Yes, There Are Lefty Anti-Semites. Like This Former Intercept Dick Arrested For JCC Bomb Threats, Maybe!
Juan Thompson was fired last year from Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept, for being a jerk to his bosses and also, you know, making up stories. It was the latest in a long line of briefly held jobs that ended remarkably abruptly, and after we spent an afternoon rolling around in a whole lot of blame-shifting and grievances, he sounded like a bit (a lot) of a nutball.
He apparently may have been more of a nutball than anyone expected, as he's been arrested for (allegedly!) making some of the threats that have been terrorizing Jewish babies and olds since the beginning of the year -- in an effort (allegedly!) to frame his stalkee ex-girlfriend for framing him .
Every Instagatewaypundit will now claim that it is really leftists -- not, say, their good buddies the "alt-right" -- who are the real anti-Semites. And in at least some cases, they will be right.
Most people on the left have some issues with Israel and its treatment of Palestinians, and according to idiots, this makes them automatically anti-Semitic. That is very stupid! You can disagree with policy, even think it's inhuman, without ascribing "inhumanity" to every Jew who doesn't even live there.
But some on the left take that anger toward Israel's actions and do ascribe them to monolithic "Jews." Here's a letter we got from a Wonkette reader! And not the kind of Wonkette reader who is sent here to call us libtard faggots from ILoveAR15sInMyButt.com! Here, read this dumb thing. It starts out being about Bernie v. Hillary and then gets stupid fast.
Looks like Wonkette has joined that part of the public which looks upon the 2016 presidential election as a horserace, and rather than looking at Hillary's history and character (or lack thereof) is handicapping the future of this country by trying to guess/force the winning ticket.
In spite of all that is known about Hillary and the dirty tactics of the DNC and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Rebecca chooses to criticize those whom she supposes to be Sanders' supporters for expressing long overdue frustration in Nevada.
We now have the two most incompetent, and compromised candidates as front runners for POTUS, and Rebecca focuses her ignorant comments against what appears to be a few Sanders supporters who have heroically and stoically endured the unfair treatment of corporate media, and snide bitchy bloggers such as Rebecca of Wonkette.
I quote John Lucente of Lexington MA who said in letter to the Boston Herald on May 18, 2016:
"On one hand we have a megalomaniac who sounds like a sailor on leave in a combat zone with a fistful of twenties.
On the other hand we have a pathetic candidate whose main qualification seems to be the fact that she should be the first US woman president.
They do have some common threads. They both will say anything. ...
It would behoove every American to go to their place of worship and pray for a divine intervention that neither of these frauds is elected as our next president."
Instead of acknowledging this abomination of current presidential candidate front runners Rebecca chooses to mock Sen. Sanders and his supporters who are trying to steer us away from the apocalypse of a Hillary or Donald presidency.
This deliberate refusal to acknowledge reality has to cause any astute voter to wonder about the loyalties of Rebecca and her ilk: Are they really concerned about this country, or are they a part of what has in the past been referred to as America's "Fifth Column."
Today we call them Israel Firsters, and we know that is true of Hillary and now Donald.
And also Wonkette ...??!- Judy B.
I was all "huh? are you saying I am a Jew?" and she was all "NOPE HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST THAT IS WHAT I AM DOING." Then she wrote back again.
Your snide attempt to demean, with your ridiculous headlines, those of us who won't support Hillary, a blood-thirsty, Israel Firster, Wallstreet/bankster moll, is evidence of your commitment to entertainment rather than truth. ... Elizabeth Warren saw the handwriting on the wall looooong ago, and planned to back the dem winner no matter which, and that was clear to all. Like everybody else she knew the fix was in for Hillary. Politics is politics.
Given all that has been revealed about Hillary, not supporting Hillary is a matter of principle for us.For you it's a matter of Israel. The only reason you choose to ignore all that we know of Hillary's character and record in order to wave her across the finish line is because of Israel - no matter how much you may deny it.Both of you are full of prune juice!! - Judy B.
See, Judy was doing a very common anti-Semitic thing, which is accusing anybody who's even half-Jewish (like me!) of being loyal only to Israel, like a Fifth Column of JOOOZ. But the prune juice thing was funny!
I pointed this out to her.
