Leadership Quote by Tim Holden

“Strongest democracies” is doing the quiet work here. Holden isn’t just noting a spike in anti-Semitism; he’s puncturing the comforting civic myth that liberal institutions automatically inoculate a society against old hatreds. By widening the frame to “countries throughout the world,” then narrowing it to include the places that like to see themselves as moral exporters, he turns the line into an indictment: if it’s happening here, the problem isn’t fringe or foreign. It’s structural, opportunistic, and increasingly normalized.

The phrase “frequency and scope” reads like legislative language, a deliberate choice for a politician. It signals measurement, pattern, escalation; it’s designed to be cited in hearings, reports, and press releases. It also sidesteps the trap of arguing over isolated incidents. Holden’s intent is to preempt minimization by asserting trendlines rather than anecdotes, and to justify a policy response without naming a specific culprit that could alienate allies.

The subtext is about vigilance and complicity. Democracies pride themselves on pluralism, yet they also run on majoritarian incentives, media cycles, and moral shortcuts. Anti-Semitism thrives when economic anxiety, conspiracy thinking, and nationalist rhetoric get rewarded instead of sanctioned. “Over the last several years” implies a failure of early warning systems: we had time, we watched it rise, and we didn’t treat it as urgent until it became harder to ignore.

Contextually, the line fits a post-9/11-to-social-media era in which hate can be both mainstreamed and networked, spreading faster than the institutions built to contain it. Holden is trying to make that mismatch politically legible.