Op-Ed: Your Rage Is Justified, But Don’t Forget Who You’re Fighting

This isn’t about allyship. It’s about survival.

And we’re wasting time othering the people most likely to grow—while the forces dismantling democracy walk free.

We come from different political traditions, but we carry the same warning. Beware the rage that forgets who the real enemy is.

We’ve carried this knowledge through uprisings and trainings, through protest marches and policy rooms. We’ve studied these patterns—not in theory, but in motion. We’ve lived them in neighborhoods under surveillance and at roundtables where power pretended to listen.

We’ve seen what happens when our movements fracture—when the energy meant to confront bigoted power gets turned on each other instead. We’ve seen it before. Pressure builds. Coalitions crack. Fear takes the wheel. Anger gets misdirected. Discipline slips.

And we’ve survived them—long enough to know when history is trying to repeat itself.

We’ve watched conviction erode into mistrust, then into quiet retreat, then into isolation. And that breakdown is a gift to those who’ve always feared what might happen if we stood together. And that’s when the oldest playbook in politics kicks in: divide, blame, erase. That’s what we’re up against now.

Let’s be clear: antisemitism is real. It is rising. It is violent. And it exists throughout society—including within progressive and racial justice movements. To deny that is to ignore hard truths. But equally dangerous is how that reality is being exploited by Donald Trump—not to stop hate, but to expand authoritarian power.

Antisemitism is not being confronted by the current Trump administration. It’s being deployed—to silence dissent, for criminalize protest, to dismantle higher education and immigrant dignity under the false claim of safety and security. But here’s the twist that too few are naming: Under Trumpism, antisemitism is being deployed with brutal precision: Jewish communities are positioned as a buffer and scapegoat—used to shield the administration from criticism while appearing to stand against antisemitism. Meanwhile, Black communities are cast as the unchecked danger—framed as the source of rising antisemitism rather than the target of rising authoritarianism.

It’s an old tactic, revived for this moment: pit two communities against one another, brand one as too powerful to question and the other as too dangerous to trust. One is made the shield. The other, the threat. Neither is safe.

This is not protection against antisemitism. It is political manipulation. And it is working.

Meanwhile, progressives are fracturing. Jewish leaders are being asked to denounce each other. Black activists are being asked to denounce each other. Movement leaders are being pulled into loyalty tests instead of strategy. Rage is rising—and it’s being misdirected.

This is not a crisis of allyship. It is a crisis of clarity.

Because the great threat isn’t coming from immigrant rights organizers, Jewish students, queer students, or Black visionaries. It is coming from those who chant “Jews will not replace us.” From those in the White House who build policies attacking equal opportunity. From those in support of racial hierarchy. From those who suppress the vote, censor schoolbooks, disappear dissenters and defund universities—while pretending to do it in the name of Jewish safety.

We’re not saying the left is above reproach. We’re saying: the left is worth fighting for. And that fight includes confronting antisemitism—directly, consistently, and with the same rigor we bring to every other form of injustice. But it also includes rejecting the idea that racial justice is only valid when it’s flawless.

There is a tradition here—of principled partnership. Black churches raised money for Jews fleeing Nazi Europe. HBCUs gave refuge to scholars exiled by antisemitic quotas. Civil rights leaders spoke out against antisemitism, even when it cost them. That wasn’t performance. It was shared resistance.

And it’s still happening. In Black spaces. In the work of Barbara Smith, Rev. William Barber, and Brittany Packnett Cunningham. It’s not perfect. But it’s not invisible. If we can’t see it, we must ask why.

Have some Jewish institutions come to expect betrayal rather than recognize imperfect but genuine engagement? Have some progressives and racial justice leaders confused criticizing and shunning Jewish institutions with doing the real work of change?

What we need now is a collective reckoning. Not a purity contest. Not a blame game. But an honest confrontation with how antisemitism and anti-Blackness are systemic tools—not personal failings. Tools meant to divide. To isolate. To make us forget who is targeting us in the first place.

What we need is interdependent resistance. That means showing up not because it’s convenient or easy, but because it’s necessary. Because if you’ve studied any of this—real authoritarianism, racial terror, hate movements—you know this is the moment when division becomes collapse.

To our fellow racial justice friends and colleagues: the time for avoidance is over. Antisemitism is not someone else’s issue. It is your issue. It is our issue. Start naming it. Start learning its history. Start recognizing when it’s being used to dismantle and undermine the very movements and peoples you claim to support.

To our Jewish kin: you are not alone. You never were. Even when it didn’t look the way you hoped. Even when it was hard to see. What we’re building together is not allyship. It is survival through principled partnership.

We must also name and uplift those who live at the intersection of these identities—Black Jews and Black Muslims—who carry the compounded weight of racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia. Their experiences are not peripheral to this moment; they are central. Ignoring their pain, their invisibility, and their insights only weakens our understanding of how inequality functions. If our vision for justice leaves them out, it isn’t justice. It’s performance.

And to everyone: rage is not the enemy. Misplaced rage is.

We have been handed a false choice: fight antisemitism or stand with justice movements. Protect Jews or stand with Palestinians. Support democracy or critique the state. But these are false binaries—designed to fracture resistance and clear the path for authoritarian rule.

We must not fall for it.

When we fight, we must fight together—not as idealized allies, but as people bound by danger, by history, and by the unshakeable belief that liberation must be collective, or it will not be real.

And if we lose sight of that now, we won’t just lose each other.

We’ll lose the whole damn thing.

Eric K. Ward serves as Executive Vice President of Race Forward, is a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and is producer of the documentary ‘White With Fear’. He is the only American ever awarded the Civil Courage Prize.

Patrisse Cullors is an artist, author and abolitionist. She has led local and global movements focused on ending state violence. She is a New York Times Bestselling Author of the book, ‘When They Call You a Terrorist.’

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