‘No MAGA Left Behind’

The Trump administration likes to justify illiberal policies with liberal arguments. It does this, I assume, because it’s easier to build public support for an un-American program if it’s presented as a vindication of traditional American values. But part of me wonders if it simply tickles the president and his lackeys to use the enemy’s language when attacking the enemy’s system.

One example is the culture war being waged by the White House in the name of fighting antisemitism. Donald Trump and his circle are quite tolerant of people with hostility towards Jews, but pretending that they aren’t gives them a useful pretext to rationalize defunding left-wing universities like Harvard and deporting left-aligned foreign students who’ve criticized Israel. The government isn’t discriminating against the right’s cultural enemies on the basis of viewpoint, you see, it’s protecting Jews. Who could be against that?