About That Squirrel Hill Massacre

Sadly enough so far this year we’ve had slightly less than 1 Mass Shooting a day, every single day (Mass Shooting being defined as more than 4 casualties in one incident). Yesterday Robert Bowers walked into The Tree of Life Synagogue, shouted “All Jews must die”, and murdered at least 11 people.

I won’t weasel with words like “alleged” because they caught him with the literal smoking gun right in his hand.

Now I could talk about Gun Control but I’ll leave that for others. What I want to focus on is Anti-Semitism.

Donald Trump is an Anti-Semite.

Many members of Trump’s team are Anti-Semites.

Don’t Javanka me or Stephen Miller me, or talk about strong support for Aparthied Israel. Charlottesville 2017- Tiki Torches, “Jews Will Not Replace Us!” chants, Heather Heyer dead.

“Fine people on both sides. On both sides.”

Look, Nazis are not “fine people”. They are the definition of evil and should righteously be harassed and shunned out of existence. And punished to the fullest extent of the Law should they break it, spitting on the sidewalk will do.

I’ll stop talking about race when people stop being racist.- Larry Wilmore

You want me to stop calling Republicans evil? Stop supporting Nazis.

Note- that condition is necessary but not sufficient.

Still I called Donald J. Trump personally an Anti-Semite. It’s true enough that his primary concern is his own fame and fortune and a little loot will cause him to momentarily forget his prejudices. Kushner is indeed Jewish (Orthodox at that) and he let Ivanka, the daughter he’d like to have sex with himself, marry him and convert. But she’s not really Jewish and the Grandkids are pure Trump.

Nah, Trump’s a Country Club Anti-Semite. “Well, every slur you’ve ever heard about them is grounded in fact, even that Blood Libel thing. They’re incredibly cunning, especially with money, but they’re not loyal. Have you noticed how the quality of the Club has declined since we started letting ‘those people’ in?”

They say Himmler was so revolted by witnessing the Bullet Genocide that he switched to Gas. Oh, and he loved dogs and kids too. Actually it was a matter of efficiency in cost and time. History sucks.

digby reminds us of a piece posted by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. Neither he nor she embed all the videos but I will because I know my readership won’t click on them if they are offended by the prospect of viewing and I don’t care about how much it screws up my YouTube Recommended List (I clicked on ‘World of Warships’ once, 5 years ago. It still keeps coming up.).

First the Racist Anti-Black Ads-

Jesse Helms: White Hands

Herbert Walker: Willie Horton

Now, the Anti-Semitic Trump Ad (included by digby). Written and directed by Steve Bannon sure, but Trump signed off on it and probably sees nothing wrong to this very day.

Argument for America

Josh Marshall-

From a technical and thematic perspective it’s a well made ad. It’s also packed with anti-Semitic dog whistles, anti-Semitic tropes and anti-Semitic vocabulary. I’m not even sure whether it makes sense to call them dog whistles. The four readily identifiable American bad guys in the ad are Hillary Clinton, George Soros (Jewish financier), Janet Yellen (Jewish Fed Chair) and Lloyd Blankfein (Jewish Goldman Sachs CEO).

These are standard anti-Semitic themes and storylines, using established anti-Semitic vocabulary lined up with high profile Jews as the only Americans other than Clinton who are apparently relevant to the story. As you can see by my transcription, the Jews come up to punctuate specific key phrases. Soros: “those who control the levers of power in Washington”; Yellen “global special interests”; Blankfein “put money into the pockets of handful of large corporations.”

This is an anti-Semitic ad every bit as much as the infamous Jesse Helms ‘white hands’ ad or the Willie Horton ad were anti-African-American racist ads. Which is to say, really anti-Semitic. You could even argue that it’s more so, given certain linguistic similarities with anti-Semitic propaganda from the 1930s. But it’s not a contest. This is an ad intended to appeal to anti-Semites and spread anti-Semitic ideas. That’s the only standard that really matters.

This is intentional and by design. It is no accident.

Trump has electrified anti-Semites and racist groups across the country. His own campaign has repeatedly found itself speaking to anti-Semites, tweeting their anti-Semitic memes, retweeting anti-Semites. His campaign manager, Steven Bannon, is an anti-Semite. The Breitbart News site he ran and will continue running after the campaign has become increasingly open in the last year with anti-Semitic attacks and politics.

It’s true there is son-in-law Jared Kushner, a Jew and Ivanka, who converted to Judaism. But this isn’t terribly surprising. Kushner appears to be conscienceless. And as I noted here, there is a storied history of anti-Semites being happy to distinguish between good Jews and bad Jews.

“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” Galatians 6:7. Yes I am an atheist. That does not mean I’m uneducated or unethical.