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Jarrin Jackson, an antisemitic businessman running for Oklahoma state Senate district 2, recently listed Jews as evidence that evil exists. He also claimed he is not “beholden to the Jews.”
The Jews, including this writer, are a convenient scapegoat. We have been the alleged mark of bad tidings for hundreds of years.
Yet we will continue to fight against the rising antisemitism that is now part of the political narrative in this country. Recall our last illegitimate president who said there are “very fine people on both sides” of the Charlottesville, VA, Unite the Right rally, in which Heather Heyer was killed.
During the January 6th insurrection, one of the criminals prominently featured wore an antisemitic sweatshirt that read 6MWE, for six million weren’t enough. Six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.
Further media focused on a man in an antisemitic Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt. Auschwitz was the main concentration camp where Jews were slaughtered by the thousands each day.
Many were rightfully horrified by these pictures. Yet Jarrin Jackson and his hate-filled followers take pleasure in saying the quiet part aloud, hoping to tip the political scales in his favor with voters.
And he is not the only one.
Antisemitism on full display among far-right political candidates
Marjorie Taylor Greene, political darling of the persecution complex crowd, doesn’t bother to hide her antisemitism. The woman who has been censured for refusing to wear a mask in Congress often crows loudly about the “global elite.”
Antisemitic videos are splashed across Taylor Green’s social media, including a Holocaust denier screaming about an “unholy alliance of leftists, capitalists and Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation” for “breeding us out of existence in our own homelands.”
Such political upstarts have the support of Trump, who made similarly outrageous claims. In fact, Trump referred to a cabal of Jews as a “global power structure” that doesn’t “have your good in mind.”
But Jarrin Jackson is not our alleged President, nor a Congressman. Yet.
Hate on the rise among candidates like Jarrin Jackson
Across the country, antisemitism is on the rise. The Anti-Defamation League tracked over 2700 incidents of antisemitism in 2021, a 34% rise from the year before.
Jews have been targeted and killed while in prayer, at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, and more recently the entire Jewish community in San Antonio was put on alert by the FBI, who cited a credible threat. This is what we live with daily.
Come to any temple or synagogue in Tulsa and you will find police presence during events, whether evening prayers or youth services. It is jarring, not comforting, to have protection from those who would seek to harm us.
Politically wannabes like Jarrin Jackson are stoking the flames of divisiveness and hate, looking for a scapegoat for all of society’s ills and problems, a group at which to point a finger and blame. The 2% of the country who identify as Jews will do just fine for people like him.
According to the Director of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, who notes that violence against Jews has been increasing for 40 years, “I think individuals should feel empowered to interrupt intolerance when it happens. Call out hate when you hear it.”
Jarrin Jackson is a man trying to fan the flames of antisemitism in Oklahoma and bring hatred to light for the sake of his own desire to grab power. He must be called out and he must be stopped.