Ilhan Omar's latest anti-Semitic comments

[Famous Mortimer]

Yet if a Republican made comments like these Democrats would be demanding their resignation immediately.

Probably. It would still be disingenuous and stupid like it is now.

[Pyro]

Former Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) was able to succinctly describe the AIPAC problem without (to my knowledge) being decried as an antisemite:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Interesting piece. Kudos to Baird for sidestepping the third rail.
Goes to show the advantages of a concise article over a tweet which could easily be misconstrued.

[Badger]

Yet if a Republican made comments like these Democrats would be demanding their resignation immediately.

Few if any demanded McCarthy's resignation when he promoted that loaded as hell "liberal Jewish billionaires are trying to take over the government" ad.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Well this discourse is all weirdly familiar. Welcome to Hell.

Sympathize with the sentiment, but do you have anything to add?

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

Some clever representative on either side who's tired of this racist BS should offer up a joint resolution expelling Ilhan Omar and Steve King from the House of Representatives for their unambiguously racist comments.

See who objects.

[Big Abraham]

Some clever representative on either side who's tired of this racist BS should offer up a joint resolution expelling Ilhan Omar and Steve King from the House of Representatives for their unambiguously racist comments.

See who objects.

King's comments aren't even remotely comparable to Omar's. Just for consistency though, I don't think either should be impeached for their comments.

[Tender Branson]

Antisemitism these days is very strong among the Muslim immigrant crowd, especially among those from the most backwards regions like Somalia, AfPak, Iraq etc.

No surprise.

OK this is bad even by your standards.

Mmmhwhat ?

It's common knowledge that Muslim immigrants from these backwards, highly religious failed states are amongst the sharpest antisemites around.

There are studies out of Europe that show Muslim immigrants have already passed actual Neo-Nazis in antisemitic crimes in several countries (such as France) ...

[Badger]

Antisemitism these days is very strong among the Muslim immigrant crowd, especially among those from the most backwards regions like Somalia, AfPak, Iraq etc.

No surprise.

OK this is bad even by your standards.

Mmmhwhat ?

It's common knowledge that Muslim immigrants from these backwards, highly religious failed states are amongst the sharpest antisemites around.

There are studies out of Europe that show Muslim immigrants have already passed actual Neo-Nazis in antisemitic crimes in several countries (such as France) ...

Just like it's "common knowledge" hispanics are criminal, blacks are lazy, and jews are greedy.

[Tender Branson]

Antisemitism these days is very strong among the Muslim immigrant crowd, especially among those from the most backwards regions like Somalia, AfPak, Iraq etc.

No surprise.

OK this is bad even by your standards.

Mmmhwhat ?

It's common knowledge that Muslim immigrants from these backwards, highly religious failed states are amongst the sharpest antisemites around.

There are studies out of Europe that show Muslim immigrants have already passed actual Neo-Nazis in antisemitic crimes in several countries (such as France) ...

Just like it's "common knowledge" hispanics are criminal, blacks are lazy, and jews are greedy.

Silly comment.

There are actual studies that show Muslim immigrants import additional anti-semitism to Europe and the US.

Here is one:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=254431.msg5780813#msg5780813

[OSR stands with Israel]

Yet if a Republican made comments like these Democrats would be demanding their resignation immediately.

Few if any demanded McCarthy's resignation when he promoted that loaded as hell "liberal Jewish billionaires are trying to take over the government" ad.

Attacking George Soros is far different than attacking a Jewish Organization which works bipartisanship to make sure Israel remains safe and secure .


I know many people who hate George Soros , and not only are they not anti-Semitic they are very much against people who are. George Soros is hated because he is one of the top contributors to the Democratic Party along with many other liberal parties and  causes around the world   , and gets no more hate from Republicans in general than the Koch Brithers get from Democrats in general .


Attacking a Jewish Organization which works bipartisanaly to make sure Israel remains safe and secure at the very least is Anti-Semitic

[President Johnson]

Yet if a Republican made comments like these Democrats would be demanding their resignation immediately.

Few if any demanded McCarthy's resignation when he promoted that loaded as hell "liberal Jewish billionaires are trying to take over the government" ad.

Attacking George Soros is far different than attacking a Jewish Organization which works bipartisanship to make sure Israel remains safe and secure .


I know many people who hate George Soros , and not only are they not anti-Semitic they are very much against people who are. George Soros is hated because he is one of the top contributors to the Democratic Party along with many other liberal parties and  causes around the world   , and gets no more hate from Republicans in general than the Koch Brithers get from Democrats in general .


