Full disclosure.

My dear grandmother on my mother’s side was Esther Wainer.

Esther Wainer was a proud Jew, feminist and socialist.

So, it kind of pisses me off on a very personal level that the same bunch of right-wing neo-fascists and Christian nationalists that brought us Project 2025, have branded their phony campaign against antisemitism as Project Esther.

Project Esther is their plan to fight what it says is widespread antisemitism.

It’s all bullshit, of course.

In the demented view of the authors of Project Esther, even my grandma Esther would be considered an antisemite.

Project Esther’s would “extirpate” this antisemitic web from U.S. society by canceling visas, upping deportations, revoking university funding, reshaping academic curricula and marginalizing dissent.

Or, in other words, the Trump agenda.

Project Esther brings back memories of McCarthyism, labeling legal immigrants and American-born citizens terrorist sympathizers.

Project Esther calls for continued attacks on the idea that we are a nation of immigrants.

Immigrants like Grandma Esther who left Russia for Germany and then came to the United States in the early part of the 20th Century.

Ironically, Project Esther was constructed without input from Jews or Jewish organizations. While the Heritage Foundation claims that prominent Jewish organizations worked on Project Esther, when the publication Jewish Insider asked, the Jewish organizations and other groups Heritage named as partners denied the connection.

In fact, Project Esther aligns most closely with evangelical Christians who believe that the “nation” of Israel plays a role their goofy vision of the end of the world and The Rapture.

It appears that a form of Project Esther has popped up in the campaign for mayor of New York City.

Both Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams have made antisemitism a cornerstone of their campaigns in a pandering attempt to win the large demographic of New York’s Jewish voters.

That neither one of them has any history in fighting actual antisemitism appears to be beside the point.

Adams plans to run as an independent on the “fighting antisemitism” ballot line and has just recently created an “office to fight antisemitism”.

Cuomo spends much of his time attacking his opponents running in the progressive lane as antisemitic.

This strategy does not appear to be working.

Most New York Jews are refusing to support Cuomo.

Grandma Esther would be pleased about that.

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