Why Are Some on the Right Blaming the Jewish People for Everything?

Stream Senior Editor John Zmirak joined Bill Martinez Live last week to discuss the temptation towards antisemitism that has gained traction on the right in recent years. Listen in as the two discuss the origin of this movement and how the real solution is a better understanding of our own faith in this 22-minute video.

Articles mentioned in this interview:

“If You Won’t Shout ‘Crucify Him!’ Perhaps You Prefer Barabbas”

“Wanna Start a Civil War? Declare Your Enemies ‘Unfit Parents’ and Take Their Kids Away”

Editor’s Note: The transcript that follows was automatically generated and lightly edited, so please be aware there could be typos or other small errors. The Stream is working toward a transcription service that does fast, accurate, and reliable work; thank you in advance for your patience!

00;00;00;15 – 00;00;06;14
Back with you, America. Bill Martinez here, along with Dr. John Zmirak from stream.org. Hey, John, how are you doing?

00;00;06;17 – 00;00;08;06
Hey, Bill. Doing well. Thanks.

00;00;08;09 – 00;00;34;06
I’m going to say happy Easter early to you, my good friend, on this Holy Week, that we’re going through. I got to tell you, boy, you got a lot of people, revved up, rightfully so. Last time regarding, the story of the Maccabees. what’s going on with the Vatican? and it’s not only the Vatican, it’s churches across America that are abandoning, doctrinal, foundational principles.

00;00;34;08 – 00;01;07;15
Absolutely. I’ve got a piece coming out on Good Friday, about this, where I talked about there’s a there’s a ry a disturbing rise in and anti-Semitism on the right and especially in some conservative like, Latin Mass Catholic circles, but in no means everybody over there. But there is a rise in that, in, in, in scapegoating Jewish people, in seeing Jewish conspiracies everywhere.

00;01;07;17 – 00;01;43;09
it’s ugly and it’s sort of it seems mysterious at first. But in my column I try to explain where it comes from. first of all, our foreign policy over the last 20 years was overly obsessed with controlling the Middle East, with trying to take over countries, democratize them, transform them in our own image. And, some of the people who were involved in crazy projects like the Iraq War said they were doing it to protect the state of Israel.

00;01;43;12 – 00;02;06;11
Israel didn’t ask for the Iraq war. Israel didn’t benefit from the Iraq War. But some Americans zealots thought they were protecting Israel by overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime. And occupying the country and turning it into an American colony. It was crazy. But there are people now who want us to start a war with Iran because they they say it’s a threat to Israel.

00;02;06;13 – 00;02;28;12
Well, you know, that’s Israel’s business. You know, we’re not even in a formal military alliance with Israel. It’s not a member of NATO. And it’s not a it would destroy the Trump administration if he got us into a war. It would it would do to the Trump administration what what the Iraq war did to the Bush administration. Everything about the war and everything else would be accomplished.

00;02;28;17 – 00;02;58;07
We wouldn’t deport any illegal immigrants. We wouldn’t overturn die. Everything would be focused on the war. So I pray that the cooler heads within the Trump administration do not get us into a war with Iran, whatever people say. But so yeah, the fact that some people associated with the Israel lobby have pushed bad policies in the past, you expect there to be some pushback, you know, okay, so we’re not going to do that kind of crazy stuff anymore.

00;02;58;13 – 00;03;20;26
But there’s something much darker out there. There’s a darkness. You see it in Canada. So when you see it in Kanye West, you see it and and an increasing number of podcasters where they have conspiracy theories blaming Jews for everything and even seeming to side with Hamas. And in my column, which I was coming out on Good Friday.

00;03;20;29 – 00;03;49;09
Which is a really vexed day for Christian Jewish relations, I try to explore that. Now. Why is Good Friday a tough day for Christian Christians and Jews? Because on that day we commemorate Jesus’s death and Jesus was murdered by a conspiracy of Roman authorities and some Jewish leaders. Right. Those Jewish leaders got some members of the crowd to shout their approval of Jesus’s death.

