Daily Kos Bigotry

Michael L.

As one of the largest progressive-left blogs in the United States, Daily Kos is also among the most racist political blogs in the United States.

Most of that racism takes the form of what Manfred Gerstenfeld dubbed "humanitarian racism."  This is the form of bigotry that the Left engages in concerning the people that they like.  Among those that they tend not to like, such as Israeli Jews - if not Jews, more generally - they are a tad more forward-leaning in their contempt.

For example, an individual who goes under the moniker bevenroDEUX recently published a piece entitled, I've had it with Jew-hate and its proponents.  In that "diary" he linked to this image:

In a poll at the end of the diary the writer asks the following question:

Is imagery like I've linked to here ever acceptable?

Now, the imagery above is pretty awful and not a just a little anti-Semitic, but full blown anti-Semitic hatred of the type that the Nazis reveled in.  We've got the hawk nose, the sharp teeth, the world domination theme, the killing babies theme.  It's all right there.

So, is this acceptable to "Kossacks"?

A full 26 percent of Daily Kos users are perfectly fine with the image above, as we see from this graph of the poll.

I would submit that if a quarter of any given population is OK with the image above, with no caveats whatsoever, then we know that we are dealing with a population in which a significant minority is perfectly comfortable with the very worst expressions of hatred toward Jews possible.

And what can that say about the rest of the group, when we know that the vast majority of anti-Semitic expressions are not nearly as obvious or heinous as what we see above?

For example, if 25 percent think that the above is just dandy, what percentage are OK with the notion, often put forth, that Israel intentionally seeks to kill Palestinian-Arab children?

The idea that Israel enjoys killing perfectly innocent Palestinian-Arab waifs is how the blood libel has metastasized and evolved to fit the current moment.  No one outside of the Muslim world believes that Jews kill non-Jewish babies to use the blood in the making of matzoh, as they used to tell one another in medieval Europe.

Now they simply tell one another that Jewish Israelis like to kill Palestinian-Arab children, but it's the same old lie told for the same old reason.

The purpose, consciously acknowledged or not, is to incite anti-Jewish violence and to justify that violence to others.

This is why Daily Kos users almost never object to Arab on Jewish violence.  For years prior to the latest Israeli excursion into Gaza, Jihadis shot thousands of rockets into southern Israel, ruining the lives of the people who live there, wrecking their economy, and giving their children Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Did Daily Kos participants speak out against this anti-Jewish violence?

Of course, they did not, because on a certain level they tend to think that we simply have it coming.  Any violence by any Arab against any Jew for any reason is considered perfectly understandable precisely because of the never ending defamation of the Jewish State of Israel and the attendant blood libel that so often accompanies these defamations.

They are, in fact, engaged in a project of desensitization to anti-Jewish imagery and, therefore, desensitization to anti-Jewish violence.  It is also, in part, for this reason that President of the United States, Barack Obama, could consider the attack some weeks back at the Parisian kosher market to be just some random attack by some random individuals against other random individuals for no discernible reason, whatsoever.

So, yes, Daily Kos is a deeply bigoted venue and the poll above, while not a scientific poll, nevertheless demonstrates the type of "racism" that progressives kid themselves that, in their enlightenment, they have left behind.

They haven't.