Thought for the Day

[filghy2]

On a positive note, the recent run of Supreme Court decisions in the US seems to demonstrate (to Trump's surprise I would guess) that Republican judges can maintain a degree of independence and that they do not accept his claims to be above the law.

If the polls continue to look bad for Trump I wonder how long it will be before increasing numbers of Republican politicians also decide it might be in their interests to show more independence from him.

[Stavros]

Who are these people, what do they use for brains? Are they on a mission to be laughed at? Bizarre.

Will Joe Biden do more to protect religious liberty than Donald Trump? Not a prayer. “City of Toronto Bans Catholic Churches From Administering Holy Communion” https://t.co/9oR3YI7Zkf

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) July 17, 2020

[KnightHawk 2.0]

Who are these people, what do they use for brains? Are they on a mission to be laughed at? Bizarre.

Will Joe Biden do more to protect religious liberty than Donald Trump? Not a prayer. “City of Toronto Bans Catholic Churches From Administering Holy Communion” https://t.co/9oR3YI7Zkf

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) July 17, 2020

Laura Ingraham is a fraudulent journalist and a enabler.

[Stavros]

'The Surge'...where have we heard that before? Baghdad, Fallujah...and now Portland, Chicago...wherever the Sunni Demcrats are, there be chaos in need of law and order, indeed, a 'Surge'. Citizens snatched from the street by men in military uniform without ID (are they Russians from the Wagner Group?) and bundled into unmarked cars -at least, as far as we know, the citzens are not executed, as many were in Baghdad and Fallujah, but how long will the 'Surge' last before peace and tranquility is returned to the streets of America? Suppose the citizens refuse to kow-tow to the 'occupying army'? Who is going to police the November election if the police are confined to their stations? Will it be by armed militias of the Federal Government, or maybe the Proud Boys and National Action?

It seems to me the US is being taken into some dark corners, and that it may be the last desperate tactic of a man who never loses, and doesn't know how take failure, and therefore intends to hold on to power. Beyond this, one wonders if the Republican Party can survive this crisis, if it still exists, just as the old Conservative Party that was once pragmatic and without ideology under Boris Johnson has become a radical party of change defined by its Brexit ideology.

The irony might be that the only saviours of the Republican Party that can acquire the respect of their voters, and assuming they want the job, are the actual managers of that other 'Surge', Gen. D. Petraeus, and Gen. S. McChrystal. Is it not time someone with backbone took hold of the Republican Party, or is it to become a raucous gaggle of libertarian nutters, Christian Evangelists and Jew-hating Nationalists who revere Mussolini?

This study of the other Surge liked here is interesting, but the Introduction by Jon. T. Hoffman is wrong to attribute the chaos in Iraq to tribal and sectarian confict -as Once Upon a Time in Iraq repeats, that we knew, it was the American Regent Paul Bremer who caused the chaos and laid the foundations for Daesh through his 'De-Ba'athification Programme', and the dissolution of Iraq's armed forces. Nevertheless it is a history with some useful insghts the President can use in his Private War against the USA-
https://history.army.mil/html/books/...hPub_078-1.pdf

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...a-time-in-iraq

[broncofan]

I can only count three occasions in my life where antisemites have wanted to harm me because I'm Jewish. I'm sure there are many American Jews whose personal experience with antisemitism is less than this. In fact, probably most.

Yet in the past year and eight months or so, there have been to my count, something like 5 mass attacks on Jews in the U.S., starting with the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. I've shared that I live in Pittsburgh, but I have to say it affected me no more than if I didn't because I don't go to synagogue and didn't know any of the victims. There was also a shooting at a synagogue in Poway, a Kosher Grocery store in New Jersey, a machete attack at a Hanukkah dinner in Monsey, and a shooting in Miami.

The ideologies of the attackers were as follows: 1. Pittsburgh-right-wing identitarian, 2. Poway-right-wing identitarian 3. New Jersey-Black Hebrew Israelites 4. Miami-unknown 5. Monsey-Black Hebrew Israelites

In the last month or so, there have been openly antisemitic statements made by several famous people: Ice Cube, Desean Jackson, Nick Cannon, and now today some rapper in Britain named Wiley who has gone so far as to say Jews should be shot.

I don't have much to say about the instances except that they all seem to be kind of extreme given the amount of visibility I've seen them get. These were not gaffes, they were not "problematic" statements, they were open and extreme hatred of the form that motivates people to kill Jews.

It's always speculative and usually an exaggeration when people say something isn't being covered. If I look up each case I can see there are newspaper articles on each one but not really the phenomenon that antisemitism is in fashion even if people want to call it something else. Those who make antisemitic statements will often have tens of thousands of people standing in solidarity with them. I'm sure this is nothing new for many other minorities groups who see people retweet Trump and right-wing commentators making bigoted comments. On the other hand I haven't seen mainstream antisemitism that isn't dogwhistled until recently.

Has anyone else noticed this? Just curious. I'm on twitter more recently and it seems every day some famous person is saying something really hateful and dehumanizing about Jews.

[Stavros]

At a basic level, anti-semitic activity in the UK has been constant throughout my life. There has always been a hard core of Nazis who never gave up admiring Hitler, and who formed or were part of various fringe groups such as Column 88. I recall a documentary on exremist members of the Conservative Party, one of whom had a portrait of Adolf Hitler in his room, and there was the lineage of Britsh fascism/anti Jewish groups that began with the British Brothers League in the early 20th century, continued with Mosley's British Union of Fascists (banned in 1940) and after the War the National Front, the British Movement and the BNP, with some of the members joining and falling out and joining parties like UKIP.