Judy, you've GOT to stop accusing me of this Israel stuff; considering I have told you, flat-out, I don't care about Israel -- never have -- the fact that you keep harping (because I have a Jewish name?) on it is truly, truly anti-Semitic. You've *got* to cut it out.
And she kept going, before I blocked her emails:
Like I've said, "Methinks thou doth protest too much." I'll start believing what you say when you stop believing that Hillary is the best candidate to become POTUS - not likely!!
Frankly your name has nothing to do with it, nor does being Jewish, whether you are or are not. Your name could be German or Dutch. Perhaps you support Hillary because of her neoliberal (have you looked that up yet??) and neocon alignment, and her anti-Palestinian rights stance. You are either woefully uninformed, or you are just as corrupt and vile as Hillary! - Judy B.
Anyway, sure, Judy B. is just one anecdotal woman in my inbox. And she's VERY upset if you suggest that accusing random Jews of being "Fifth Column" traitors to the United States because they are "Israel Firsters" is anti-Semitic, so I guess she ... isn't? LOL.
As to the matter at hand, and Juan Thompson's alleged campaign of terror against some collateral Jews?
Honestly, we don't even know that Juan Thompson hates Jewish people -- he just happened to alight on "terrorizing them" (allegedly!) as a cool recourse to get back at his ex (allegedly!). Nor do we even know he's "a lefty," though he calls himself a socialist on Twitter, and if the JCC-bomb-threating shoe were on the rightwing foot, with an alleged perp who'd worked at NRO or Breitbart, we'd have no problem saying that he was either "conservative" or just "an amoral piece of shit."
There may be a HELL of a lot more anti-Semitism on the right than on the left, but we're going to have to own this one, and the rightwing blogs are going to get to (rightfully) call us on it.
We need to clean the speck out of our own eye before we yell about the beam that's in theirs.
Wonkette is supported only by Readers Like You -- and the International Jewish Conspiracy. SHEKELS PLEASE!
I lived in St. Louis for 20 years, and you are right. I also lived in Chicago, and it was the same there. The only place I didn't encounter it openly was Miami, but I'm sure it exists there as well among certain groups.
I had two very dear friends in college who were Jewish and from Chicago, and I visited both of them in their parent's homes several times. All of their grandparents were Holocaust survivors. We had some long and interesting conversations, which is when I heard some of the older family members say that "every Gentile is secretly anti-Semitic." I disagreed at the time, but I was young and idealistic, and as I got older, I have found that this is mostly true, but there is a wide spectrum of anti-Semitism.
Sometimes the anti-Semitism is very superficial because they have never actually met a Jewish person, and they are just repeating things they heard other people saying, but they never really think about it, nor do they act upon it because they never meet any Jewish people. It is in some ways similar to people who say "Germans are obsessed with rules and structure" or "Italians are so emotional" or "The French are so arrogant and rude." These are common stereotypes, which are sometimes true and sometimes not true, and people who have not traveled or met any Germans, Italians, French or Jewish people often believe in these stereotypes, especially if they see them portrayed on TV.
Does that make them anti-Semitic? I don't know. I don't have the right to make that decision, as I am not Jewish.
I did work in a government office 37 years ago in a town I will not name that is predominantly German Catholic, and where a large number of the support staff were uneducated, redneck trailer trash, and they decided that I was Jewish because of my hair and my profile and the fact that I had a few female friends who happened to be Jewish. Then a male friend from The Gambia who was a Ph.D. student at a nearby university took me to lunch, and that was even worse. I was secretly referred to after that as a "Jew N----r lover." This was in 1980, not so long ago. I got out of that job and that town ASAP. I suspect nothing has changed there.
My mother was an Italian Catholic, and she lived in tiny little Lynn, MO in 1950. The rest of the town was almost exclusively German Catholic. The small business people refused to wait on her because they despised Italian Catholics. People would not even speak to her. The local Catholic Church refused to enroll my sister in pre-school, saying the class was full, which was a lie. After 9 months of this treatment she told my father "get a transfer to somewhere else or I'm leaving you," so he did, and they moved to a larger, more liberal city. This was not anti-Semitism, it was something else that today we call "ethnic profiling."
omg that's so wrong.