As I understand it, the tweeters who accused certain Jews of being Israel First also accused certain gentiles of being Israel First. Is this incorrect? If they only leveled the accusation at Jews, but leveled it at multiple Jews, then that’s some pretty strong corroborating evidence of the claim of antisemitism.
If they also leveled the charge at non-Jews, then I think your analogy would be better phrased as, “It’s those rabble-rousing crack-dealing jerks that we need to look out for,” which would not be a sentiment that I think many African-Americans would take umbrage at.
Because it doesn’t use a term that accentuates Bernake’s Jewishness? Because it lacks any semblance to the old Jewish stereotype of the secret Cabal that controls the world? You know, the things we’ve been telling you in this thread that the term Israel-firster does?
Again, where is the corroboration? Where are the instances in which these folks bemoaned Jewish control of the government more explicitly, or where they made snide comments about Jews in the media, or where they offered any other evidence of their antisemitism?
I can think of three different possibilities here:
These guys are amazing ninja-antisemites, who keep their antisemitism so hidden that it’s only surfaced in this one instance, in which case, they wouldn’t have been caught if it weren’t for those meddling kids.
The evidence is out there, but folks in this thread either can’t or won’t find it, for whatever reasons.
They’re not really antisemitic, but they chose a very poor word to describe politics, and on being appraised of the word’s history, apologized for its use.
Are there other possibilities? Or do folks think that it’s one of the above?
I genuinely don’t know. I tend to discount point #1, since ninja-antisemites don’t seem all that likely to me. Point #2 seems plausible to me, which is why I’m asking for the evidence. Point #3 also seems plausible to me.
You’ve invented this nonsense about “corroboration” to buttress your weaksauce apologia. The Southern Strategy was talking about blacks when they used terms like “welfare queens” even if they didn’t also explicitly bemoan the evils of black culture. That’s the whole point to dog-whistling.
You are providing such an intellectually dishonest apologia that you’ve just actually offered up a possibility that they’re “ninja anti-semites”, and demanding yet more evidence, rather than honestly looking at the glaringly obvious fact that they’re smearing all of their political opponents as being people who are traitors to their home nation and are engaged in their treachery on behalf of the Jewish State.
Except of course the traditional accusation is that there are Jewish Occupied Governments, or ZOG’s now that Zionist is the new dog-whistle. So pointing out that there are Jewish American traitors and their Zionist pawns all acting in the interests or benefiting the Jewish State at the expense of their own home doesn’t diminish the context.
Considering that Israel is the sovereign state of the Jewish people and every Passover ends with the invocation “Next Year in Jerusalem” this a fairly foolish comment.
Actually the term “Israel-Firster” most certainly is viewed as “code words” and a “dog-whistle”.
Moreover, it’s not merely Finn and the others who feel this way.
You’ll notice it was only one junior staffer at CAP who referred to Jews as “Israel-Firsters” and he is no longer with CAP even though he deleted the tweet and apologized for it. Whether or not he was fired or forced to resign is unclear.
Anyway, it’s pretty clear that CAP itself has decided they don’t like the term.
And here’s the problem with dog whistle words: they’re designed to be recognizable to antisemites while sounding like normal speech to regular folks, right?
So why isn’t it plausible that the young CAP staffer thought it was normal speech when he used it?
Interestingly enough I don’t think he claimed this.
That said, yes, it’s quite possible there are some staffers at Conservative Think Tanks who are so dense they think there’s nothing racial about referring to Barack Obama as “The Food Stamp President”.
Even if it wasn’t a dog-whistle, what defense would its users be falling back on? That faced with a political position they didn’t like, they actually accused those who hold it of disloyalty? That they’re so undone by differing politics that their only possible response is not to solidly and easily refute their opponents claims (as they should be able to do if the rightness of their own position is ineluctable), but to go straight for ad hominem territory? That’s their defense, they’re not anti-Semitic, they’re just stupid?
“Hey, I’m not a racist! I resent that implication! I’ll have you know that I’m a fucking moron!”
Forgive me, but who’s “he” in this quote–the staffer, or treis, or someone else? If it’s the staffer, is there a link to the text of the apology?
Just so you know, when you pretend you’re agreeing with me when you say something different from what I say–even if I’d agree with your point were you to offer it honestly–it’s dishonest and annoying.
Now that you know that, yeah, it’d be totally possible for someone to refer to Obama as the Food Stamp President and for that to be a reference to his massive increases in welfare (stipulating that he did something that massively increased welfare, natch), and for that to be an unintentional use of a dogwhistle. The correct response would be to alert that staffer to the history of the use of food stamps as a racial slur, and for the staffer to apologize for the unintentional slur.
Do you disagree? Be honest, don’t congratulate me for being a forthright Klansman or agree with me that people can call Hispanics Spic unintentionally or something else like that, just tell me whether you agree or not, if you don’t mind.
