Despite overheated rhetoric about America’s imminent descent into fascism, despite the frequent labeling of President Trump’s advisers and supporters as “Nazis,” and despite the anti-Trump left’s habit of calling itself the “resistance,” neo-Nazis and white supremacists are few and far between in the U.S. James Kirchick tries to make sense of the current hysteria:

[W]here do all these legions of Nazis and passionate brigades of anti-Nazis come from? . . . They are the products of a moral panic with an underlying political cause, which is now being exploited by a wide range of political operatives. . . . Fighting Nazis is a free and easy moral victory because there is almost no one on the other side. This suggests that [those who] advertise themselves . . . as brave and forthright fighters of Nazis are either immature or deploying lazy rhetoric to get their listeners to join in the unwitting pursuit of some other, presumably much less popular or acceptable, goal. . . .

The use of Nazis as a political strawman was long a propaganda technique of the Soviet Union, which casually slapped the label “fascist” on anyone or anything it didn’t like. (The tradition continues with today’s Kremlin propagandists, for whom “fascist” or “Nazi” is interchangeable with “critic of Russian foreign policy.”) In the American context, hyping the threat of Nazism is a proven fundraising tool. . . .

Besides the obvious dangers, and inherent foolishness, of such thinking, Kirchick notes that it can also have particularly deleterious consequences for Jews:

[W]hile anti-Jewish social prejudice, like saying the words “smelly kike,” for example, or refusing Jews admittance to your country club, has become a serious social crime—the sort of transgression that can destroy careers—actual anti-Semitism (“a cabal of rich Jews secretly manipulates and controls American foreign policy to benefit Israel,” “Israel is an illegitimate foreign colonial implant whose bloodthirsty leadership hates peace and delights in killing Palestinian children”) has become increasingly acceptable, even mainstream in some parts of the left.

Standing up to Nazism, as members of the Democratic Socialists of America valiantly did in Charlottesville, serves as a convenient fig leaf behind which to hide institutionalized organizational anti-Semitism, which the group giddily expressed just a week prior at their annual convention in Chicago, chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free,” after passing a motion in support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. . . .

Social prejudice may be annoying, depressing, and generally unpleasant, but it’s anti-Semitism that has proved to be physically dangerous—and very often lethal—to Jews.

With the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program damaged, and its regional influence diminished, the U.S. must now prevent it from recovering, and, if possible, weaken it further. Benjamin Baird argues that it can do both through economic means—if Congress does its part:

Legislation that codifies President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” policies into law, places sanctions on Iran’s energy sales, and designates the regime’s proxy armies as foreign terrorist organizations will go a long way toward containing Iran’s regime and encouraging its downfall. . . . Congress has already introduced much of the legislation needed to bring the ayatollah to his knees, and committee chairmen need only hold markup hearings to advance these bills and send them to the House and Senate floors.

They should start with the HR 2614—the Maximum Support Act. What the Iranian people truly need to overcome the regime is protection from the state security apparatus.

Next, Congress must get to work dismantling Iran’s proxy army in Iraq. By sanctioning and designating a list of 29 Iran-backed Iraqi militias through the Florida representative Greg Steube’s Iranian Terror Prevention Act, the U.S. can shut down . . . groups like the Badr Organization and Kataib Hizballah, which are part of the Iranian-sponsored armed groups responsible for killing hundreds of American service members.

Those same militias are almost certainly responsible for a series of drone attacks on oilfields in Iraq over the past few days