Without further context none of those seem antisemetic to me if I give her the benefit of the doubt, which I do. But note that if I don’t give her the benefit of the doubt, all those statements could be reasonably construed as antisemetic.
I refuse to classify a speaker as antisemetic based on effect alone. I think some refuse to make the distinction (Atamasama might call such people “snowflakes”). I also think some people do away with the benefit of the doubt because of her identity, but most who think she is antisemetic probably base that conclusion on how many times she’s been reported to have said something that was construed as antisemetic.
If you were to poll Americans on whether they think Rep. Omar is likely to be antisemetic, I think a good majority would say yes. If you were to poll these respondents as to the reason, I think most would say they’ve seen enough reports claiming she said something antisemetic, or is antisemetic, and give these secondary sources enough credibility to take their word for it. Probably less than 1% who have an opinion on the matter have actually looked at her statements in context to get the straight dope.
A complicating factor - in scripture, the Jewish people are sometimes referred to as Israelites. The distinction between tribe(s) and nation is similarly blurred. Israel long outlived the ancient political entity, much like Rome outlived the western Empire. The fusion of nation (a body of people) and state (a political entity) is fairly recent, postdates most historical antisemetism, and does not necessarily hold when examining antisemetic speech.
I think it should be clear in this thread that I’m not refusing to make that distinction; in fact I’ve been making a point of explaining it, or at least trying to.
I can’t tell whether you meant that you thought otherwise, or were just jumping off from my post in general.
Do you mean that the separation of people and state is relatively recent?
If what Omar said is antisemitic then what about saying “Jews love money”?
I’m curious if Joe Rogan will be held to the same standard Omar is . . . oh wait, I’ve already heard conservatives excuse it as a joke, I just want to know where the punch line is.
That’s definitely antisemetic. But Joe Rogan has gotten away with saying even nastier stuff about Black people, and somehow his audience doesn’t seem to care.
I need hardly point out that Omar, as a member of Congress, should be held to a higher standard than the loudmouth bigot Rogan.
My take on her comments is that, even if they had anti-Semitic intent, she’s made all the proper amends. Which is far more than can be said for GOP committee members who have said far worse and done far less to make up for it.
Well-meaning and non-hateful people tend to want to not be called racist or bigoted. As a result, a lot of times, when something is called racist or bigoted they will back off and apologize. It works pretty OK, as a general rule of getting along in the world. If you think racists are bad, you don’t want to be seen as racist.
But there is an underlying requirement of reasonableness that the 21st century western progressive type is pretty uncomfortable with, because calling anything unreasonable if it involves alleged bigotry feels like a thing bigots do. It is, nevertheless, necessary, to avoid the situation where for example Elon Musk says he’s being attacked for being African-American or whatever.
It is not reasonable to say that someone who says the true things Ilhan Omar said is being bigoted by saying them. They’re true, and important in the context in which she expressed them. You don’t get to say something is bigoted because it “invokes” tropes unless it’s actually reasonable to say the tropes are being invoked. Even when it’s not a reasonable objection, well-intentioned people will apologize and say yes, of course I do not mean to invoke blood libel. They won’t say “you’re being unreasonable for saying that.” But that doesn’t mean the objection is reasonable.
We live in a world now where a bigot will laugh at you for calling them a bigot, and never think about it again, and a non-bigot will apologize and backtrack from legitimate criticism because of the cost of being called a bigot. I would say it isn’t ideal, and it would be better for other well-intentioned people to say that person isn’t being a bigot, and doesn’t need to apologize. But even imagining yourself saying those things, you can feel the incoming accusation that the defense is, itself, bigoted. And then you don’t want to make it. Not ideal.
What she meant to say was apparently not bigoted. What she actually said came across as bigoted, and it is in absolutely no way unreasonable to say so.
Human language is very often ambiguous, and very often ambiguous in ways that a speaker doesn’t realize, or doesn’t think of, at the moment of speaking. It is often necessary to clarify one’s statements.
And it is always proper behavior to apologize for stepping on somebody’s foot, even if you didn’t mean to do so. To instead accuse them of claiming that you shouldn’t be allowed to walk in that general direction, when they said nothing of the sort, is not useful.
ETA: – you know, I’m also going to point out that Omar’s original statement can very easily be taken as insulting most of the members of Congress. It reads very much as if she’s accusing them of straight out taking bribes in exchange for their votes. (I wouldn’t want to guarantee that none of them are; but I think generally it’s more subtle than that; plus which the reasons for supporting Israel are varied, some of them having little nothing to do with the influence of lobbyists.)
“Came across” attenuates the connection between what she said and what is offensive in exactly the way that prevents any kind of meaningful conversation about it. I didn’t say it was unreasonable to say it “came across” that way. I said it was unreasonable to say that it was.
