The Early Warning System
British physician John Scott Haldane noticed a problem as he observed miners working underground: By the time they realized they had been in contact with poisonous gases beneath the earth’s surface, it was often too late.
Haldane advised that miners take mice and canaries, animals far more sensitive to the effects of these gases than humans, into the mines with them. If the animals died, it was time to get out—hence, the idiom canary in the coal mine.
The Jewish people are the canaries in the world’s cultural coal mines. Where antisemitism is accepted, other forms of persecution will arise. History demonstrates that antisemitism is an early indicator of a troubled culture. And recent events indicate that the United States is a nation in peril.
In February, members of the Goyim Defense League (GDL), an antisemitic hate group, gathered outside a Chabad center in Orlando, Florida, where they harassed ultra-Orthodox Jewish people leaving the property.
In a video of the event posted on Twitter, GDL founder Jon Minadeo Jr. shouts slurs, such as “You filthy Jew!” “Heil Hitler, Jew!” and “Leave our country, go back to Israel—you know, where you bomb Palestinian kids.”
That same month, Jack Eugene Carpenter III was arrested for making murder threats against Jewish officials in Michigan’s state government. He tweeted that he would “carry out the punishment of death to anyone that is Jewish in the Michigan govt [sic].”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who is Jewish, later tweeted, “The FBI has confirmed I was a target of the heavily armed defendant in this matter. It is my sincere hope that the federal authorities take this offense just as seriously as my Hate Crimes & Domestic Terrorism Unit takes plots to murder elected officials.”
Days after Carpenter’s arrest, antisemitic hate groups organized a national “Day of Hate” to take place on February 25. A New York City Police Department memo warned officers that these groups were “instructing likeminded individuals to drop banners, place stickers and flyers, or scrawl graffiti as a form of biased so-called action.” Though no incidents of widespread acts of hatred were reported that day, the very proposal of the event is deeply disturbing.
Such actions and threats should alarm every American. Antisemitism demands denunciation. Hatred of our Jewish friends and neighbors must never be tolerated.
On top of these threats, the Gentile world must understand that hatred of Jewish people does not stop with Jewish people. Antisemitism is merely the starting point.
In a 2022 interview, Deborah Lipstadt, noted historian and the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, spoke to this point:
Antisemitism is like the canary in the coal mine of democracy. It is a threat, a warning. If you’re an antisemite, then you think, well, the justice system isn’t fair because it’s controlled by Jews. The government isn’t fair because it’s controlled by Jews. The media isn’t fair because it’s controlled by Jews. You lose faith in the democratic institutions. As a historian, I can think of no democracy that tolerated antisemitism and remained a vibrant democracy.
The best case in point is Weimar Germany turning into Nazi Germany. . . . I’m looking at Weimar Germany as a fragile democracy that was beginning to thrive, but as the antisemitic forces, along with other forces, became stronger and stronger, its fate was doomed.
Embracing Jew-hatred is one of the first indicators not only of a culture in decline but also of God’s impending judgment. Just look at ancient Egypt, Philistia, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, the Byzantines, the Crusaders, the Spanish Empire, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union.
Such societies are doomed because he who touches Israel touches the apple of God’s eye (Zech. 2:8). The United States and other Western nations should take this truth to heart before it’s too late.
