“As Steven Waldman notes in the Atlantic, “dual-allegiance charges go much further than offering a polite disagreement on policy. They imply not only that a group is un-American, but that its adherents have no agency. They cannot be patriotic, because they are thoroughly under the influence of a foreign power or code.” It’s a way of suggesting not just that one is an “other” but also that one is brainwashed, hypnotized, or lacking in moral agency as a result of nefarious foreign forces. It’s a suggestion that you are a pawn, and lucky to have a protector. This is a slur and a scandal in which the president of the United States is invoking an age-old, blood-soaked, anti-Jewish trope. And, ever the narcissist, Trump is also warning all American Jews that he will not protect them if they are disloyal to him.”
Medicynical note: Never thought in my life that I’d hear anybody, much less the President, stoop so low. His comments are steeped in antisemitic tropes and insulting to not only to Jews but to all citizens. He’s become a bad joke and really needs to go.
Medicynic 