Marjorie Taylor Greene Opposes Bad, Bipartisan 'Anti-Anti-Semitism' Bill For Bad Reason: It's Not Anti-Semitic
Plenty of blame to go around with this one!
Almost a year ago, Joe Biden proposed several efforts to fight anti-semitism, prompting Republican weirdo Lauren Boebert to complain that was secretly a plan to “go after conservatives” with tactics that were “straight out of the USSR's playbook.”
Now that the campuses are in an uproar and there’s (a lot of!) political hay to be made, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has passed a bill — with the support of all but 70 Democrats, too — that would give government the power to defund universities that fail to end student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. The bill was framed with a noble enough title, the “Antisemitism Awareness Act,” but in effect it would impose one of those campus speech codes Republicans always condemn as Political Correctness Run Amok.
But suppressing speech is fine, as long as the punishment is meted out to universities, which Republicans don’t like anyway. The bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Michael Lawler (R - New York) was quite clear that the goal was to go after higher education (Washington Post gift link), plus whatever campaign benefit Republicans might get for framing universities and Democrats as bad guys. Lawler claimed, “We must give the Department of Education the tools to […] hold college administrators accountable for refusing to address antisemitism on their campuses.”
The bill, HR 6090, would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include the definition of antisemitism written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. It’s a good definition — for people who want to consider what they’re saying and make sure they’re on the right side of a line. What it shouldn’t amount to, though, since much of it is focused on couthness and not being a bigoted dick, is speech being made actually illegal.
The IHRA’s own 2016 resolution adopting the definition specifies that it is a “non-legally binding working definition,” for the little that may be worth.
The problem, however, is that the bill would also codify the 2016 resolution’s “contemporary examples” of anti-semitic speech, such as “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” or even “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” the latter of which is such a judgment call that Crom only knows how it could be enforced.
As the Washington Post explains,
The idea is that student-held signs, for example, like those displayed at Columbia University in New York this week, calling for “revolution” or “intifada” — which means “uprising” — would amount to antisemitism under the law. The Education Department, in turn, could then revoke federal research grants and other funding to a university that fails to take punitive action toward students who express such views, the bill’s proponents say.
The bill wasn’t only opposed by free speech groups like the ACLU, but also by many Democrats who strongly support Israel but also think the First Amendment is a good thing, too. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York), who’s Jewish and has co-sponsored other bills that focus on non-coercive means of countering anti-semitism, called on Democrats yesterday to vote down the bill, saying it “threatens to chill constitutionally protected speech.”
“If this legislation were to become law,” he said, universities wanting to avoid federal investigation “could end up suppressing protected speech criticizing Israel or supporting Palestinians,” and students and faculty might be driven to self-censor.
The Post also notes that in floor speeches against the bill, Democrats pointed out that it was opposed by a number of Jewish groups, “in addition to the man who authored the antisemitism definition for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance,” but darned if our cursory searching found the specifics, thanks a lot, WaPo.
But that’s not necessarily a surprise, given the IHRA’s preface that the definition isn’t meant to be legally binding, as well as its caution that while it’s anti-semitic to conflate Jews as a people with the state of Israel, “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
That cautionary note isn’t explicitly mentioned in the bill text.
More to the point, although Tom Emmer, the House Republican Whip, claimed the bill was needed to stop “pro-terrorist anti-semites taking over” college campuses, we don’t need new laws restricting speech to deal with even the really ugly instances where some protesters have said extremely ugly, unquestionably anti-semitic things.
We would note that at Northwestern and Brown, administrators negotiated an end to protests by agreeing to hold discussions and votes on the protesters’ demand to divest from arms manufacturers. No new law needed there. And at Columbia, where the NYPD cleared and arrested protestors who had occupied Hamilton Hall, you can argue all you want about whether the police response was appropriate or heavy-handed, but it didn’t need any action by the federal government.
Plus, there’s the whole hypocrisy thing, even though Republicans are immune to shame. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-New Mexico) said in a floor speech Wednesday,
“How dare the party of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene come down here and lecture Democrats about anti-semitism. […] Remember, the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, dines with Holocaust deniers, and said there were ‘fine people on both sides’ at a rally where white supremacists chanted ‘Jews will not replace us.’”
It's unclear whether the bill will have any chance of passing in the Senate; Democrats have their own measure on anti-semitism in both houses of Congress; the Post explains that instead of restricting speech, it would
establish new positions focused on antisemitism at the White House and the Education Department and require federal law enforcement to conduct an annual threat analysis of antisemitism in America.
But that wouldn’t bust any heads or defund any universities, so what good would it be?
Finally, because Marjorie Taylor Greene can always find a way to make matters worse, we’ll close by noting that Greene said on Twitter yesterday that she couldn’t support HR 6090, because even though “antisemitism is wrong,” she explained, she frets that that it “could convict Christians of antisemitism for believing the gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews.”
Her sentiments were echoed by fellow anti-semite Matt Gaetz, who complained that “The Gospel itself would meet the definition of antisemitism under the terms of this bill!” and that the Bible makes very clear that all Jews remain guilty for the crucifixion, any fool knows that.
As of yet, House leadership has not taken any action to hold either member responsible; they may need to start a university in order to face consequences.
[WaPo (gift link) / AP / Times of Israel]
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“could convict Christians of antisemitism for believing the gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews.”
Jesus, she couldn't even get that right, huh?
It was Pontius Pilate, dipshit, not Herod.
And it was the religious leaders who handed him over, not all of the Jews.
And the substitutionary atonement exegesis of the crucifixion required Jesus to die for EVERYBODY. So if you were going to blame someone for killing Jesus, you should start with the person in the mirror if you hold to that theology.
I mean, okay, maybe I don't expect all of you Evangelicals to know about the Old Testament you definitely seem to have trouble with the "no adultery" bit, but this is your gospel, Lady. The supposed point of your entire religion. Pick up a goddamned book.