00;03;49;12 – 00;04;25;14
Over centuries, Christians have totally mis misinterpreted this story. Not all Christians, but here we are chronically. Some have, like in in Tsarist Russia, every Holy week, in some places there would be pogroms where the Christians would attack the Jews to beat them up for what they did to Jesus. Right. Can you possibly get the story more backwards? in the passion narrative, all the people present the mostly Muslim Jews are representatives of the entire human race.

00;04;25;21 – 00;04;55;27
You and I, as sinners. We were all there. Every time we sin, we are driving a nail into Jesus’s hand. Exactly. Absolutely nothing to do with your genetic heritage, with whether you practice Judaism, whether you practice Christianity. We are all sinners and our sins nailed Jesus to the cross. and, on on Palm Sunday at Mass, you know, we play the part of the crowd when they read the gospel and we have to say, crucify him, give us Barabbas.

00;04;56;00 – 00;05;20;25
That’s a relatively recent thing in the Catholic liturgy, and I think that’s an improvement. Most things they did to the liturgy in the 60s were bad. This, I think, is an improvement because it reminds us, you and I, we are the crowd that prefers Barabbas. Yes. So a lot of people. But that’s a very uncomfortable thing. You realize it’s very uncomfortable to admit your complicity in the suffering of Jesus Christ.

00;05;20;27 – 00;05;44;06
It’s much more comfortable to say, oh, those Jews did it. The Jews killed Jesus to benefit us. What a deal. Well let’s go. But even though we benefited with eternal salvation, let’s go punish the Jews anyway. It’s it’s an absolute madness. It’s Satan. It’s the devil trying to take the redemption Jesus brought us and turn it on its head.

00;05;44;08 – 00;06;17;24
there there are other reasons for it, though. I wrote a piece at the stream a long time ago called The Samson Option, where I talked about how so many secularized Jews in the West who don’t practice the religion of Judaism in any meaningful way. They have found a substitute religion progressivism, liberalism, multiculturalism. To them, Jewish identity consists in pushing for the left, pushing the left wing views, left wing causes everywhere, and there are historical reasons for that.

00;06;17;27 – 00;06;40;28
In past centuries, conservative regimes often discriminated against Jews, whereas those who protected the Jews were often seen as the more liberal progressive elements. That’s no longer true. And that stopped being true with communism. When communism emerged on the scene in Russia, a lot of Jews supported it because the czars had been mistreating them. But the communists quickly persecuted Jews as well.

00;06;40;28 – 00;07;03;21
Stalin was persecuting Jews. Jews were fleeing the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was helping the enemies of Israel to try to wipe that country out. But that cultural memory, that the left is the friend of the Jews and the right is the enemy. It made many Jews just children, almost. They felt like they were genetically left wing Democrats.

00;07;03;23 – 00;07;31;21
So people react negatively to that. Okay. And the other thing I think this most going on since World War two, anti-Nazi ism has replaced Christianity as sort of the civic religion. That’s the religion that’s in the public square that we no longer look to God to see what’s good and try to pursue that. We look to the Nazis and see what’s evil, and we just avoid that.

00;07;31;23 – 00;07;54;07
So any evil that can’t fall under the Nazi umbrella, they get away with it. So abortion it up to the same people who will go to the Holocaust Museum and weep. They’ll give money to Planned Parenthood, I know, which is a eugenics organization founded by white racists to limit the number of black people or any other thing.

00;07;54;09 – 00;07;57;09
And meanwhile, the black leaders are saying nothing, right?

00;07;57;11 – 00;08;26;23
Transgenderism that the things they’re doing to children. And now in Colorado, they are passing a law that if you don’t affirm your child’s transgender identity, you could lose custody if you divorce case, the affirming parent will get custody because you are an unfit parent. I wrote a piece at The Stream. This is a way to start a civil war is to tell people that if they practice their religious beliefs, you’re going to take away their kids, that that’s what the the Nazis did to some people in Poland.

00;08;26;23 – 00;08;51;00
They took away their kids to be raised as Aryans. churches have, you know, French. The French monarchy’s to do that to Protestants, taking away their kids and giving them to be raised as Catholic. That is the most fundamental attack. But okay, so if the if the false religion that replaced Christianity after World War two was, well, I don’t know what’s good, but we know the Nazis are evil, so we’re just going to do the opposite.

