08-21-2019, 04:30 AM
As Steven Waldman notes in the Atlantic, “dual-allegiance charges go much further than offering a polite disagreement on policy. They imply not only that a group is un-American, but that its adherents have no agency. They cannot be patriotic, because they are thoroughly under the influence of a foreign power or code.” It’s a way of suggesting not just that one is an “other” but also that one is brainwashed, hypnotized, or lacking in moral agency as a result of nefarious foreign forces. It’s a suggestion that you are a pawn, and lucky to have a protector. This is a slur and a scandal in which the president of the United States is invoking an age-old, blood-soaked, anti-Jewish trope. And, ever the narcissist, Trump is also warning all American Jews that he will not protect them if they are disloyal to him.