Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer argued in his new book that the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol Building is a prime example of the “danger of right‑wing antisemitism” – more so than deadly shootings targeting Jewish synagogues.
“For our entire lives, American Jews of my generation have known that if someone was going to walk into our homes or synagogues with a gun, it was more likely to be someone from the far right,” Schumer (D-NY) wrote in his book “Antisemitism in America: A Warning” which
hit bookshelves Tuesday and was obtained by The Post.
Schumer, 74, pointed to the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh – the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in US history, which killed 11 people – and the 2019 Chabad of Poway shooting in San Diego, which left one person dead, as examples of the “real-world impact” of “the far right connecting Jews to malicious plots.”
But the senator, who is Jewish, explained that those attacks didn’t open his eyes to antisemitism as much as the storming of the Capitol by supporters of President Trump.
“The event, however, that most opened my eyes to the danger of right-wing antisemitism and shook my soul was one that I lived through myself: January 6, 2021,” Schumer wrote, adding that he doesn’t think the president himself shares the views of the antisemites.
The senator recalled how he was looking forward to certifying former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win and becoming the highest-ranking elected Jewish official in US history, after two Democratic wins in Georgia Senate races the night before, when he felt a “a yank around the neck” from a police officer that he described as “jarring.”
As he was being whisked away to safety by Capitol Police officers, Schumer recounted seeing “a mob of people in front of us, less than thirty feet away” in the Capitol’s central corridor.
“There’s the big Jew. Let’s get him,” Schumer claims he heard one of the rioters shout.
The alleged incident was one of “several” instances of antisemitism displayed on Jan. 6, 2021, Schumer said.
Those shows of hate – including reports of rioters making Nazi salutes, holding flags with swastikas and wearing clothing with antisemitic messages – serve as a “reminder that while the main driver of the riots wasn’t antisemitism, it always seems to travel in extreme right‑wing circles,” Schumer argued.
“I thought immediately of those twenty‑two thousand American Nazis at Madison Square Garden,” the senator wrote, after seeing a photograph of a rioter in a “Camp Auschwitz” sweater. “If they were alive today, I knew they’d be the kind of people to storm the Capitol.”
“For me and for many others, January 6 was a searing reminder of the consequences of political extremism, of what happens when conspiracy theories, ultranationalism, and bigotry are allowed to flourish and given a direction and a target,” he continued.
“[T]he same forces that inspired the rioters on January 6 are the ones that fuel antisemitism.”
Despite this view, Schumer doesn’t believe Trump, 78, is antisemitic.
“Let me state unequivocally: I do not believe Donald Trump is an antisemite,” the New York Democrat wrote. “But he all too frequently has created the feeling of safe harbor for far‑right elements who unabashedly or in coded language express antisemitic sentiments.”
The senator also charged that Trump – who is
threatening to strip federal funding from universities that allow antisemitic discrimination and harassment on campus and
deport “pro-Hamas” activists – hasn’t “tried to counteract” or “speak out against” antisemitism in the same way his predecessors have.
“Antisemitism itself is not, and has never been, an invention of the right,” Schumer wrote before he argued that “certain ideological movements on the right latch on to antisemitism and – inadvertently or by design – help spread it.”
“That is why it is not the isolated gunman we fear most, as fearful as that person may be,” he added. “More than the man with his finger on the trigger, we fear the ideas that would drive him to pull it.”
“Just as many on the right justifiably feel that
Democrats have an obligation to shout down antisemitism on the left, Republicans have an obligation to shout down antisemitism coming from the right.”