00;08;51;02 – 00;09;19;17
It allows abortion, allows transgenderism, gruesome experiments on kids that are as hideous as anything Mengele did in the death in the concentration camps. They’re happening a gender affirming surgery all across the country. So if if the the, the dominant religion is anti-Nazi ism and it’s false and it’s falling apart and it implies open borders and being and, anti-white racism is okay.

00;09;19;17 – 00;09;44;09
Radical Islam is okay. Hindu nationalism is okay. Anything that wasn’t done by the Nazis is okay. And and conversely, anything the Nazis did is evil. Anything. Even if they fight cancer. You know that the Nazis believed in border control. The Nazis believed in law and order. The Nazis believed in in large families. So it’s just a totally irrational, crazy way to make up a religion.

00;09;44;09 – 00;10;08;22
But it was the religion of the West. Since World War two. Now people are rebelling against that post-Christian concoction that has been the dominant liberalism since World War Two. The problem is they’re going in the opposite extreme. They’ve been told for 40 years anything sensible, any common sense, natural law thing you want, that’s probably kind of Nazi. That’s that’s Nazi, that’s Nazi, that’s Nazi.

00;10;08;25 – 00;10;31;01
Deporting illegal immigrants is Nazi. Keep telling people that everything’s sensible, normal of sane non suicide is Nazi. And after a while they’re going to start giving Nazi ism a look. They’re going to say, well it seems like the only thing that all the good things are linked to the Nazis. Maybe the Nazis are getting a bad rap. Maybe I should read Holocaust revisionist literature, which pretends they didn’t murder the Jews.

00;10;31;04 – 00;10;37;20
And the left has created this Frankenstein monster, and now it’s roaming around killing you.

00;10;37;22 – 00;11;03;21
Well, you know, this is the thing that, you know what? What comes to mind here, John, is that when the Jews cited, as you said, I mean, interestingly, five days, six days before, they are yelling Hosanna as Jesus is coming into Jerusalem and he knows what he’s coming into. And they are, you know, with palm branches cheering him into the city.

00;11;03;23 – 00;11;17;11
And, and then five, six days later, they’re telling Pilate, well, crucify him and let the consequences of that crucifixion be upon our heads. And our children said, think about that.

00;11;17;13 – 00;11;24;19
Yeah. Look, you know, that was a a small number of people 2000 years ago. They don’t get to speak for everybody, right?

00;11;24;22 – 00;11;54;13
No, no, but I get that. But even going back to Caiaphas, Caiaphas said, look at. It’s better that one man would die for the sake of of the nation, as opposed to this nation be demised. And, but here it is. I mean, they’re just, I, I just pause on that moment of what, what the Jews there had had to say, even though it’s a small group, they had cast this curse upon them and their nation, and for generations.

00;11;54;13 – 00;11;55;07
John.

00;11;55;09 – 00;12;26;04
Well, that is that was used as a pretext by Christians to persecute Jews for hundreds of years. Yes. Clearly it’s a miss application. totally, of the of the gospel. Well, what we have to realize is Christ’s blood being upon you is a good thing. Christ. Blood is what redeems us. And and the way I think to to always read the history of the Jewish people as a Christian is that they are stand ins for the entire human race.

00;12;26;04 – 00;12;26;26
Yes they are.

00;12;26;26 – 00;12;47;12
I used to I used to joke because I, my my Jewish friend was a roommate at Yale. I said, Jews are only human, except more so. In other words, the Jewish people are like the human race, writ large or in concentrated form, because God shows them as kind of the protagonist, as like the representative of the entire human race.

00;12;47;16 – 00;13;12;02
Right? It was a Jew, Jesus, who was the Redeemer, and his mother, Mary was was Jewish. The apostles were all Jewish. The the sacrifice of the mass is based on the temple ritual in Jerusalem. The sacrifice of the mass, especially the traditional mass, is closer to the temple ritual in Jerusalem than anything that happens in a synagogue. We are a Jewish religion.

