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I have a theory, and it goes like this: One reason right-wing politics has flown so far off the rails is because, in the aftermaths of past Republican defeats, no one with real clout in the conservative movement has leveled with GOP voters. Nobody would tell them their grievances were unattractive, and rooted in lies. Nobody would encourage them to look inward, or to help from the government, to solve problems in their communities, instead of blaming Mexicans or Chinese people or “Hollywood” 😉.
Tellingly, the conservative who came closest, in his smarmy and self-serving way, was JD Vance. His memoir Hillbilly Elegy was a strained rumination on white working class dislocation, but he disavowed it the instant he realized the shortcut to greater wealth and power ran not through repudiating Donald Trump’s demagoguery, but through aping it.
The United States could still use a more earnest version of that earlier Vance—an avatar for what you might call respectability politics for white conservatives. But it will have to wait for Trump’s second presidency to collapse or Republican fortunes to turn south. It would ring discordant when the right feels victorious and emboldened, and honestly there’s nobody in Republican politics who’d choose to do this at the moment. There may no longer be a single prominent Republican who believes it. Only in calamity might someone with real name recognition step forward and say enough—in your bigotry and scapegoating you conform to terrible stereotypes, and you give the country and the Republican Party a bad name.
But since I believe this kind of appeal has some merit in theory, I want to be true to myself and speak to someone in one of my own communities about his appalling conduct, which also conforms to harmful stereotypes. Specifically, I want to tell Mark Zuckerberg, Shame on you for doing antisemites’ work for them.
KAPO AMERICA
I don’t have high expectations for people in Zuckerberg’s shoes. He’s a billionaire executive with an interest in maintaining good relations with the U.S. government. When Trump is president that militates for obeisance and corruption. That’s why so many business leaders have paid tribute to Trump in one way or another, though some, unlike Zuckerberg, have managed to pull it off in lower-key and less undignified ways.
Zuckerberg is the most prominent Jewish aspirant to a still-forming MAGA oligarchy, but unlike his ideologically fanatical peers (Elon Musk, Peter Thiel), he came late to rapprochement with Trump, and has thus had to do far more groveling [ [link removed] ].
Musk and Thiel suddenly find themselves spokespeople for the ruling class, menacing its critics, maybe even creating official government policy. Zuckerberg is supplicating, trying awkwardly to fit in, tossing favors Trump’s way in exchange for nothing, kissing his ass and hoping it pays off in the form of mercy or consolation prizes.
More than the all-in, right-wing oligarchs, Zuckerberg looks craven and weak and insecure. Now where have I seen that kind of depiction in the past…
It is not on Jewish people that antisemites caricature us, falsely, as all of these things. But it’s all the more reason for leaders in our communities to transcend caricature.
As Gene Weingarten once wrote [ [link removed] ], "To be a shanda for the goyim is to confirm the most hurtful stereotypes, thereby doing damage twice: a Jew who dishonors Jews by not only doing something bad, but doing something that confirms the worst fears of others about Jews in general."
To be fair to Zuckerberg, he isn’t the worst groveler. Jeff Bezos, who, as a major federal contractor, has more at stake than Zuckerberg, grovels at least as pathetically. Four years ago, Zuckerberg donated money to organizations that helped voters cast ballots safely during the pandemic, then kicked Trump off Meta platforms after the January 6 insurrection, only to disavow his civic giving, welcome Trump back on to Facebook, and swaddle him and his movement. For his part, Bezos sabotaged the Washington Post and abandoned its “Democracy Dies In Darkness” mantra to appease Trump, while Amazon funneled $40 million into the Trump family coffers.
Both pathetic! But I concern myself with Zuckerberg because he’s doing it all to fit into a circle of power that’s shot through not just with other billionaires, but an overlapping posse of bigots. The price he’s paying isn’t just financial, it’s to help them dehumanize the objects of their hatred and foment atrocities against them when (as a Jewish public figure and someone who’s been down this road before [ [link removed] ]) he knows better.
If you find this kind of complicity abhorrent, consider joining Off Message, where groveling isn’t just frowned upon, it’s forbidden.
SHANDA OF THE THREADS
When I was a child, I would have had sympathy for Zuckerberg. Shortly after launching Off Message, I wrote about growing up Jewish in a right-wing community of Christians [ [link removed] ], and how it pitted me against an inseverable part of my own identity. I wanted to fit in, and that meant lying to myself and others, and pretending not to notice casual antisemitism.
But a combination of getting older and witnessing Trump, then Musk, invite neo-Nazis out from their sewers has made me sensitive to just how chickenshit that kind of self-denial is. Not necessarily for a teenager trying to feel normal, but definitely for a grown man with a platform, and certainly for a billionaire with one of the largest platforms in the world. ...

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