching their tents across America, it is difficult to miss that this administration has done little more than observe as the flames of chaos are stoked—flames not to be confused with those emanating from the flags set ablaze outside Union Station.

For decades, American Jews have remained Democratic loyalists. In the 2020 election, approximately 70 percent to 76 percent of Jewish voters supported Joe Biden, while around 21 percent to 30 percent voted for Donald Trump—a pattern that carries back to 1968, when roughly 71 percent of Jews voted Democratic, according to the Jewish Virtual Library. Recent figures, however, reveal that 83 percent of Orthodox Jews support Trump, compared to 81 percent of Reform Jews and 62 percent of Conservative Jews who favor Kamala. Secular and unaffiliated Jews, meanwhile, tell pollsters their primary concerns are “the future of democracy” (51 percent) and climate change (31 percent). Notably, only 10 percent of American Jews now identify as Orthodox.

Standard Democratic Party lines about “reproductive freedoms” and “LGBTQ+ equality” remain sacrosanct to many liberal Jewish voters. Meanwhile, organizations committed to combating anti-Semitism and supporting Israel, like the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have aligned themselves with Democratic policy issues, including civil rights reforms, comprehensive immigration reform, and advocacy for “marginalized communities.”

Of course, support for Israel remains the Gordian knot of American-Jewish politics. With Hamas sympathizers now an obvious and growing part of the Democratic constituency, support for Israel has become an undeniable source of friction within the party. This wedge-issue has prompted some individual Jews to reconsider their loyalties, though a popular shift away from the part has yet to occur.

Practically, the left and the Jews serve one another. Most political dynamics, once the garb of lofty rhetoric and elaborate ideology is discarded, can be distilled in terms of “patron” and “client.” The patron provides support, money, and access in exchange for loyalty, thanks, and allegiance.

It is easy to see clientelism in the machine politics of Latin America, the feudal ties of medieval landlord and peasant, the caudillos and hacendados, the Jacksonian spoils system, and the notorious days of Boss Tweed. Yet this basic concept of exchange is found in virtually every political system. In a world awash with promise and pretense, politics remains a matter of mutual benefit—albeit often at the expense of genuine accountability.

In the era of liberal democracy, elections aren’t always decided by groups that are necessarily persuadable, but often by the loyalty of those who vote a certain way, irrespective of circumstance, because they are clients of a political machine. Within the Hobbesian nightmare colloquially known as “Our Democracy,” power is conferred in exchange for rewards distributed according to what is practically a racial headcount. The client classes of the Democratic Party leverage their status as a “protected minority” to secure endless rewards. 

In a multicultural democracy, the side that can reliably garner votes from an ever-expanding nonwhite electorate will triumph over the side preoccupied with the faded glories of “Reagan’s America” and visions of a vibrant Hispanic constituency within the GOP, which remains largely unrealized.

Like nearly every demographic—except for white Christian Americans—Jews historically have found themselves woven into the Democratic Party’s web of patronage. Their loyalty appears driven less by a genuine commitment to “social justice” than by a desire to marginalize perceived threats. Nihilistically progressive, the contemporary Jewish left is motivated by a resentment towards religious Gentiles and a determination to thwart the specter of Christian theocracy. Never mind that that threat is about as realistic today as a potential invasion by Babylonians or the Romans. All of that is beside the point. Jew-hatred exists, but to notice that the groups that actually perpetuate it belong mostly to the Democratic Party’s multiethnic constituency would undo decades of psychological conditioning drilled into us since grade school.

These anxieties persist most strongly among the descendants of Eastern European Jews—those whose ancestors survived pogroms, ghettos, and concentration camps. In contrast, Sephardic Jews, along with old-line German American Jews, exhibit a markedly different temperament. Sephardic Jews, in particular, tend to be more conservative by nature, marrying young, raising well-adjusted children, and fostering a quiet cultural cohesion—seldom indulging in the grievance politics and prey-like mentality so prevalent elsewhere.

Although the conditions that once justified this instinctive fear among Jews have weakened, stoking it does well to secure special recognition, compensation, and favor, regardless of whether the danger is as imminent as it is presented. Victimhood must be manufactured and reinforced. Searching for demons under every rock—or rather, Nazis lurking in every darkened corner of an otherwise peaceful town—has become the anxious obsession of Jewish advocacy. Consider the weekly incident reports from the Secure Community Network, a nonprofit group that catalogs the slightest suggestions of anti-Semitism as though they herald the resurgence of a new Reich. One cannot help but wonder whether reports like this are creating the very anxiety they purport to quell.

One recent report of the Secure Community Network dated Sept. 16, 2024, brings us to Scranton, Pennsylvania. There, local police were alerted to a man from Dunmore known for his history of “concerning” remarks about the Jewish community. The echo of a prejudiced thought was enough to mobilize law enforcement despite no threat—implied or explicit—being present. This “warning” prompted extraordinary security measures at a local synagogue preparing for Rosh Hashanah. More absurd still, the group breathlessly reported about a synagogue in Pittsburgh receiving an email accusing Vice President Harris of being a Nazi, Marxist, and worse—a nonsensical and incoherent rant that, in any other context, would be dismissed as the drunken drivel of disgruntled conservative.

