Right wing anti-semitism: a question

This thread is about the anti-semitism on the right.

But we just elected a president who sat for 20 years in the church of a Jew-hating preacher, and the whole left wing simply ignored that.

It's true. It's like every day is opposite day.
 
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Considering the way some here would like to define antisemitism, this thread seems relevant:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/100596-the-black-israel-fallacy.html

I did not follow the link, did it say something good, I figure if the guy who posts a link does not take the time to quote from the link, I find the person did not read the link himself.

Was it good?

Haha. Have to say you figured wrong. It's a link to a thread I started so I didn't just read the link, I wrote it.

Didn't know I was working with such laziness.

If you'd like some quotes:

QUENTIN said:
Those who argue and believe that if you don't support Zionism and Israel even in the face of their war crimes, you must be prejudiced against Jews are intellectually indistinguishable from those who argue and believe if you don't like President Obama even in the face of policies you find awful, you must be prejudiced against black people.

Just a fact. It's the exact same argument and they're both completely bogus and dishonest attempts at deflection.

Expanding a bit later:

QUENTIN said:
...had a bunch of this cliche bullshit. People who claimed any fair, objective, or compassionate person who thinks killing innocent people is bad whether it's done by Israel or Islamic terrorists or Soviets or Americans or Cambodians or what have you is equally and always wrong is automatically an anti-semite. Or in other words, people who so fully worship another country that they believe if you don't agree with their stance on our relation to it, it isn't possible that you have a different opinion on policy or more consistent worldview but rather you must be personally deficient and prejudiced. That literally, despite every government in the world making mistakes on a regular basis, this one, Israel, is incapable of any wrongdoing or subsequent criticism and all opposition must be rooted in virulent personal hatred of a group of people for their religious beliefs or ethnicity, that it's impossible to instead just think that their government's policies are inhumane as you might think of many other nations. That was the impetus for this thread. I'm just sick of that intellectually bankrupt idea being trotted out so often.

There's no doubt that a lot of anti-zionists are anti-semites (especially in the Middle East), just as a lot of people who oppose Obama are racists (especially in the rural Midwest and South), the dishonesty and deflection and bullshit arises when anyone claims if you are one you must be the other, implying there is absolutely no legitimate reason to oppose either. A whole lot of the strongest supporters of Zionism are themselves racist against Muslims generally and Palestinians in particular, viewing them as subhuman and therefore their suffering beneath consideration. But I wouldn't dream of saying or thinking "every supporter of Israel is a racist" because that's so obviously nonsense. The reason I made this particular comparison is because, in addition to being the exact same argument with only different nouns plugged in, many of those who cry anti-semitism at every opponent of Israel's belligerent policies are the same folks who endlessly criticize Obama and cry foul (rightly) when someone assumes they must be racist just for disagreeing with him politically.

If you support or oppose any politician or political actor, you should be able to explain why, but attempting to silence dissent by arbitrarily denigrating the character of all who may disagree with you (especially as close-minded racists) is nothing more than an attempt to avoid discussing the issue at hand, a petty and dishonest distraction tactic.

I might update that now to point out another totally analogous fallacy that those on the right who cry anti-Semitism are guilty of one half of.

If you claim that opposing the current actions and policies of the government of Israel makes you "anti-Israel" and especially "anti-semitic" then you must also accept the claim that opposing the current actions and policies of the government of America makes you "anti-American" and "anti-Americans."

Since both of those are inherently warped and dishonest bullshit claims, people have to admit that opposing Israeli policy ≠ anti-semitism, particularly if they oppose some American policy.

Acknowledging that Israel has a miserable human rights record and has committed war crimes has nothing to do with anti-semitism or Judaism or prejudice. It's a recognition of bad policies by a government, which one can and should recognize for every government since none even approach reach of perfection.

However, believing there's a grand conspiracy among the world Jewry to control finance and banking and collapse economies for their own profit as is being pushed by some on the right now... that's the most classic and well-worn example of anti-semitism there is, taken right from the fucking "Protocols."
 
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Antisemitism in the US reached its apex between 1920-1940. It has shrunk steadily to about 14% of the population, and only has institutional support amongst right wing fringe groups, e.g., Christian Identity churches, Aryan-White Resistance, Klu Klux Klan, Holocaust Deniers, Liberty Lobby, and American Neo-Nazi organizations.

You will recall prominent right wing figures such Henry Ford and Father Coughlin suggesting that the New Deal was a Jewish financial conspiracy. This sentiment exists today on the far right, where we are told that a cabal of Jewish bankers secretly controls world finance. Of course we cannot forget Nixon's famous "liberal Jewish media".

My question: why did the main stream right abandoned antisemitic rhetoric, pushing it to the margins, where it thrives in a network of lesser groups, who are disowned when they bring bad press.

My answer is this: I think this shift away from antisemisitm can partly be explained by the importance of Israel during the Cold War. As Britain was shedding it's colonies (and thereby leaving the middle east), America began to compete for middle east geopolitical assets. Bringing the world's largest energy region under one's sphere of influence was vital to both SuperPowers. Suffice it to say, the money & weapons that started flowing from the US to Israel during the Cold was staggering. During this time, the corporate money that flowed into antisemitic groups dried up. Antisemitic elements within right wing punditry was reigned in.

After the Cold War ended, isolationist components on the Right urged the party to reduce funding for Israel (and Saudi Arabia), claiming that there was no longer a need to protect the region from Soviet domination. Enter the Neocons (many of them Jewish), who believed that the region's oil wealth was too important to ignore. They convinced the party to increase it's support of Israel, who became a chief asset in the War on Terrorism. For this reason antisemitism was again marginalized. It would remain on the fringes, where it would be used electorally, to mobilize uneducated people who wanted to take their country back from invisible demons and shadowy jewish conspiracies.

Why do you thing antisemitism was purged from the main stream right?
That's your other right - the port side - that has the rep for anti-semitism.
 

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