The Terrorization of the Democrats

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, September 01, 2026

 

When Democratic Representative Adam Smith voted with 103 of his fellow Democrats for a failed measure that would have drawn U.S. support for Israel down to zero, he explained that he had done so under duress.

 

It was “a very close vote for me,” he wrote. Ultimately, though, he felt that he had been bullied into his “aye.” He decried the “tactics used by the far left” to menace him into submission. Among them, the vandalization of his home, the fires set in his driveway, the harassment of his neighbors, the efforts by agitators to “shut down” his town halls, and even the fact that one of his staffers was “physically assaulted.”

 

The statement, which should have been accompanied by Smith’s resignation, revealed the degree to which Democrats are being terrorized by their own constituents. Indeed, in Smith’s case, the activists’ goal — terrorization — had been achieved.

 

Smith’s experience with the activist class was certainly unpleasant. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s was arguably worse.

 

This summer, Nessel told a roundtable community meeting that she would not be attending the Democratic Party’s nominating convention. It would not be safe, she confessed.

 

“I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” she admitted. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”

 

Nessel had experienced what the New York Times called the “excruciating and agonizing” “new reality for Jewish Democrats,” or anyone perceived to be something less than hostile to the Jewish state’s existence. “I rarely, if ever, get threats for being gay or for being a woman,” Nessel told the Times. “They have been fast and furious and nearly always about me being Jewish.”

 

Well, apparently the threats and abuse have gotten to Nessel. In a particularly unhinged moment in a recent speech, the Michigan AG confessed to wrestling with arguments raised by those who believe she should cease to exist, and she discovered that their case has merit.

 

Sure, she admitted, the mob had imposed a “stark choice” on Democrats. And she appeared to resent the “members of our own party who seek the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and place the Jewish diaspora in jeopardy.” But she would nevertheless concede that saving the Jews from the designs of their tormentors is less important than the progressive project.

 

“We have a moral imperative to place the needs of the world above even our own self-interest and, yes, even our own survival,” she said. What is the preservation of the Jewish people when weighed against the prospect of, for example, catastrophic climate change? “What is defending the historic homeland of our ancestors and demanding that candidates acknowledge its right to exist, if the planet upon which it rests is no longer inhabitable?”

 

The speech represents a confession that Nessel, too, has been terrorized into submission.

 

There is no civilizational imperative that is advanced by the oppression (or worse) of its Jewish people. Indeed, the history books are littered with examples of rich, vibrant societies that indulge Jew hatred and subsequently descend into stultification and ruin. To even suggest that the existence of AI or heat-trapping emissions justifies Jewish persecution is a terrifying rationalization that can only be a product of intimidation.