Opinion: Israel is the last vestige of European colonialism - so Trump defends it at all costs

At a July rally in Des Moines, Iowa, Donald Trump used a telling turn of phrase. While touting the benefits of his recently passed tax-and-spend bill, the American president remarked: “No death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker - and in some cases, Shylocks and bad people.” 

“Shylock” is, of course, a reference to the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and is widely recognised as an antisemitic trope. The Anti-Defamation League, for example, called the president out for his comment, while Trump, for his part, later claimed ignorance of the term’s anti-Jewish connotations.

It might be possible to write this off as an isolated comment, but Trump’s gaffe is part of a larger pattern of antisemitism linked to his Make America Great Again (Maga) movement. In May, NPR identified three administration officials with close ties to antisemitic extremists, including a man described by federal prosecutors as a “Nazi sympathiser” and a prominent Holocaust denier.

More recently, Trump’s erstwhile ally Elon Musk has come under fire for antisemitism once again when his Grok AI bot launched into antisemitic tirades praising Adolf Hitler.

Read more: Israel is the last vestige of European colonialism - so Trump defends it at all costs Opinion by Kyle J Anderson