They’re Nazis. Fuck 'em. Nazi defenders are Nazis.
Got any reputable cites?
It says that he dislikes Rogers more than he dislikes El Sayed. I don’t think that’s something to be proud of. As someone mentioned in another thread, being disliked by Tucker Carlson is one of the only things Rogers has going for him.
And there have been plenty of pro-Rogers ads that call Abdul a terrorist, as well as other racist and islamaphobic things, not to mention what Trump has said about him. I think it’s pretty disturbing who Haley has the heat for and who she doesn’t.
A pretty big issue that unites both democratic and swing voters is opposition to Trump’s war in Iran. Catlson happens to be on the right sidevof that.
It takes significantly more principle than I have to not use that wedge issue to win elections against a fascist movement. I don’t want to be the most pricipled person in alligator alcatraz.
Who the hell is defending Rogers here?
I’m pretty sure that all of us who say we understand where she’s coming from also said that she’s making a mistake. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Haley Stevens.
Oh yeah, you’re all “She’s making a mistake, but…”
No, she’s throwing herself in with racists 100% and you’re still defending her and attacking El Sayed for not meeting her stupid demands.
She’s coming from a position of opportunism, selfishness and racism. Nothing more.
Stevens came at El-Sayed personally. From the outside, it appears not much more complicated than that.
Regarding the Rebellion PAC/Stevens kerfluffle: any consideration that it could well have been an operation? “Make’em deny it!”, “Make’em denounce it!”, and “Make’em not rule it out!” are all apples on the same propaganda tree. And giving a strong denouncement to the first offense in line is not necessarily a safe PR play because then you must respond in kind to all the rest that will be lined up at your feet. All of them. Tirelessly. If you ever had a message or identity of your own, good luck getting it out after falling for that “denounce it now!” stunt.
El-Sayed’s response has been the correct one as a political calculation. He wasn’t getting 100% of the votes anyway. He also couldn’t stop a last-gasp Rogers-Stevens attack from siphoning off a small number of votes (but only a small number, as it turns out). But what El-Sayed could do was mitigate the damage—maybe lose 2,000 votes instead of 8,000 (thin-air numbers).
What we are telling you is that a lot of people in the Jewish community don’t consider her demands stupid at all. We are also telling you that even more troubling than Abdul El Sayed’s own positions is the way that the rest of the party is minimizing our concerns. @DSeid made a very excellent post about it in the “stupid liberal idea of the day” thread, but I don’t want to quote it without his permission because it was originally posted in a Pit thread.
Instead, I will link this article that someone in a lefty Jewish discord I am in posted:
As Stevens said in the first statement she made on the topic - the issue is that El Sayed said “I didn’t make that ad”, which is true, but he didn’t say that he disagrees with it, and in fact the message at the very least rhymes with his own messaging. That’s a problem for me and for many other people.
Nevermind
No, read the article. The guy is a Nazi defender, and says extremist things himself. And the Rogers campaign defended having him on the team.
If I’m understanding correctly (and I’ll concede I may be missing something), the complaint against El-Sayed is that while he has condemned antisemitism, he has not condemned or distanced himself sufficiently from other people who are considered antisemitic. It’s not his job to attack all individual antisemitic people. A general condemnation of antisemitism seems sufficient. Or at least close enough for politics. (few politicians say everything the way I would prefer, and I don’t expect that to change).
“Antisemitism is a scourge, and we need to address it in all its forms. It has no place in our communities. Ever. Full stop.”
In response to Piker saying something stupid, he said:
“Comparing Jewish Michiganders to the Ku Klux Klan is utterly inappropriate and flat-out wrong.”
I had never heard of Piker until a few days ago. He seems like a complete ass, among other things. I doubt El-Sayed needs his support. I don’t know why he appeared with Piker at a campaign event. El-Sayed has tried to distance himself from Piker in the general election. Not enough in my opinion, but that hardly indicates that El-Sayed is antisemitic. Nor do I draw that conclusion from his criticisms of Isreal or AIPAC (both of which align pretty well with my own views, as a very secular Jewish American).
People tend to make up their minds, and then search for facts that fit their world view. Maybe I’m doing that because I like this guy and find him an effective and committed public servant. Maybe others who don’t like him are coming up with excuses to justify their opinions.
Does there exist a nonzero number of people for whom that’s true? Undoubtedly. But they don’t speak for all Jews, any more than Michigan Jews for Democracy do. How many of them are there? Of those, how many would have distrusted El-Sayed no matter what he said about this ad? Or would have eventually come to a position of distrust after the 7392nd statement made by some random nobody that El-Sayed didn’t stoop to respond to? Because there are definitely plenty of other people who aren’t El-Sayed who say hateful things that people like Stevens could call on him to renounce. There’s so many, in fact, that even if he spent 24 hours a day on renouncing all of them, he’d never get to the end of the list.
This is the one and only thing that matters, here. What is El-Sayed’s own actual messaging? If he’s said something that’s problematic, share that, and we can debate that. If he hasn’t, then stop saying that he has.
From the article I linked earlier:
Per the cite-
As has been pointed out, Carlson in no way “endorsed” El-Sayed .
None of that is remotely antisemitic (and some of it is false). Is that really the best they’ve got?
People who can’t distinguish between Jewish people and the state of Israel are never going to be reached.
As I said above: