Friday, August 15, 2014

Confronting Jew Hatred on Daily Kos: Are They Nazis?

Michael L.

This was originally published at the Front Page Magazine blog on July 30, 2010.

Heck, I had not even quit smoking by that point.

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not fascism when we do itWell, no. Of course, they are not Nazis. That is, they are not members of the National Socialist German Workers Party (that’s not quite possible, now is it?) nor are they modern day Neo-Nazi white supremacists. They are, for the most part, leftists who claim to hate war, favor environmental regulation, women’s rights, gay rights, and the entire hodge-podge of issues, including an anti-racist agenda, that makes up what we call the “progressive movement.”

And, yet, on the foremost website devoted to electing Democrats, with over 250,000 registered users, they allow a malicious and vocal minority to drive the Israel-Palestine discussion in such a way as to create hatred, and thus violence, toward Jews. As if that’s not bad enough in itself, they also do so in a manner that echoes anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda from the 1930s. Again, my criticism of Daily Kos is not that they’re a bunch of anti-Semites, but that they provide a venue for a bunch of anti-Semites.

These people represent the grassroots / netroots of the Democratic party, yet they comfortably share a “home” with people who are little more than modern day Nazis.

Just as the Nazis demonized Jews, so many “Kossacks” demonize the Jewish state, its people, and by extension, Jews, in general. After all, if Israel is a Demon State, what does this say about the vast majority of diaspora Jews that support it? It can only mean one thing, that Jews are inherently evil. (Of course, they also demonize and dehumanize conservatives, particularly of the Christian rural variety, but that’s a whole other story, I suppose.)

Here, let me give you an example from just yesterday by someone with the moniker Flyswatterbanjo:
It seems more and more Americans have become well-versed in the particulars of Israel’s founding, including the ethnic cleasing of 750,000 Palestinians, its 43-year occupation and the criminality attendant to that enterprise, its tactics, its danger to the United States, and the role of our own government in propagating the injustices going on there. These commenters know about and mentioned the savage war on Lebanon in 2006, Israel dropping white phosphorus on UN schools and hospitals during the assault on Gaza in 2009, the blockade of Gaza, the Flotilla raid, General Petraeus’ warning that our interests are harmed by our perceived favoritism of Israel, Netanyahu’s insults to our President and Vice-President, the amount of aid we give to Israel annually.
The writer suggests that Israel’s founding included the “ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians.” What he fails to tell his readers is that the Arabs of the British mandate launched a genocidal civil war against the Jews in November of 1947. By leaving out this critical piece of context he seeks to demonize the Jewish people as ruthless beasts who, for no reason whatsoever, marched on the perfectly innocent, huddled Palestinians who wanted nothing more than to live in peace with their neighbors. It is a lie of omission designed to demonize Jews. Just as the Nazis claimed that Jews of the Holocaust generation provoked war for their own nefarious ends, so this Flyswatterbanjo person claims that Jews of that very generation did so, as well. He is, in effect, repeating Hitler’s talking points.

He references the war in Lebanon without breathing a word concerning Hezbollah and its affection for launching missiles at Israeli civilian targets. He references the blockade of Gaza, without mentioning the 2005 Israeli pull-out of that region, nor Hamas’ own affection for killing Israeli civilians. He references the recent flotilla nonsense, without mentioning that the Mavi Marmara contained violent Jihadis seeking martyrdom through the time honored method of attacking Jews.

In these ways, and more, this writer is demonizing the Jewish people in a manner if not as bad, than almost as bad, as the Nazis did in the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s. During a period of rising anti-Jewish violence, and while actual Jihadis are joining forces with western leftists in opposition to the United States and Israel, he is stoking the flames of hatred toward the Jewish people via the Jewish state. And he’s doing it on the number one Democratic blog around.

Meanwhile, Markos Moulitsas, the owner of Daily Kos, remains mum, allowing the hatred to be spread on a daily basis. It’s not that Moulitsas is a fascist – because he is most definitely not one – but he allows the dehumanization of the Jewish people (as well as Christian conservatives) a prominent place on his blog. And I would suggest that dehumanization is at the very heart of what fascism is and was.

And, to my constant horror, these are Democrats.

Remind me again why are so many Jews are Democrats?

Ah, heck, you do not need to remind me. I was a registered Democrat up until about 5 minutes ago, myself. The problem, of course, is that most Jewish Democrats are progressives and thus support the Democratic party.

 If they had the slightest idea what was simmering just beneath the surface of that party, I promise you, most would run screaming into the hills.

12 comments:

  1. If you make, or agree with, a statement that ZOG (especially in a diary noting that the current administration is HOLDING UP weapons shipments! how the fuck does THAT 'prove' their point, btw?!) is 'true,' you are a neo-Nazi.

    'HoundDog' is a neo-Nazi. And his 83 upraters are neo-Nazis. It's irrelevant what else they believe. If they believe Jews secretly control the government, they are neo-Nazis. There are no two ways about it.

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    1. Hmmm. Maybe a bit harsh? They're DEFINITELY antisemites, that's for sure. But scratch a bit below the surface, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that most share quite a bit more than ZOG with neo-Nazis...