I agree, leading to two possibilities. If he’s an antisemite, he knowingly used the term. Or, if he’s a regular person, he might very well have unknowingly used it. But to Jews, it sounds straight out of the antisemite playbook, so it’s upsetting to them and they are likely to presume the author an antisemite unless there exists evidence showing otherwise. Is there?
I don’t know that there is. I disagree, however, that it’s reasonable to reach a conclusion on whether the author is antisemitic, one way or the other, absent further evidence.
I don’t know that whether or not he’s an antisemite is really that important. The problem is that he used antisemitic language, whether he meant to or not.
"Look, Dual Loyalty, as expressed by 'Israel-Firster' is an old, ugly calumny. At worst it's anti-semitic dog whistling, and at best it's still a pretty shitty way to bring the political discourse plummeting down and to slime your opponent's loyalty because you can't rebut his positions."
"Yes, but unless the accuser is some sort of ninja, he must have left other evidence of possible anti-Semitic views, like talking about how much he hates Jews and their control of the government. So you should discard that as a possibility and just naturally assume no malice."
"You seem not to understand the point of dog whistling. If folks were comfortable openly espousing anti-semitic views, they'd be using a regular whistle, eh?"
"I don't see your point."
"Okay... the very fact that they're using a dog-whistle means that they're not going to come right out and use the blatant terms. That's *why* they're using a dog-whistle in the first place. So when they bemoan the (imagined) fact that the Jewish State controls the politics of the United States, they *are* talking about how much they hate the (imagined) Jewish dominance of our government."
"I don't agree."
"And, obviously, it's an accusation that someone is a traitor in any case, as we expect our politicians to place the good of their own nation before other nations. For a politician to claim to serve his home and in fact only be working for the benefit of another nation at our own nation's expense, he'd be betraying the electorate's trust and betraying his obligations and the faith placed in him. It's an accusation of treachery on behalf of the Jewish State. That's obviously a very troubling accusation, and it's recklessly irresponsible to make it if the only proof one has is that their political opponent has the nerve to have different politics."
"It's not an accusation that someone is a traitor."
"Wasn't abuse down the hall?"
"What?"
"Nevermind. Look, accusations that individual Jews cannot be trusted because their prime loyalty is to International Jewry and that International Jewry is in the process of corrupting and subverting entire nation states is classical anti-semitic conspiracy mongering. Even if they are *just* using trops with a long anti-semitic history in order to slime their political opponents as traitors it's shit they should cut out because it's intellectually bankrupt and because nobody should be casually tossing around anti-Semitic tropes."
"But it can't be anti-Semitic, because it's not saying all Jews are traitors!"
"Oh come on. It's clearly a statement that the 'bad' Jews who you can't trust are those who have the 'wrong' positions on Israel and whose loyalty is therefore suspect as they may be selling out their nation for International Jewry, and the 'good' Jews are those who have the 'correct 'positions on Israel. It's clearly a slur designed to intimidate all Jews into having the opinions which are allowed to them."
"Nuh uhn! It would only apply to all Jews if it was a statement that those with the 'wrong' politics couldn't be trusted but those who agreed with the speaker were the 'good' kind of Jews."
“And nobody has even shown how “Israel-Firster” is even an anti-Semitic accusation, anyways.”
“What? We’ve gone on and on about how it mirrors claims of dual loyalty. It’s got the same semantic value. What, are you one of those idiots who was fooled by people like Walt changing “dual loyalty” to “conflict of interest”, too?”
“Dual loyalty has been a slander against Jews for thousands of years, ever since the Romans saw the Jews as a perpetual Other, always scheming on behalf of International Jewry.”
“Yeah, but the Romans spoke Latin, so they didn’t use the same phrase.”
“And it continued in international discourse until it was slightly remodeled during the rise of modern European anti-Semitism as evinced by the Dryfus Affair.”
“Yeah, but the French also didn’t speak English, so the term wasn’t in use then either.”
“And then during the early 20th century in America people like Father Coughlin, Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh all used the same trope to talk about how Jews were either inherently untrustworthy or those Jews who didn’t have the ‘correct’ politics were betraying America.”
“Yeah, but they also used various synonyms, so it doesn’t count.”
“And then in modern times we’ve seen other attempts to rebrand the same concept, changing ‘dual loyalty’ to ‘conflict of interest’ and ‘Israel-Firster’ while still alleging not just that Jews cannot be trusted if they disagree with your politics, but also echoing the Protocols in suggesting that International Jewry has corrupted foreign governments and dominated them for the benefit of the Jewish State.”
“Ah-hah, so you admit it! Israel-firster is pure as the driven snow with no history at all!”
The benefit of living in China Town is that you can at least get Chinese food, I suppose.