"Is this what 1930s Germany looked like?"

That's the question my wife asked me in the weeks following Oct. 7.

"No," I answered. "Not yet."

In prewar Germany, government policy and state-sponsored propaganda fueled the inferno of violent antisemitism. In America, at least, the government still condemns Jew-hatred and — for the most part — prosecutes anti-Jewish hate crimes.

But for how long?

Newly elected representatives Darializa Avila Chevalier of New York, Melat Kiros of Colorado and Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan all won their districts easily despite relentlessly repeating the malignant fiction of Gazan "genocide." NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani couldn't make it through a speech mourning victims of the Oct. 7 massacre without parroting the same heinous slander.

Meanwhile, ousted Rep. Haley Stevens has been pilloried by her own party and is receiving death threats for the crime of demanding integrity over blind party loyalty. As a Jew, I would like to have confidence in constitutional protections and the rule of law. But it's getting harder, staring down the barrel of antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism, radicals elected to Congress and the wholesale abandonment of facts, logic and history in favor of mindless sloganeering.

"From the river to the sea" is nothing but a brazen call to purge all Jews from the land of Israel. How perverse is it to accuse Israelis of committing genocide by defending themselves against genocide?

Before 1948, nearly a million Jews resided in Arab lands; today, 99% have been driven out or fled for their lives. In Israel, by contrast, Arabs sit in parliament, serve as supreme court justices and play on national soccer teams. There have been Arab deputy prime ministers and even an Arab Miss Israel. So, who is actually guilty of apartheid?

Israel returned Gaza to Arab rule in 2005. Israel also offered to return up to 97% of the so-called West Bank to Arab governance in 1967, 1993, 2000 and 2007, only to have the offer rejected each time by Arab leaders. Archaeological and historical evidence places Jews in Israel 3,000 years ago, whereas seventh-century Muslim invaders conquered and occupied at least half of today's 22 Arab countries. So, who are the real "colonizers"?

How can we explain this unhinged rhetoric and brazen disregard for facts? Are the purveyors of anti-Jewish hate speech true believers blinded by willful ignorance? Or are they political opportunists indulging in this week's addition to the Ethical Lexicon:

Demagoguery (dem*a*gogu*ery/ dem-uh-gog-uh-ree) noun

Consolidation of power by appealing to the emotions, fears, prejudices and popular desires in place of reasoned arguments, facts or moral principles.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels understood that if you repeat the same message over and over, the masses will eventually believe that it's true. Paradoxically, the more outrageous the message, the more readily listeners come to accept it. The subconscious mind concludes that no one could possibly invent such an outlandish claim; therefore, it must be so.

It's called The Big Lie, a technique effectively employed by Joseph McCarthy, Joseph Stalin and, of course, Adolf Hitler. But if leaders, pundits and politicos have confidence in the authenticity of their own positions and platforms, why must they resort to lies?

There are two possible answers. One is that they've bought into an emotionally rewarding narrative without concern for whether it's true. They know they can't present a coherent argument, so they double down on their ideology. Lacking any rational defense for their positions, they attack again and again with smoke and mirrors.

The second possibility is that they don't care about either truth or resolution. Their only goal is to retain control over their own power base by rallying them against a fabricated enemy.

Leaders who disseminate disinformation about Israel are typically in the second group. Acolytes who credulously consume their disinformation are in the first.

Intellectual incoherence is easy to spot, nowhere more than among antisemites. Jews have been hated for being rich and for being poor; for blending in and for remaining apart; for being subhuman vermin and for controlling the governments and the banks.

There is no logic to Jew-hatred; and that is precisely the point. The question is, who is worse: the demagogues who deal in malicious slander or the willfully ignorant who empower them?

The more important question is this: What are we going to do about it?

See more by Yonason Goldson and features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists; visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Andrew Neel at Unsplash