The Origins of the 'Globalist' Slur

After National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn announced his resignation last week, President Trump offered a back-handed compliment to his departing adviser: “He may be a globalist, but I still like him.” Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, chimed in with his own statement: “I never expected that the co-worker I would work closest, and best, with at the White House would be a ‘globalist.’”

Despite the seemingly joking use of the term “globalist” by Trump and Mulvaney, many were quick to point to the word’s unseemly past as an anti-Semitic slur, embraced in alt-right circles before spreading into, “Where the term originates from is a reference to Jewish people who are seen as having allegiances not to their countries of origin like the United States, but to some global conspiracy.” Greenblatt said it’s “disturbing” when public officials “literally parrot this term which is rooted in prejudice.”