We have a serious problem with rising tides of white supremacy and antisemitism — both in America, on the political right and left, and around the world. It’s not a new phenomenon, but it is the responsibility of leaders everywhere to work aggressively to combat this poison. Instead, we have a president who, in clear language and in code, encourages and emboldens it.

After Charlottesville, Donald Trump gave renewed license and safe harbor for hate to white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and the KKK. There’s a short line from those people marching with tiki torches in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” to the shooter at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh saying Jews “were committing genocide to his people.”

We need a comprehensive approach to battling antisemitism that takes seriously both the violence that accompanies it and the hateful and dangerous lies that undergird it. Sadly, antisemitism takes many different forms and cuts across ideology, political party, group and nation. So we must remain vigilant and speak out every time we see the persistent evil of antisemitism rear its ugly head. It’s incumbent on all of us to stand against those who traffic in pernicious stereotypes, or who seek to scare and divide us for political gain. Silence is complicity, so we must speak out — every time. We must call hate by its proper name, and condemn it....

5. Have you participated in a Passover seder or other Jewish holiday ritual? If so, what were the circumstances, and what was the experience like for you?

I’ve had the honor of sharing many meaningful experiences with Jewish friends and family — celebrating weddings, sitting shiva. During our first year in office, in 2009, President Obama became the first president to host a seder at the White House — a tradition he maintained each year of his presidency. In 2013, Jill and I were proud to have the first Vice Presidential Sukkah at the Naval Observatory, and we welcomed Jewish children from the community to come decorate it. It was incredibly meaningful to be able to host our friends from the community during Sukkot with traditional hospitality. And in 2014, I presided over the lighting of the National Menorah to mark the start of Hanukkah with a message that is critical for us all to remember today: “Jewish heritage is American heritage.” The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

A video that was edited in a monumentally dishonest fashion to make Joe Biden sound racist just circulated all over Twitter. Distressingly, some reporters and people with large Twitter followings tweeted out the video, before others drew their attention to the full context, causing them to backtrack
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It is simply incredible that anyone in the business of informing people would circulate a video like this before verifying the full context. Have we really learned nothing in the past few years? One hopes this episode will be taken as a cautionary tale of what’s coming.

The video in question, which your humble blogger will not link to, shows only 19 seconds of a 13-minute monologue that Biden delivered in New Hampshire. Biden had been asked by an audience member to speak about his work and his agenda on sexual assault and domestic violence....

One of the original purveyors of this disinformation (again, we won’t link) is still pretending this was an honest depiction, and is accusing those who supplied the corrective context of being the “real” purveyors of disinformation. Take this as a glimpse of what’s coming.....

All this is a sign of what the Democratic nominee could face. It’s no wonder that some Democrats are worried we might even see “deepfake” media manipulations. Imagine such ultra-sophisticated video distortions of Biden’s rambles, retweeted by Trump, and perhaps even by reporters.

Trump views disinformation not as a scourge to be combated in the name of protecting our democracy, but as an ally. In this particular case, Trump has not retweeted the video of Biden — yet. But let’s try to learn from this.