If you have any doubt that antisemitism is a persistent problem in California and the U.S. as a whole, you need only consult the voter information guide for the upcoming primary election.
That’s where Don J. Grundmann, an independent candidate for governor, has written a crazy anti-Israel rant that is as sinister as it is bizarre. It’s in his “candidate statement,” page 24.
Grundmann claims, among other things, that conservative activist Charlie Kirk was “murdered by [a] shape-charged bomb Israel used”; that the World Trade Center was destroyed by Israeli art students, and that “Israel rules our conquered Republic.”
For good measure, Grundmann attacks Christians, too: “Talmudic ‘Judeo-Christian’ values don’t exist,” he declares.
It would be nice to think that Grundmann is alone in his incoherent ramblings. But they reflect content widely available on the Internet, and bear a strong resemblance to the nonsense put out regularly by podcasters on the far left and far right. Tucker Carlson, for example, described the U.S. last week as “occupied by Israel.” Carlson no longer has any influence on the White House, but he still has a large audience.
One should not exaggerate the reach of these extremists. Just this week, we learned that the Southern Poverty Law Center was allegedly paying informants and leaders inside extreme right-wing organizations.
In other words: there was so little hatred in American society that they had to pay people to create some.
But the haters are there. And while it’s difficult to believe any voter is going to be convinced to believe in Grundmann’s conspiracy theories, one can understand why the Jewish community is both worried and outraged that the California Secretary of State printed Grundmann’s hoaxes.
The problem is that Grundmann does not appear to have violated any rules.
California Code section 85601 only has one restriction on candidate statements: namely, that they may not mention any opponents for the same office. Other than that, anything goes.
It would be folly to ask the state government to exclude Grundmann’s statement simply because it is offensive. It is not hard to imagine how the state government might abuse the power to edit candidate statements, as they have done with ballot initiative descriptions.
But the fact that Grundmann found a clever way to get the state to distribute his extremist views is a warning to Californians: Antisemitism is a real problem, and it is not going away.
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