Letters to the Editor
-
The Poor Persecuted AIPAC Criticizers
I'll say what I want about the ADL and AIPAC and I invite others to do the same, without worrying about what some scold with the vapors thinks is permissable.
Of course you will. This refusal to even acknowledge how AIPAC is often used by anti-Semites is why what you do is so damaging.
I heard this same pathetic justification when "The Bell Jar" was published in 1992. "It's only facts!" they whined. Black people really are less intelligent. If people resist it it's because they're overly sensitive to racism over the pursuit of truth.
It's the same nonsense. You want to peddle your criticisms in a vacuum. You want to be able to shout whatever you'd like without responsibility for feeding damaging historical narratives.
No.
You don't have that right, any more than wingnuts trumpeting their conflation of Saddam Hussein and 9/11 have the right to mix them up under the confusing narrative of "Moolems" who hate us.
Because Jewish financial conspiracies are a staple of so much damage, criticising AIPAC must be done in context with an awareness of this misuse and cover for real anti-Semites.
You cannot simply plunge recklessly into so damaging a discourse without education and awareness.
You are perpetuating a tool of the David Dukes of the world. You are lending legitimacy to Jew haters who will routinely claim Joe Lieberman isn't really an American and is secretly an Israeli (yet of course Dick Cheney and George Bush remain Americans).
You ignore the numerous non-Jewish war funders in the interests of privleging the Jewish ones as "proof" of hidden government control.
When you people angrily stomp your feet and demand the right to announce your grand Jewish financing conspiracy proof with AIPAC without any desire to consider how these narratives fuel anti-Semitism is when you become part of the problem.
And just because you don't feel racist, that doesn't mean you aren't. I'm sure some of your best friends are Jews and you cried when you read Anne Frank.
But I'm not going to sit idly by while you stumble into age-old paranoid conspiracy theories and let you get away with it. There have been ample expressions in this thread of the Jewish financing "cabal" myth to show you what happens when the AIPAC nonsense gets out of hand.
At its very core, there's this simple truth: Take AIPAC out of America. Make it disappear tomorrow.
Do Bush and the fundies still invade Iraq and try to bomb Iran?
Of course.
So why perpetuate stupid conspiracy theories under some silly rubric of "it's my right to say whatever I want, I'm being silenced, waaaa!!" You're not being silenced. You're being told how your incurious laziness contributes to the real anti-Semites.
You're too lazy to take a critical look at how you 're doing that? That's your problem. And you'll get called out every time.
-
WinSmith
If Glenn is Jewish, he's never mentioned it or addressed it, so neither shall I. It clearly is not something he identifies with in any way, and he seems quite intent on proving it has no involvement in his ideological or intellectual arguments.
Wow. It's amazing that you can know what religious beliefs I idenitfy with and which ones I don't.
So if someone doesn't openly discuss their religious beliefs, then it means they have none?
The notion that "Jewish money" was behind it is farcical, paranoid and factually incorrect.
We didn't invade Iraq because of AIPAC. This should be obvious to anyone looking at the raving hysterics that drive Bush's base. They get whipped into a frenzy by media campaigns led by pretend patriots and chickenhawk cowards.
But we invaded Iraq to help Israel?
One of your many problems in this thread is that because your arguments are so baseless, you keep making things up and attributing them to other people, particularly me.
You keep claiming that people here argue that anti-semitism doesn't exist even though everyone here told you they have argued no such thing.
And you keep claiming that I believe that we invaded Iraq because of AIPAC and Israel when I have never argued that. What do you think gives you the right to just make things up like this?
I wrote a book where I argued that many factions led to the invasion of Iraq, of which Israel-centric neoconservatives are but one. Please stop claiming that I hold views that I don't hold.
-
What did WinSmith really mean?
He plainly said that criticism of AIPAC offered shelter and comfort to anti-semites. This would suggest that WinSmith was arguing that criticism of AIPAC served to delegitimize the notion that anti-semitism exists. In my opinion only a bigot could with to delegitimize the notion that anti-semitism exists because its existence is an undeniable fact.
I believe I characterized WinSmith's argument correctly, and that he is now unable to acknowledge the ineluctable implications of his argument. We can't be sure what he means, but we can be sure that he didn't mean what he wrote because it was incoherent and contradictory of his entire thesis.
-
Stop with the straw-man, already!
When you people angrily stomp your feet and demand the right to announce your grand Jewish financing conspiracy proof with AIPAC without any desire to consider how these narratives fuel anti-Semitism is when you become part of the problem.
WHO? Are you kidding us? Who, except you, made any reference to any such conspiracies?
-
Denning
You truely think his statement was not even in the ballpark? And we've been wasting all this time trying to have a reasonable discussion with you? Even Glenn replied.
What a waste!
I couldn't be clearer Denning, but for you, I'll give it one more try.
What I clearly stated was that when one engages in legitimate criticisms of AIPAC without an awareness of how anti-Semites will use that information, they are implicitly reinforcing the notion that anti-Semitism doesn't exist or matter (or else, why worry about how others will misconstrue? That can't happen, because anti-Semitism isn't entering into this).
His response, "so anything I say about AIPAC is anti-Semitic" was moronic baiting. Of course not. I've said a hundred freaking times that there are legit criticisms of AIPAC.
But there is a whole school of anti-Semites out there waiting to use "just the facts" to build David Duke racist narratives.
If you minimize this reality, you minimize the real anti-Semitism that takes place around the ADL, AIPAC and even a reprehensible fool like Lieberman.
There are facts, and there are facts delivered in context. When you engage racist or anti-Semitic tropes you must be aware of this, or your ignorance perpetuates it.
So many here deny or minimize that real anti-Semitism even takes place around these issues of hidden Jewish financing of the Iraq War. They claim it's simply an "attempt to silence", echoing the persecution complexes of most wingnuttery.
It is not an attempt to silence. It is an attempt to contextualize and make aware the dangers of misuse. Instead, there's angry foot stomping and demands to swing away at AIPAC even if the anti-Semites celebrate every time you do and use it to build their grand conspiracy arguments.
Oh, but that's not your problem.
You're simply "stating facts."
Please.
This is not a vacuum. The responsibility is on you to provide context and accuracy in your AIPAC criticisms and not to perpetuate outlandish Protocols of Zion mythic Jewish financing cabal conspiracy thories.