Attacking a Jewish Organization which works bipartisanaly to make sure Israel remains safe and secure at the very least is Anti-Semitic

Tend to agree with OSR here. With George Soros, it depends on whether you attack him because of his ideology/the candidates he donates to, or because he is a Jew. The latter is not acceptable, of course. The first should be fine as long as constructive criticism.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

Yet if a Republican made comments like these Democrats would be demanding their resignation immediately.

Few if any demanded McCarthy's resignation when he promoted that loaded as hell "liberal Jewish billionaires are trying to take over the government" ad.

Attacking George Soros is far different than attacking a Jewish Organization which works bipartisanship to make sure Israel remains safe and secure .


I know many people who hate George Soros , and not only are they not anti-Semitic they are very much against people who are. George Soros is hated because he is one of the top contributors to the Democratic Party along with many other liberal parties and  causes around the world   , and gets no more hate from Republicans in general than the Koch Brithers get from Democrats in general .


Attacking a Jewish Organization which works bipartisanaly to make sure Israel remains safe and secure at the very least is Anti-Semitic

Tend to agree with OSR here. With George Soros, it depends on whether you attack him because of his ideology/the candidates he donates to, or because he is a Jew. The latter is not acceptable, of course. The first should be fine as long as constructive criticism.

Singling out Soros, Steyer, and Bloomberg as a unit is pretty dog-whistle-y, though.

Still not the bullhorn that was Omar's comments.

[Famous Mortimer]

Yet if a Republican made comments like these Democrats would be demanding their resignation immediately.

Few if any demanded McCarthy's resignation when he promoted that loaded as hell "liberal Jewish billionaires are trying to take over the government" ad.

Attacking George Soros is far different than attacking a Jewish Organization which works bipartisanship to make sure Israel remains safe and secure .


I know many people who hate George Soros , and not only are they not anti-Semitic they are very much against people who are. George Soros is hated because he is one of the top contributors to the Democratic Party along with many other liberal parties and  causes around the world   , and gets no more hate from Republicans in general than the Koch Brithers get from Democrats in general .


Attacking a Jewish Organization which works bipartisanaly to make sure Israel remains safe and secure at the very least is Anti-Semitic

Tend to agree with OSR here. With George Soros, it depends on whether you attack him because of his ideology/the candidates he donates to, or because he is a Jew. The latter is not acceptable, of course. The first should be fine as long as constructive criticism.

Singling out Soros, Steyer, and Bloomberg as a unit is pretty dog-whistle-y, though.

Still not the bullhorn that was Omar's comments.

Dog whistling to who? People who know who those people are and know that they are Jewish and view that as a bad thing are like 0.01% of the population.

As much as Democrats fantasize about it, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites are neither a major chunk of the population nor the Republican Party base.

The Republican Party base probably includes a lot of people who are casually racist towards Blacks and Hispanics but anti-Semitism is extremely rare. Most racists aren't racist towards Jews because Jews look and act white.

Omar reaction proves this even more, Republicans are more angry about Omar slightly criticizing the Israel lobby than they are about her committing immigration fraud. Republicans generally love Jews.

Yes, there are some some white reactionary anti-Semities but they are not numerous enough to justify spending the money to "dog whistle" to.

[GP270watch]

What exactly is casual racism?

Is that like casual Fridays?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Attempting to contribute to these sorts of threads in a reasonable and measured way feels sort of like playing one of those party games where you have to stack things or hang things off of each other in such a way as to reverse course whenever the structure starts toppling on one side. I'm not sure which are worse, Israel threads or abortion threads. Funnily enough, those are the two issues that a certain infamously dysfunctional DSA chapter expelled a friend of mine for wrongthink about a couple years back.

[Famous Mortimer]

Attempting to contribute to these sorts of threads in a reasonable and measured way feels sort of like playing one of those party games where you have to stack things or hang things off of each other in such a way as to reverse course whenever the structure starts toppling on one side. I'm not sure which are worse, Israel threads or abortion threads. Funnily enough, those are the two issues that a certain infamously dysfunctional DSA chapter expelled a friend of mine for wrongthink about a couple years back.

Are you going to comment on every thread today to tell people how smart you are for not having opinions/never defending them?

[All Along The Watchtower]

Attempting to contribute to these sorts of threads in a reasonable and measured way feels sort of like playing one of those party games where you have to stack things or hang things off of each other in such a way as to reverse course whenever the structure starts toppling on one side. I'm not sure which are worse, Israel threads or abortion threads. Funnily enough, those are the two issues that a certain infamously dysfunctional DSA chapter expelled a friend of mine for wrongthink about a couple years back.

Are you going to comment on every thread today to tell people how smart you are for not having opinions/never defending them?

