A RACE, NOT A RELIGION:

1) Israel loyalty

In the recent controversy over Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) criticizing Israel, conservatives accused her of perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes about Jews having "dual loyalty" to Israel. While she never actually said anything like that, as Eli Valley points out, she could have phrased her comments better to avoid causing unnecessary offense (and indeed she has done so since that time).

But Trump has said something far, far worse than even what the most bad-faith critics of Omar accused her of saying. In a speech before the Republican Jewish Coalition in April, he said that recently reelected Benjamin Netanyahu was "your prime minister." Instead of implying dual loyalty, he all but said Jews aren't actually Americans at all, because they have single loyalty to Israel. As Josh Marshall writes, it's "as though American Jews are somehow an expat community of Israelis resident in the United States." (The conservatives who had a purple-faced screaming fit about Omar mysteriously didn't raise a fuss about this.)

2) Jews and money

One of the oldest stereotypes about Jews is that they are all money-grubbing chislers -- a prejudice that was at the root of countless medieval pogroms. Trump has implied or straight-up said this many times. In a 1991 book, John O'Donnell, the former president of the Trump Plaza Hotel & C[***]o, said Trump had told him: "Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day." [...]

4) Conspiracy theories

Probably the worst anti-Semitic propaganda Trump has pushed is the classic conspiracy theory that Jews control world politics and the global economy. In the last days of the 2016 campaign, he rolled out an ad featuring three rich Jews -- then-Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and financier George Soros -- over a narration decrying "those who control the levers of power in Washington," and the "global special interests" who "partner with these people who don't have your good in mind." The obvious implication is that Hillary Clinton is a cat's paw for a global Jewish conspiracy. As Josh Marshall writes, "These are standard anti-Semitic themes and storylines, using established anti-Semitic vocabulary."

Trump has focused particular ire on George Soros in this vein. He baselessly accused him of funding protesters of Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and suggested Soros could be funding the refugee caravan -- lending credence to the conspiracy theory that world Jewry is conspiring to bring immigrants into the United States to replace white people (thus the "Jews will not replace us" chant referenced above).

It bears repeating that this kind of thing is very close to what you find in Mein Kampf. But you don't have to look at history to see the danger of spreading this sort of poison. A Trump supporter sent a pipe bomb to Soros' house (as well as 15 other high-profile liberals) last year. The right-wing terrorist who massacred 11 Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last October espoused the exact same conspiracy theory about refugees. This is simply the kind of thing that happens when the most powerful person in the world is constantly spewing anti-Semitic propaganda.

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