00;13;12;04 – 00;13;40;06
Christianity is a Jewish religion, and we we should be thankful and grateful to the Jewish race for the gift of monotheism and eternal salvation and Western civilization. That doesn’t mean we have to embrace the crazy things that left wing Jews who are lost besides, and abandon their own tradition when they grab on to left wing causes and claim that if we don’t, if we oppose that we’re Nazis, we have to say no.

00;13;40;06 – 00;13;41;22
Actually you’re lying.

00;13;41;22 – 00;13;42;19
You’re exactly.

00;13;42;19 – 00;13;43;21
You’re kind of going crazy.

00;13;43;26 – 00;14;02;19
Well, they’ve abandoned the legitimate John. You and I’ve talked about this. They have forsaken the legitimate, which is, you know, we all do that. We’re all fallen people, humanoids. And you’re exactly right. I mean, as you were speaking earlier, you know, the refrain from the book of judges, you start to see things according to your own eyes.

00;14;02;21 – 00;14;27;03
And because you let go of these foundational, core first principles that come from God, that are, you know, the Jews were told, look at in the morning when you wake up as you’re walking on the highway, as you, in the evening when you sit down and with your family, you’re to talk about these key principles and keep, you know, repeating them, you know, to yourself and to one another.

00;14;27;06 – 00;14;40;01
there was a reason for that. And as you say, rightfully so, the the Jewish, nation is a classic example of humanity. And what happens when you when you forsake God?

00;14;40;03 – 00;14;46;04
Yeah. I think we’re meant to see the Jewish people as a microcosm of the human, human race.

00;14;46;08 – 00;14;48;00
I like you. Yeah, I like that. Yeah.

00;14;48;00 – 00;15;16;01
And, and so, any, any, Sorry. My dog’s kind of going nuts in the background. anti-Semitism is. It’s so stupid and vulgar, and it it’s I it’s tempting people because they want scapegoats. We want it. We want to we want to blame. They want these people want to blame Jews for the death of Jesus. They don’t have to realize it was their sins.

00;15;16;08 – 00;15;42;17
She would have been crucified for one sinner. For your sins or for mine. And what we need to do is own that. Embrace the guilt and thank him for purging us of the guilt by his sacrifice. This on the cross, and the idea that you would target and mistreat his his cousins, the Jewish people today to punish them for the gift of salvation that came from the Jewish nation.

00;15;42;19 – 00;15;44;05
It’s so diabolical.

00;15;44;05 – 00;15;45;14
It really is. Yeah.

00;15;45;21 – 00;15;48;04
Fingerprints all over it.

00;15;48;06 – 00;16;03;24
Well, it’s just as hypocritical as those Jews that picked up stones that wanted to kill the woman caught in adultery. Right. And you can almost, you know, see Jesus coming down from the cross and writing in the sand everybody’s sin.

00;16;03;27 – 00;16;09;01
Right? Right. I’ve always wondered what he wrote in the sand. Have you have any what I think to know.

00;16;09;03 – 00;16;13;28
I yeah, I, I think you know, it was obvious that it was left out for a reason.

00;16;13;28 – 00;16;14;14
Yeah.

00;16;14;17 – 00;16;28;01
because, we can only imagine, you know, what would have caused these people that were so, you know, so ready to throw the first stone until Jesus says, hey, here. And so you just, I mean, you know.

00;16;28;01 – 00;16;50;21
One, one, one thing that people don’t realize that was a trap, okay? Under Roman law, the Jews did not have the authority to impose the death penalty. Yes, but but the the law of the Old Testament said they should do the death penalty for adultery. So these people were trying to get Jesus into being the ringleader of violating Roman law so they could turn him into Pilate.

00;16;50;24 – 00;17;13;25
Exactly. That was it was a it was a it was lawfare. It was like what they are they they did a Donald Trump and and Mike Flynn, it was the first example of lawfare, of trying to use the law to twist it against its purpose and find some federal judge to, to issue an injunction. It takes out the righteous from doing what needed to be done.

