We underestimate the role public education has played in preparing the ground for all manner of demagoguery to take root. To be sure, pointing and yelling “antisemitism!” is no longer effective because antisemitism has become part of mainstream discourse. But I do not think that better Jewish messaging will turn the tide, because it wasn’t a failure of Jewish messaging that brought us to this point, but the success of decades of left-wing race essentialism and identitarianism, particularly in public education. You simply cannot send a generation through a public school system that puts racial pride (except for whites/Europeans) at the forefront of students’ understanding of themselves and their place in America and teaches them to understand their world and the dynamics of power through a racial lens where one racial group is designated as an oppressor and the rest as the oppressed, and not expect that framework to transmogrify. The very cognitive frameworks young people applied to understanding Black-white relations in their English class have now been adopted to “understand” alleged Jewish and non-Jewish power imbalances. The racial pride that certain groups were allowed to express in school has now been adopted by young whites who ask, “Why not me?” And if white people can be villains for their disproportionate wealth and achievement in society, why can’t Jews be “ultra-villains” for doing even better? In today’s antisemitism, we are reaping what we allowed to be sown in our schools for years. And as those of us who warned about this possibility years ago predicted, once this ideological virus begins replicating, mutations are inevitable, and containment becomes exceedingly difficult. Antisemitism is our warning-our canary in the coal mine-because it is one of the earliest signs of social cannibalization; an angry society’s appetite is rarely sated by cannibalizing the smallest of minorities. This is not a problem that will be easily solved-once these ways of thinking are entrenched, it becomes exceedingly difficult to free people from them. But in order to mitigate the damage, we must treat the divisive and demagogic ideologies polluting our public schools as a national security threat. If our schools do not instill in our children a shared civic identity that transcends ethnic factionalism and impart to them a renewed understanding of individualism, we are truly doomed. United we once stood, and divided we will fall. https://t.co/ZYZe3G3ult
— Frank McCormick (@CBHeresy) October 16, 2026
We underestimate the role public education has played in preparing the ground for all manner of demagoguery to take root.
To be sure, pointing and yelling “antisemitism!” is no longer effective because antisemitism has become part of mainstream discourse.
But I do not think that better Jewish messaging will turn the tide, because it wasn’t a failure of Jewish messaging that brought us to this point, but the success of decades of left-wing race essentialism and identitarianism, particularly in public education.
You simply cannot send a generation through a public school system that puts racial pride (except for whites/Europeans) at the forefront of students’ understanding of themselves and their place in America and teaches them to understand their world and the dynamics of power through a racial lens where one racial group is designated as an oppressor and the rest as the oppressed, and not expect that framework to transmogrify.
The very cognitive frameworks young people applied to understanding Black-white relations in their English class have now been adopted to “understand” alleged Jewish and non-Jewish power imbalances. The racial pride that certain groups were allowed to express in school has now been adopted by young whites who ask, “Why not me?” And if white people can be villains for their disproportionate wealth and achievement in society, why can’t Jews be “ultra-villains” for doing even better?
In today’s antisemitism, we are reaping what we allowed to be sown in our schools for years. And as those of us who warned about this possibility years ago predicted, once this ideological virus begins replicating, mutations are inevitable, and containment becomes exceedingly difficult.
Antisemitism is our warning-our canary in the coal mine-because it is one of the earliest signs of social cannibalization; an angry society’s appetite is rarely sated by cannibalizing the smallest of minorities.
This is not a problem that will be easily solved-once these ways of thinking are entrenched, it becomes exceedingly difficult to free people from them. But in order to mitigate the damage, we must treat the divisive and demagogic ideologies polluting our public schools as a national security threat. If our schools do not instill in our children a shared civic identity that transcends ethnic factionalism and impart to them a renewed understanding of individualism, we are truly doomed.
United we once stood, and divided we will fall.
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