Is Elise Stefanik good for the Jews?

(RNS) — Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., will be the next United States ambassador to the United Nations.

Many Jews are cheering.

Not so fast.

You might remember Rep. Stefanik, from upstate New York. She earned her Jewish street cred through her pointed interrogation of university presidents during a House hearing on campus antisemitism.

She asked University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill whether calls for genocide against Jews would constitute harassment on Penn’s campus, according to the university’s code of conduct. The congresswoman repeated the question to Harvard President Claudine Gay (Stefanik is herself a Harvard alumna) and MIT President Sally Kornbluth. All three presidents said the answer to Stefanik’s question would depend on “context.”

OK, so far so good.

But Rep. Stefanik backed former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. On Jan. 7, 2024, she appeared on “Meet the Press” and called those who had been arrested for their actions at the Capitol in 2021 “Jan. 6 hostages.” She claimed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was responsible for the attack on the Capitol. Rep. Stefanik describes herself as being “an ultra-MAGA warrior.” In other words, this upstate Republican legislator embodies some of the darker elements of contemporary Republican ideology. She has appeared on Steve Bannon’s podcast. She voted to keep pathological impostor George Santos in Congress, tweeting on X that he would “take on NYC liberal elites and bring a new generation of GOP leadership to NY … ”

Which prompts the question: What was behind Stefanik’s hard questioning of those university presidents?

It’s those “NYC elites” — and surely, way beyond NYC.

So, let’s talk about the war against elitism — which, in some way we have not yet completely unpacked, was responsible for the Trump victory last week (or, perhaps more precisely, Kamala Harris’ loss).

It is absolutely clear to me that Oct. 7, 2023, provoked a major culture war within American society itself. American Jews have seen every aspect of elite culture weaponized against Israel, and against them: from school curricula, starting in the youngest grades, that feature the demonization of Israel; to the publishing industry (what I have called the literary intifada); to authors’ boycotts of Israel; to bookstores pulling up the welcome mats for pro-Israel and Zionist authors.

All of this is bad. I, and many others, have decried it.

Moreover, when it comes to the elite universities, American Jews are wondering aloud: Is an Ivy League education worth the possible danger to my children and to their Jewish identity?

That is a good question. And, as any of my regular readers know, I am horrified — nauseated, actually — by the nihilism that has emerged from American academia.

But Jews should be very, very careful before joining the attack on the “elites” and “elitism.” As historian Richard Hofstadter noted, already 60 years ago, there is a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in American life. It is not pretty, and it is not hospitable to Jews, especially when the intellectual class is so heavily Jewish.

So, back to Elise Stefanik. Her championing of a Jewish cause was merely a weapon in her arsenal in a larger war that has major implications for the American future.

In fact, come to think of it: There is every reason to believe Elise Stefanik doesn’t like Jews all that much. Because her political views are only one click away from some very dangerous conspiracy theories.

To quote NBC News:

Stefanik … accused Democrats of conspiring with pedophiles to provide baby formula to immigrants and promoting lax border policies in order to bring about a “permanent election insurrection.”

Stefanik combined two conspiracy theories in one.

First, the QAnon conspiracy theory — the bizarre hallucination that a secret cabal (itself a term with antisemitic roots, coming from kabbalah, the secret mystical doctrine of the Jews) of pedophiles controls America.

Second, the great replacement theory — a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory that got its start in Europe. It alleges that there is a nefarious plot to replace white Europeans with Muslims, as a way of conquering Europe. In the United States, “Muslims” became “nonwhite immigrants,” and the agents of replacement were the Jews.

To quote an American Jewish Committee study:

Arthur Jipson, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Dayton, said antisemitism is the most enduring component of the white supremacist worldview. … Today’s white supremacist propaganda echoes 12th Century condemnations of Jews such as the charge of blood libel, the widespread blame of Jews for unconnected murders and other horrific crimes. But in some white nationalist circles, that condemnation is not as blatant. While white supremacists condemn “ZOG,” or the “Zionist-occupied government,” white nationalists often use more coded language such as “an international conspiracy to undermine white civilization.”

This conspiracy theory leads to violence. The Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh; the march in Charlottesville, Virginia, with its cries of “The Jews will not replace us!”; the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, where 51 people were murdered; the Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where 23 people died; and the supermarket in Buffalo, New York, where 10 people died — all of these massacres can be traced back to elements of that conspiracy theory.

How relevant will her conspiratorial theories be at the United Nations? That remains to be seen. My guess: very little.

But this is for my Jewish friends, mostly. Before you fawn over this choice, just know the whole story.