To the sober observer, these “anti-Semitic” incidents and their outsized responses inflate what might otherwise be dismissed as the sad, if hateful, mutterings of disturbed individuals. The gravity with which they are approached is scarcely justified. I do not wish to make light of genuine danger, but to address every random expression of ill-thought as a precursor to violence strains the boundaries of credibility.

While these reports ostensibly were released as security measures, the political utility of this tactic is obvious. It is meant to reassert the status of American Jews as an endangered minority, week after week. When even the slightest of incidents is taken to substantiate claims of “anti-Semitism on the rise!” a narrative is spun. The actual severity of these incidents goes unquestioned as they add to the count and the statistics, dubious as they might be, reinforce a state of crisis among those of us whose minds are the most fertile soil for the seeds of panic. Democrats, in turn, capitalize on this fear to build loyalty and consolidate power.

It is also the case that American Jews remain steadfastly loyal to the high-status hallmarks of the dominant liberal culture. Given time, that allegiance deftly hollows out religion, leaving it an elegant husk—rich in matters of myth and ritual but stripped of conviction—replacing belief with the garish idol of consumerism. “Bagel-and-lox Jews” in their eager embrace of modernity, have forsaken the soul of their faith while clinging to tenets of “Jew-ish” culture. This is why “Queer Sabbath Meals” have fallen into fashion among my peers, why Tel Aviv boasts about being the gay capital of the world, and why the call of Tikkun Olam (a Hebrew call to “repair the world”) has been co-opted to facilitate replacement migration of the Third World. With every aspect of life becoming politicized, as in “democratized,” even religious mandates are reduced to mere fodder for ideology.

A local rabbi once declared before his congregation that Jews are commanded to be “global HR directors.” He is clearly compelled by the spirit of liberalism. While we are indeed called to be a light unto the nations, we have strayed from this obligation by abandoning the commandments—especially those now considered “intolerant.” In the absence of moral direction, Jews have instead “taken on the shape of our container,” preaching the values of petty bureaucratic tyrants and finger-wagging corporate harridans rather than the word of G-d.

History, in its cyclic irony, finds us repeating old patterns. Just as Jews in Persia succumbed to hedonism, many fell to Hellenization under the Syrian-Greeks. Placed in a culture so saturated in “libtarded-ness,” we have, in fact, become the “global HR managers.” One might think this phrase perpetuates harmful stereotypes. Well, I suppose stereotypes persist for a reason.

Orthodox Jews may be outbreeding their secular counterparts, and by numbers alone, one would expect secular Jews to face extinction. If the principles of Western culture are fundamentally incompatible with healthy relationships between the sexes, liberalism cannot reliably sustain itself through birthrates. But liberalism swells its ranks in a way quite contrary to nature, as it approaches all things in opposition to nature. American classrooms, therefore, serve as breeding grounds for insufferable leftists, aided by the corrupting influence of popular culture. Evil, lacking the ability to create, seeks to pervert.

Far from being contained within the secular wings of Judaism, liberalism, that civilizational acid, has permeated deeply into the Modern Orthodox, and even Orthodox, communities. I speak from personal experience. At my university, a friend of mine delivered a speech to members of the Orthodox community drawing parallels between the sins of Noah’s time and the darker, ancient forces underlying the spirit of modernity. He emphasized that it was abortion, forbidden relations, and robbery, in particular, that had prompted G-d to release the floodgates upon the world.

This went about as well as one might think. Students were quick to point their torches and pitchforks squarely at someone so confident in his conviction that he dared to give it public status. The outrage reached such a fever pitch that women and homosexual students rallied for punitive action. An investigation soon followed, and before long, this student transferred elsewhere—where, I am told, he is much happier.

Most ironic was that the very same students who had hounded this Orthodox Jew off campus were, only weeks later, bewailing how Judaism was once again under attack—this time by pro-Palestinian mobs. Say what you will about the tent-dwellers, but one could almost admire their lack of pretense in their open calls for “global intifada.” Pro-Israel counter-protesters, however, wave signs bearing slogans to a more poetic effect of “Israel is tolerant of homosexuals” and “Israel isn’t racist because it welcomes Ethiopians!” Is there a sight more pitiable than groveling to leftist standards of acceptability?

These supposed “brave voices” wasted no time in accepting airtime on Fox News or appearing before House Committees as a burgeoning “activist” class. It was not long before these students were soon rebranded as “conservative,” not because they have embraced the right in any meaningful sense, but because the Democratic Party, grappling with its own internal divisions, no longer finds Jews a convenient client.

The Democratic base considers Israel just another Western, white, settler-colonial project—indistinguishable from America in its conquest of a nonwhite, non-Christian people for its own enrichment. Disaffected liberal Jews, scrambling to reclaim their “protected class” status, rally for measures like the Antisemitism Awareness Act.

We scratch our heads in bewilderment. We could hardly imagine that our loyalties might have indirectly facilitated the mass importation of Hamas sympathizers into this country. Jewish students, once silent when professors unleashed venomous diatribes against “White Christian men”—rhetoric unimaginable if aimed at any other group—lament this treatment when Israel becomes the latest target of the mob. Liberal Jews have long wed themselves to the spirit of the age, and it was not until Oct. 7 last year that many found themselves unexpectedly “widowed.”

American Jews may be at unease with the growing acceptance of literal jihadis as a loyal Democratic client base, but they are certainly not turning to the right. They remain thoroughly liberal in their sensibilities—what one might call “Republicans in name only.”