Last week, a couple of drifters, David Anderson and Francine Graham, precipitated an attack that is being classified as a case of domestic terrorism. Their first victim was Jersey City police detective Joe Seals who stumbled onto the pair in a stolen U-Haul van in a cemetery in Jersey City. After killing him, the killers went to a kosher market and killed Leah Ferencz, Moshe Deutsch, and Douglas Rodriguez before being killed by responding police officers. Inside the U-Haul, officers recovered a modern sporting firearm, a 12-gauge shotgun, and three pistols. The kosher market seems to have been targeted because of the virulently anti-semitic beliefs held by Anderson. Anderson was a member of the Black Hebrew Israelites — these were the same people who set off the infamous conflict between Stolen Valor fraud and sometime medicine man, Nathan Phillips and the kids from Covington Catholic High School. There is speculation that Anderson, who styled himself variously as Dawada Maqabath, AKANapoleonHill, Baryon Bloodbourne and Dawad Maccabee, actually wanted to attack the synagogue next door to the market; that place of worship contained a school and a daycare center.

Long story short, five people and the two killers are now dead because of antisemitism. How, we may ask, could that happen?

Simple.

Apparently, antisemitism has made a comeback as a socially accepted bias and perhaps one that is totally justified. Consider this story from the Washington Post shortly after the killings:

Imagine if WaPo ran an article in the aftermath of the Walmart massacre about racial tensions among white El Pasoans thanks to increased Hispanic immigration. That would rightly have been deemed insane. That's this article, but it's all fine, because Jews. https://t.co/K3UuAVG31Y

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 13, 2019

This by the New Yorker:

Untangling the Hate at the Heart of the Mass Shooting in Jersey City | The New Yorker https://t.co/dsuhlcgqvf, see more https://t.co/RpAKIDztiu

— Desperate Times👏WASH YOUR HANDS👏 (@realJohnCurley) December 12, 2019

It is one thing to report on ethnic tensions in a way that seems fawningly eager to understand and soft-pedal the underlying prejudice and hate. But when it gets to the point where an elected official feels sufficiently comfortable to engage in a vile antisemitic rant on social media, you’ve reached a point where that hate and bigotry has been so mainstreamed that people who fancy themselves community leaders feel free in giving it voice. This is the case with Joan Terrell who is a trustee of Jersey City Board of Education.

What tees this up is one man (Lincoln High School Principal Chris Gadsden) complaining that City Hall wouldn’t get upset over a similar shooting in a predominantly black neighborhood (I have to admit, I’ve never before encountered the term “Moorish” in a context of a US ethnic group and I’m making an assumption about what he means, but I don’t get out all that much so I might be wrong).

She seems nice, doesn’t she? Just the kind of person you’d want involved in the education of your kids.

This is pretty extraordinary stuff. The Jews in Jersey City are “brutes.” They threatened black homeowners who would not sell their homes with bringing drugs and prostitutes into the neighborhood. Community gardens were eliminated. Jews were recruited to come to Jersey City with “make it yours” ads. Programs helping the black community were closed. Rabbis were selling body parts (luckily she didn’t have a Planned Parenthood clinic around or she would’ve had a cow). Drugs and guns are being planted in the black community (by whom???). She closes by lionizing the killers and seemingly challenges other people to do the same:

Mr. Anderson and Ms. Graham went directly to the kosher supermarket. “I believe they knew they would come out in body bags. What is the message they were sending? Are we brave enough to explore the answer to their message? Are we brave enough to stop the assault on the Black communities of America?

This is crap that you’d expect a Grand Wizard in the Mississippi Delta, circa 1930, to be handing out.

It is abundantly clear that antisemitism is slowly but surely being mainstreamed into American culture. The left tries to blame Trump but they need to look inside. Terrell is not, you can bet your bottom dollar, a MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporter. She’s not a product of America under the Trump administration. Her antisemitic bigotry has been present for years and has been nurtured in a Democrat-controlled city. It is beyond credulity to suggest that a person who writes this kind of filth on social media was not vocal about it to friends and colleagues. And yet she has an advisory position on the Board of Education.

This kind of thing is a logical and foreseeable outcome of the Democrat policy of race-baiting, racial balkanization and identity politics that they have long relied upon to stay in power. When you cultivate racial and ethnic grievances as a means to acquire power, at some point, quite a few people lose sight of the fact that it is just a grift and start believing it. And when that happens you have no right to clutch your pearls and wonder aloud how it could’ve happened.