Analogies to physical assault vs. accidental injury are just another way to attenuate what’s actually being claimed about her. Nobody stepped on anyone’s foot, that’s the problem.
I’ve come around a bit on this point, because my opinion has been much the same as yours.
BUT…
If the true thing you’re saying is uncomfortably close to a bigoted trope, you have to take care in saying it. Using flippant language gives the impression that you have no concern for the people affected by such tropes and comes off as insensitive, and that is worth calling out. And I think it’s also worth an apology.
I still think there’s a significant difference between being insensitive and saying something bigoted, let alone being bigoted. So I do maintain that accusations of antisemitism are overblown. But I also understand why she was called out and I still appreciate that she apologized.
(To be clear I’m mostly addressing the controversy about the “Benjamins” comment.)
At the risk of BillClintonifying the conversation, it all depends on what the meaning of “was” was. What does it mean to say that a statement was bigoted? Do you mean that it conveys the speaker’s bigoted ideas? Do you mean that it sounds bigoted to the audience? Do you mean that it is similar to other statements used by bigots in the past?
I’m unclear on your meaning here.
But that seems pretty clearly untrue. A lot of Jews are telling us that they hear, “It’s all about the Benjamins” in connection to a Jewish organization’s lobbying, and their toes sure feel stepped on. Do you think they’re lying? Delusional?
I think that I do too, and I certainly think she did the right thing under the circumstances by apologizing. What choice is there, really.
On the other hand, I think after the fact and at some distance from it, we should all say “she said a lobbying group’s authority was all about money, that’s pretty unremarkable.”
Like I said, I don’t think “toes feel stepped on” is a useful indicator of anything. Are you asking me whether I think the fact that someone said “all about the Benjamins feels anti-Semitic” means it is anti-Semitic? If that’s the question, no, of course not. Of course it doesn’t mean that.
No–I’m asking you what you mean by “is” anti-Semitic. There’s a whole debate on intent vs. impact as a necessary condition for an unacceptable statement, and you seem to be rejecting impact, but I can’t tell whether you’re embracing intent.
(And yeah, I know I’m swapping “unacceptable” for “anti-Semitic” here, because the debate’s about the broader question, and I don’t know what the best word is).
I mean this is the uncontroversial aspect of what Omar said. American politicians are effectively bribed by special interest groups. Obviously they don’t literally give them bags of cash but AIPAC is far from the only group spending millions campaigning for politicians and IDK about AIPAC specifically but in general the turnover between the actual policians and their staff and the lobbying groups is so common that it basically amounts to corporations and the rich paying money to politicians that support their preferred policies.
If the debate is about that broader question, then I concede that I’m not contributing in any way. My reading is that the debate is not about a broader question; it’s about whether what Ilhan Omar said (and was specifically roundly censured as an anti-Semite for) was anti-Semitic.
Anyway, I suppose I define it as prejudice or bias against an individual or group of individuals on the basis of their being Jewish. In the context of, say, a large organization’s anti-discrimination policy, I would expect that their subjective intent would not determine whether an action was anti-Semitic (i.e., “I didn’t mean it” is not a defense). But what would control would be an objective, reasonable person’s perspective on whether an action expressed that kind of prejudice or bias. Which is where I came in, above, with the point that this reasonableness test is something the left is not very comfortable applying, even though it really has to be. We all apply a reasonableness test, we just don’t like talking about it.
In theory, what’s supposed to be happening is that the lobbyists are explaining their point of view, and need the money so that the lobbyists can educate themselves and provide educational materials, so that the lobbyists can travel to and live in Washington DC in the style in which they like to be accustomed, and so that they can provide fact-finding trips to politicians on which the politicians will actually try to find out some facts.
In practice, of course, you’re entirely right: while some of the above does happen, at best it amounts to a system in which those interests which can afford to support lobbyists in style in Washington have more influence that those who don’t, and often I suspect it amounts to politicians being likely to look more favorably on the nice friendly people who took them on that lovely vacation cruise on which they spent a few hours looking at whatever evidence they were handed. Or, worse, who helped them get that bank loan at the implausible rate with the indefinitely extendable due date –
Which “objective, reasonable person”?
Because quite a lot of people in this thread, as well as quite a lot of people not in this thread, have said that our/their perspective is that the particular action could entirely reasonably have been taken as expressing that kind of prejudice or bias. Most of us are quite willing to agree that it might not have been meant that way; but that really isn’t the issue.
I don’t know how else to articulate this. I have no opinion about whether it “could be taken” any particular way. “Taking” something a particular way is an action. Obviously people did take it that way. There is, nevertheless, a point at which it is OK to say well, but it wasn’t that way. She used a cultural reference from her youth that has a straightforward meaning and which applied straightforwardly to make a true statement about the topic under discussion.