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    2. The concept of "Nazi" has two meanings.

      The first, naturally, is that of the National Socialist German Workers Party between the end of the 1920s and the middle of the 1940s.

      The second meaning, which I suppose is specific to Jews, is anyone who spreads malicious themes about Jews in such a manner as to promote violence. Talk of baby killing, as we see on Daily Kos, and elsewhere, is straight out of the Medieval period.

      Talk of genocide and Gaza as the new Warsaw ghetto represent the manner in which the enemies of the Jewish people use the Shoah as a club against us. They've taken the single worst nightmare in 4,000 years of Jewish history - one still within living memory - and they use it as a weapon.

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    3. And, btw, if we fail to support them politically this makes us "conservatives" and "neocons."

      The worst people on the planet.

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    4. Oh, and btw, the Phillies are in town.

      The Giants are 5.5 games behind the insidious Dodgers.

      We're going to the game on Sunday.

      My brother-in-law is in town and we going to show him the ball park.

      Garlic fries and like that.

      Y'know, if only they played béisbol in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia all our problems would be over!

      ;O)

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    5. We're waiting on the Eagles and the Flyers here. The Phillies aren't even the best baseball team in Southeastern Pennsylvania. There's probably a high school team or two capable of sweeping them in a series.

      Enjoy the game, though!

      I haven't had garlic fries since Portland. Laurelwood Public House on NW 23rd around Lovejoy, just off the streetcar, if I recall. Which I don't think even exists anymore. Must have been seven years ago.

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  2. Although reference to Daily Kos is at times appropriate, fixation is not.

    The theater of Daily Kos is itself based on fixation, and it is across the board, no matter the issue. Every matter is monumental, and each requires the actors to assume the proper role of a progressive angel, saving us all from ourselves, according to dogma that practices "Repressive Tolerance" to accomplish its goal. This allows behavior opposite of what they demand from others, in blindness to what it makes them in the process. Totalitarians.

    At Daily Kos they have their dungeons and dragons playrooms. Israel is just one in a line of causes, according to the zeitgeist. I do not think any fly would be afraid of flyswatterbanjo, or any Jew or capitalist for that matter. If these incapable illiberals were ever in charge, they probably could not even succeed in bringing about the brave new world they seek, except in a social media type of way.

    In other words, better to understand what they are and are not. They may be the netroots, but not the grassroots. Know what they say, but also know that they operate in reflexive fashion, away from reality and things of greater substance.

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    1. I think that we make a mistake when we underestimate the power of the normal discursive back-and-forth on large political blogs like Daily Kos or the others. I have recently returned to monitoring dkos only because of the current hostilities in Gaza and, you can be sure, am very much looking forward to putting it in my rear view mirror.

      I do believe that it helps us understand the way that the activist base thinks and, clearly, what we are seeing on both the Executive level, in the WH, and the netroots level, on places like Daily Kos, is an extreme ramping up of Israel Hatred.

      ZOG is now considered the new normal?

      This is significant and may represent a sort-of turning point in how Democrats discuss this issue.

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    2. Is there back and forth?

      I do not consider what occurs there as activism, but theater, of actors seeking to outdo and give a virtuoso performance in an echo chamber.

      The hatred has been there well before now. It is in the DNA and it is not just for Israel and Jews.

      Democrats are looking more closely about Obama and Israel. Support is down. Daily Kos is a non-factor, however, except to show what goes on in the deep end and to illustrate excess and hypocrisy in the abstract.

      In other words, it is a diversion where not much of any significance or intellect is produced, but surely a bunch of white noise by people who cannot hide their hatred in fake concern about the human condition.

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    3. School,

      I cannot even begin to tell you the number of times that people have told me that dkos is essentially irrelevant.

      My point has always been not that dkos has much in the way of influence, but that it, along with other such venues, represent the progressive-left as it expresses itself within the activist netroots.

      It represents yammerings at the base of the movement and the party.

      But, as I say, I am very much looking forward to putting that place and those people back into my rear view mirror.

      I'll drop in again in two or three years, the next time that we go through this thing with Gaza.

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    4. The site may indeed represent the progressive-left as it expresses itself within the activist netroots. Is that different than the liberal-left?

      On the other hand, it may represent the extremist-left more than anything, especially if the theatrical aspect exists.

      Yammerings at the base of the movement and the party seem less strident and more pragmatic than that seen and heard from the activist netroots that lives in a world of theory and arguments. It depends on the movement involved. That is not to say there is not an overlap, but outside the netroots people deal with reality.

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  3. While you did a reasonable job responding to Flyswatterbanjo's nonsense, there's one item of Flyswatterbanjo's nonsense that you missed, "General Petraeus’ warning that our interests are harmed by our perceived favoritism of Israel."

    With that item, FSB invokes the authority of David Petraeus to put a veneer of impartial expertise behind his assertions. However, there is another authority on what Petraeus believes regarding American support for Israel and the consequences of such support on American interests abroad, David Petraeus. The following footage of a talk that Petraeus gave at St. Anselm College gives Petraeus' position on support for Israel straight from the horse's mouth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJzXvAK36OI .

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