HOW NOT TO MARGINALIZE THE ALT-RIGHT:

An old Jewish joke, full of the mordant humor of Judaism’s darkest hours, is typically told thus:

Rabbi Altmann and his secretary were sitting in a coffeehouse in Berlin in 1935. “Herr Altmann,” said his secretary, “I notice you’re reading Der Stürmer! I can’t understand why. A Nazi libel sheet! Are you some kind of masochist, or, God forbid, a self-hating Jew?”

“On the contrary, Frau Epstein. When I used to read the Jewish papers, all I learned about were pogroms, riots in Palestine, and assimilation in America. But now that I read Der Stürmer, I see so much more: that the Jews control all the banks, that we dominate in the arts, and that we’re on the verge of taking over the entire world. You know — it makes me feel a whole lot better!”

I thought of that joke upon reading Thomas Chatterton Williams’s brave New York Times column on the common threads connecting the racialism of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the racialism of Richard Spencer:

Read the whole thing.