00;17;13;27 – 00;17;33;10
Yeah. And they are so crazy, just like today, you know, here they get together and they’re trying to come up with some sort of narrative of why, you know, Jesus, you know, should be crucified. And so they’re making up this stories. Oh, he’s going to blow up the temple. And you know, and, oh, he refused to pay taxes to Caesar.

00;17;33;13 – 00;17;34;07
That’s you.

00;17;34;07 – 00;17;58;29
Know, that’s why it’s important that pilot finds an innocent. Yes. Because Jesus was not a criminal. He was not punished for cause. He was he was not justly executed. He was an innocent victim. The spotless lamb, the lamb that was slain, whose blood redeems us all. So exactly, powerful theological reasons for everything that’s in the gospel narrative.

00;17;59;01 – 00;18;13;03
Exactly. Including the truth that the two criminals who were rightfully punished as one said, hey, look at he’s innocent. We’re getting what we deserved. So you need to, you know, dial it back, so to speak, right?

00;18;13;04 – 00;18;37;07
That’s right, that’s right. And that’s a great affirmation of the justice of capital punishment. The good thief says we deserve this, right? Jesus doesn’t rebuke him and say, oh no, Pope Francis will teach in 2000 years that the death penalty is always illegitimate and inappropriate. No, he didn’t say that. He praised the. He praised the thief for his faith and promised him have it.

00;18;37;10 – 00;18;52;29
So that’s the most powerful scriptural verse in support of the death penalty. Is that the good thief on the cross, the first person to go to heaven after Jesus? One verse, as we know, is there because Jesus said so. He affirmed the death penalty and Jesus did not correct it.

00;18;53;02 – 00;19;08;08
Exactly. You know, you talk about, what the left will do and man, according to his own eyes and what they’ve done to, advocate the the concept of compassion, where does compassion begin and where does it end? John?

00;19;08;10 – 00;19;35;05
It begins with actually a cost to you. Okay. So if you want to be compassionate to refugees, sponsor them, sponsor one illegal refugee and become responsible for his food, his shelter, his education. Do it with your own money. Don’t vote like the people in Martha’s Vineyard to become a sanctuary city, knowing there will be no immigrants brought to your city.

00;19;35;08 – 00;19;51;04
Migrants come. You call the National Guard to have them removed that. Okay, so it’s the opposite of Martha’s Vineyard. There’s a certain negative infallibility. Whatever they’re doing in Martha’s Vineyard, you could pretty much do the opposite, and you’ll probably be getting it right.

00;19;51;06 – 00;20;12;14
Exactly. But, you know, compassion is such an overused word, and it’s one of those words that are used in today’s vernacular to shut down the debate and to really shut down a, an intellectual, conversation where we can arrive at that place of compassion that truly is compassion. It and not manipulative.

00;20;12;16 – 00;20;35;25
Yeah, it’s a magic spell like diversity. Our diversity is our strength. That is got to be the stupidest slogan I have ever heard. It’s like cigarets prevent cancer. That’s how false it is. Okay? Cigarets might prevent Alzheimer’s because they kill you before you get it. exac. No, no nation in history has thought diversity was one strength. Why?

00;20;35;29 – 00;21;11;28
The same reason your body’s immune system doesn’t welcome foreign bodies. Foreign DNA floating around in it. Could it? Because it leads to weakness and division, not the whole mantra diversity, equity, inclusion. Other magic words like public health, which they use to lock us all in our homes and force an untested vaccine into our arms. whenever you see all the nice, respectable people in society, the people who get published in The New Yorker, in the New York Times, the people get platformed by large churches whenever they all agree about something.

00;21;12;00 – 00;21;18;21
You should probably give it a second look. It’s not necessarily false, but probably it’s probably false.

00;21;18;21 – 00;21;39;24
Right. And the fact that it’s probably false is enough, because the truth is that black and white, you know, Jesus said it very clearly. He’s the truth, the way and the life. There’s no exception. But, you know, you got compassion of sorts. They want to rewrite history and rewrite what Jesus and what God himself said. John’s Americas always.

00;21;39;24 – 00;21;46;09
We appreciate the insight. Look forward to next week. As always, happy Easter. My Easter. John Zmirak from stream.org.