Nathan has plenty of opinions, just like you. The never defending them part is more your style though. not Nathan's.

[Joe Republic]

Calling someone anti-Semitic (or racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. for that matter) is a great way to end a conversation. There is no response that person could give to satisfactorily counter your point because you can't prove a negative. Anything you say will inevitably come up short, so you'll just end the conversation there. It's even easier online when you're not interacting as a normal conversation.

If you think something someone has said is anti-Semitic, it's up to you to show them why it offends you, or I can guarantee nobody will listen to what you have to say. People will understand the impact their words have better when they can link it to a specific person's experiences. Even though I don't really know any Atlasians in person, I know that I would consider how someone on here would take what I'm saying if I understood their reason for reacting so strongly to something. It's a way of personalizing something that very few, if any Atlasians have actual personal experience with, and is largely a theoretical debate between political factions, rather than a personal debate between individuals.

I’m still a little floored by how perfectly and effortlessly DavidB demonstrated this response mechanism towards me last night.  The content of my post was completely irrelevant to him; the key part was that my phrasing resembled (in his mind) something the Nazis would say.  Conclusion: I’m antisemitic.

It’s one of the most frustrating elements of discussing AIPAC.

[Chief Justice Keef]

You know, there's another member of the Minnesota congressional delegation who's been publicly critical of AIPAC in the past, coming from the other side of the river in St. Paul.

Wonder why her name doesn't get brought up.

because she's white

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Attempting to contribute to these sorts of threads in a reasonable and measured way feels sort of like playing one of those party games where you have to stack things or hang things off of each other in such a way as to reverse course whenever the structure starts toppling on one side. I'm not sure which are worse, Israel threads or abortion threads. Funnily enough, those are the two issues that a certain infamously dysfunctional DSA chapter expelled a friend of mine for wrongthink about a couple years back.

Are you going to comment on every thread today to tell people how smart you are for not having opinions/never defending them?

Yes.

[afleitch]

As someone who is from Somalia, lived in a refugee camp as a child and emigrated and was naturalised in the States she has a unique lived experience, something that I think, alongside her faith is an experience that very few people can understand, I think she can be forgiven for being passionate, perhaps even flippant. She's not and never will view Israel the way that the body-politic of pro-Israeli US politics. I don't think she's anti-semitic for the same reason people dragged her for being homophobic for a contorted interpretation of her comments about Graham. She's apologised; think of it as a 'teaching moment.' I don't see the need to chew on this for another news cycle.

[Badger]

Yet if a Republican made comments like these Democrats would be demanding their resignation immediately.

Few if any demanded McCarthy's resignation when he promoted that loaded as hell "liberal Jewish billionaires are trying to take over the government" ad.

Attacking George Soros is far different than attacking a Jewish Organization which works bipartisanship to make sure Israel remains safe and secure .


I know many people who hate George Soros , and not only are they not anti-Semitic they are very much against people who are. George Soros is hated because he is one of the top contributors to the Democratic Party along with many other liberal parties and  causes around the world   , and gets no more hate from Republicans in general than the Koch Brithers get from Democrats in general .


Attacking a Jewish Organization which works bipartisanaly to make sure Israel remains safe and secure at the very least is Anti-Semitic

Wait a minute. Now we're not talking about whether criticisms of the targets are anti-semitic or not based on the content of said attacks, but based on which targets one politically supports more. That is completely bass-ackwards. An attack is anti-Semitic based on what it says and seeks to communicate. That holds true whether the target is Chuck Schumer or the guy that killed Yitzhak Rabin.

And FYI, aipac largely seeks to push Israeli colonization of the Westbank under the guise of a purported two-state solution. The I and many other Americans don't consider them particularly admirable at all.

[Don Vito Corleone]

Can you self-fellating hacks PLEASE shut the hell up about Which Party Has More Antisemites??? Whichever party it's coming from, it's not acceptable. And yes, there's a difference between observing that Israel has an unusually powerful policy lobby in the United States and claiming that Those People have wholesale "bought" our political leadership, which is what Omar is doing.

Agreed. I think Omar should resign from the Foreign Policy committee.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just from a duty of care perspective someone needs to change her twitter password and enforce a ban on all media contact that doesn't directly concern her district, at least for a little while. She is plainly not ready for prime time and just can't help herself: it's like watching an Atlas poster suddenly thrown into the limelight.

[Calthrina950]

At least in the future, I know what to expect when Omar or someone like her makes similar comments. People on here will invent all kinds of excuses to cover up for those words. It also amazes me how people on here have an irrational hatred of AIPAC, as if it is the enemy here.