The Tiki Torch Has Been Passed

The Tiki Torch Has Been Passed

Abe Greenwald for Commentary

In his 1961 inaugural address, John F. Kennedy said, "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.” 

Here’s my pitch, free of charge, for a fresh Democratic slogan that ties Camelot nostalgia to the current disposition of the party: “The Tiki Torch Has Been Passed.” It’s got a nice ring to it, no?

It also happens to be true.

In 2017, hundreds of neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, carrying tiki torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us!” They were part of a larger crowd that opposed the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue from a local park. Before long, they clashed violently with counterprotesters, and one of the white supremacists deliberately drove his car into a crowd, injuring dozens and killing a 32-year-old woman.

Soon afterward, President Donald Trump remarked that there were “very fine people on both sides.” The media and Democratic politicians exploded at once with accusations that Trump was praising neo-Nazis. Joe Biden even claims that this was the moment he decided he would run against Trump in 2020.

Never mind that Trump was referring to the debate about removing the statue and also stated explicitly, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”

The Democrats needed to bury that part of his remarks to bolster their core position at the time: Trump was a racist, his followers were racists, and the entire MAGA project represented a white-supremacist conquest of America.

Yes, Democrats were terribly distraught at the prospect of a white-supremacist, anti-Semitic takeover of our beautiful country. 

So distraught that nine years later, their chief strategy is attacking Jews, Jewish money, and Israel—and criticizing the Republican Party for failing to tolerate anti-Semitism. 

The Dems are now the party of the forgotten Jew-hater. Leading Democrats today, unlike Trump, praise neo-Nazis and anti-Semites round the clock. How could they not? The anti-Semites are their supporters, candidates, and elected officials. There’s Mamdani, Platner, El-Sayed, and other colorful figures. 

For example, there’s Texas Democratic congressional candidate Maureen Galindo, who pledged on social media last week to “turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking.” She added: “It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists.”

If there’s still a quiet part that Dems are not supposed to say out loud, Galindo seems to have said it. Major Democrats have summoned herculean courage to condemn her remarks about imprisoning Jews and castrating them for pedophilia. 

But everything else goes. So-called moderate party leaders and potential presidential candidates are denouncing AIPAC, Israel, “the Epstein class,” etc.

They’re also going out of their way to praise Jew-haters across the aisle. Yesterday, the career anti-Semite Thomas Massie lost a Republican congressional primary election in Kentucky. Just a week ago, Massie posed for a picture with a supporter who was wearing an “American Reich” sweatshirt complete with a Reichsadler-esque logo. Last night, after his defeat, Massie’s first public comment was “I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede, and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.” 

Democrat Ro Khanna, a 2028 presidential hopeful, couldn’t bear to see such a fine man go down. “My good friend @RepThomasMassie lost tonight,” he wrote on X. “He lost because he had the guts to stand up to the Epstein class and against the war.” Nor could Khanna miss the opportunity to hoover up Massie’s anti-Semitic base. “I say to this voters who feel rejected by Trump,” he went on. “We welcome you. Join our coalition to take on a rotten system and stand for the working class over the Epstein class.”

An hour later, perhaps realizing he forgot to mention AIPAC, Khanna posted: “The message is clear: if you take a stand against war, AIPAC, & the Epstein class, you have no place in the Trump coalition. But the future of the Democratic Party that is done with the establishment is yours to shape.”

The message is clear, alright: There are only good people on one side—on the other, there are Jews. When you blame an election loss on a rigged system, it’s a threat to our democracy. When you blame it on a system rigged by the Jews, it’s “guts.” And if you blame the pesky Jews for everything, you’ll find a home in the Democratic Party. 
  
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the tiki torch has been passed to a new generation of Democrats.