'Antisemitism,' the Trump administration's code word for justifying ideological persecution

WashingtonOne criteria for denying visas, arrest activists and cut funding to universities, in addition to demanding that they review aspects of their teaching curricula. Antisemitism has become the magic word with which the Donald Trump administration is justifying the persecution of certain speech and ideologies that do not fit with the positions of the new administration. "What we are seeing is an expansion of the definition of antisemitism to be used against what, under other circumstances, would be protected political speech in the United States," Sarah McLaughlin of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) tells ARA.

For Trump to be able to freely use the concept of antisemitism right now, Republicans and lobbyists had already been preparing the ground. Last spring, the current Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, ran for office. on the campus of Columbia University to give a confrontational speech to the protesting students and accuse them of being "anti-Semitic."

Republicans seized on an extremely sensitive issue to bring the debate over the concept of anti-Semitism back to the table. "A lot of this is based on a definition from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and there's pressure to use this definition of anti-Semitism. And, theoretically, there's an open debate about whether this is the best definition of anti-Semitism, because some of the examples provided in this definition are political expressions protected by the Constitution.

A year ago, there was a debate about how far the right to protest extended and what should be considered anti-Semitism. Now the government is applying its own definition, and it already exists At least three activists and a university professor arrested under that charge. The four, who were residing in the country with legal status, face deportation for their views on Palestine. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he had already revoked more than 300 student visas for individuals he deemed to be acting against the national interest or having been involved in a crime.

Unprecedented pressure in decades

To do so, Rubio is invoking a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that gives him broad authority to qualify for deportation anyone he believes could negatively impact US foreign policy. "One of our big concerns is Rubio's justification for this provision. Because this isn't limited to Israel and Palestine, it could also apply to all those positions on Ukraine, Canada, Russia... There's a very long list of foreign policy issues that are considered important to the administration," McLaughlin warns. "Furthermore, we know that there are already students who are self-censoring for fear of being deported, despite their speech being protected by law."

Just twelve weeks into office, Trump has already made arrests under this criterion to persecute and silence speech critical of the Gaza war. The arrests and funding cuts to universities are not only creating a climate of fear among pro-Palestinian activist groups, but also threaten to create a climate of normalcy surrounding ideological persecution that could later be applied to other speech unrelated to the Palestinian cause. "There are parallels with what happened to the communists during McCarthyism," says McLaughlin. But she adds: "However, some of the actions Trump is implementing, such as targeting student visas and migrants with legal status to exercise censorship, are actions that have not been seen in decades."