Gerry Gable and others created a monthy newsletter then magazine called Seachlight which regularly posted notes of petty crimes, mostly the desecration of Jewish graves in and around the London area, petty in terms of the law rather than affect. I hardly need refer to the more recent incidences of anti-semitism in the Labour Party, and of course in the US it has reached the highest office, for in spite of the President's daughter marrying a Jew, and Jared Kushner being 'Under-President', the President's baiting of George Soros smacks of the 'casual' anti-semitism that its adherents acknowledge as a message of support, as indeed has been the reaction to the 'Christianist' ideologies of Orban in Hugary and Andrzej Duda in Poland, two countries with a grim historical record where Jews are concerned.

I feel we have to constantly educate people about the truth, which is not elusive, but available eveywhere, but I guess if people want to believe Covid 19 is a hoax, that vaccines cause more illnesses than they treat, that Bill Gates is part of a global consiracy to electronically tag everyone, there will always be a hard core of people who 'make up their own mind', but with the President of the USA casually nodding to QAnon, you have now to deal with this poison at the highest level, and that is with the curious relationship he has with the Russians, and also the Saudi Arabians, whose ant-semitic and anti-Christian literature distributed worldwid is part of the problem.

When they go low, you should aim high, this is a fish rotting from the head down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column_88

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antise...Gerald_Kaufman
(the attack on Gerald Kauffman is ironic as he was a severe critic of Israel)

[Stavros]

Futher to my point above, but not mentioned in Mary Trump's book other than her father joining a Jewish fraternity in College, are her family's connections to Jews and Jewish causes, indeed, Fred Trump met the young Benjamin Netayahu when the latter was Israel's Ambassador and lived in Manhattan. It does make one wonder if the baiting of George Soros has been done to send a message to those in America who loathe the Jews, that is, as a political tactic, regardless of the President's actual views- but as one of the comments to the article suggests, Fred Trump may have been motivated by the money he made from real estate, rather than an instinctive love of Israel, and as the other link points out, Fred was arrested when attending a KKK rally in 1927 and Woody Guthrie wrote a song about him after he lived in the Beach Haven complex.

This offers a deeper perspective on the President and the Jews-
https://vosizneias.com/2019/11/01/do...-jewish-roots/

A tale of two dads-
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.pre...inds-1.5433047

[broncofan]

Trump does make an interesting case study because he is not very intelligent but is in his own way he's socially adept. As a result, he is very quick to internalize stereotypes about groups of people and with his limited filter these stereotypes are made evident in every interaction he has.

Someone wrote an article in Tablet magazine saying that Trump believes stereotypes about Jews but the positive spin of those stereotypes. He believes Jewish people are good at making money, good with money, love to make deals, are powerful, are more loyal to Israel and other Jews than non-Jews. These comments come across when he speaks to certain right-wing pro-Israel organizations but as these organizations don't represent the brightest members of our community they are flattered by it. In truth, if you think someone is complimenting you, even based on a false premise, you feel ungrateful to object.

The Soros conspiracy theory is becoming much more common on the right. A large percentage of people who rely on the conspiracy theory are unaware it has an antisemitic provenance though it clearly does. They are not criticizing Soros as a person or for his actions but instead attribute to him all sorts of fantastical powers that no person could have. If it weren't based on the fact that he's Jewish, it would still be superstitious nonsense. I believe Trump likes it because it gives him an enemy and it's sort of white supremacist stock in trade: powerful Jew is manipulating people of all races to be disobedient.

One major problem is that people who believe in these powerful Jewish archetypes occasionally commit hate crimes against Jews so the conspiracism isn't just some harmless hobby. And the conspiracy theories are divorced enough from the every day life of a Jewish person that the purveyor of these theories is certain that spreading them doesn't touch on their interests as human beings. One person tried to explain to me one time that he didn't object to ordinary Jewish people like me, just the sort of "big Jew....the powerful Jew....the one in control...."

[blackchubby38]

Antisemitism has been slowly on the rise for the past few years now and it seems its the one thing that both the far right and far left have in common. In 2017, it was a bunch of white guys walking around with tiki torches saying "The Jews won't be the ones to replace use". Fast forward to 2020 and its black people saying antisemitic things on social media. Malcolm Jenkins, an NFL player who is a prominent social justice activist, basically said he doesn't have time to talk about antisemitism.

[fred41]

Antisemitism has been slowly on the rise for the past few years now and it seems its the one thing that both the far right and far left have in common. In 2017, it was a bunch of white guys walking around with tiki torches saying "The Jews won't be the ones to replace use". Fast forward to 2020 and its black people saying antisemitic things on social media. Malcolm Jenkins, an NFL player who is a prominent social justice activist, basically said he doesn't have time to talk about antisemitism.

Yeah, unless you live here, you probably wouldn’t know it, but the majority of anti Semitic assaults in NYC the last couple of years were disproportionately by black people...I don’t even know what category you put that in politically. I doubt the majority of the aggressors really identify with a party, probably just thugs...but I will say this - members of the far left always love to flirt with anti-semtism, often saying it’s just politics against Israeli aggression, but then quite a few of them always seem to have something good to say about Louis Farrakhan too.