Preston Damsky, a law student at the University of Florida who won awards for his white nationalist essay, admitted in an interview with NBC News on Friday that he has Jewish ancestry, despite his X/Twitter posts calling for Jews to be “abolished by any means necessary.”
Damsky’s paternal great-grandfather was a Jewish immigrant to the United States, labeled ‘Hebrew’ by border agents at the time, over a century ago. Harry Damsky traveled from Russia in 1910 to Canada and then to New York.
Henry Damsky, the son of Harry Damsky, was also raised Jewish, and both are buried in Jewish cemeteries, as is Henry’s wife, Georgette Louise Boucher Damsky, the grandmother of Damsky.
“The positions I have taken don’t depend on who my paternal grandparents or great-grandparents were,” he told NBC News. “I never met my paternal grandfather. And I reject that who they were has any effect on my thinking as a matter of logic.”
Damsky added that he had “never set foot in a synagogue” in his life and was also not raised Jewish.
He also denied that his grandmother was Jewish, despite NBC finding records that she had performed in a play at a Purim party that the Hebrew Ladies’ Benevolent Association produced.
“She wasn’t Jewish, she was a Catholic from France,” Damsky said. “She met my grandfather after the war, meaning World War II.”
Damsky added that his father “wasn’t religious” and he wasn’t aware of his mother’s religious affiliation but that it was, regardless, “entirely irrelevant” to his belief system.
The controversial white nationalist essay
In a paper for a class last fall, Damsky took an “Originalism” stance and claimed that “We the people” in the Constitution referred exclusively to white people, according to the New York Times. It was based on this argument that Damsky argued for the voting rights of other ethnic groups to be terminated in the US.
The essay landed Damsky the “book award,” which recognized him as the best student in class, the NYT reported.
University leadership reportedly defended giving Damsky the coveted award and argued that professors should not engage in “viewpoint discrimination.”
Despite initially defending the award, Damsky was later suspended for his X profile, which he used to espouse antisemitic and racist messages.
Damsky denied to the NYT that he posed any risk to students and asserted that he was being unfairly treated for his opinion.
“You know,” he said, “I’m not, like, a psychopathic ax murderer.”