Most of you will probably be mystified by Kanye's line, "black people are actually Jew also." This sounds like Black Israelite ideology. It's the theory that Israel was originally a Black nation. The best known faction of the movement is Rastafarianism.
I may be losing it, but I heard Bernie Sanders on Sunday talking sense. He said that the Democrats are slipping because they don't have an economic message and they're relying too much on abortion. Indeed. Abortion has always been Lucy's football for Democrats. Charlie Brown, i.e. Democrats go to kick it and Lucy pulls the football away, with Charlie landing on his back. (Abortion has retreated to being a 5% issue in terms of importance and of those people you have plenty of single issue pro-life women voters. Meanwhile, Republicans are owning the economic message as well as crime.
A couple of comments regarding American Conservatives and the Jews. Anti-Semitism has been rife in American life since there were enough of them to be noticed. It begins with the oppression of Union activity, the Frank Pencil Company fire, and Henry Cabot Lodge’s refusal to meet Louis Brandeis, hold a hearing, and allowing his nomination to languish for six months. Then Lodge decided to schedule a vote and Brandeis ascending to the Supreme Court. The trend continues with the barring of refugee boats during the Holocaust, the emergence of the KKK, and in the post war period the John Birch Society and others.
Buckley was a product of his class. He engaged in what a college professor of mine referred to as “polite anti-Semitism”. It was alright for them to write for his magazine but they should never darken his door let allow let alone eat in his house.
I suppose Buckley’s position represents an improvement over his family’s. He lived in a home where pictures of Generalissimo Franco and pre Vatican II popes held pride of place.
The Buchanan imbroglio was not settled until Buckley was on his death bed where he grudgingly admitted that Buchanan had committed anti-Semitic acts and made anti-Semitic statements. Some observers are not sure Buckley fully excommunicated Buchanan. A person with whom I did business in the early 1990’s, who sported impeccable GOP credentials, told me that Buchanan was a fascist. It was comforting that someone said it out loud.
Jewish people came to America seeking economic freedom and not be chased in the street because of their religion . For at least three generations, this has been the case. Maybe we, as a people, have had a good run here and it’s time to continue our wandering. I, for one, think that’s not the case but I am convinced they will come for us if Trumpie becomes President again because we know that he is a despicable bigot and he thinks all we think about is Israel. No, Donnie the embassy moving to Jerusalem and making peace with two Emirates won’t cut it. Just like WEB DuBois, I will waiting for them with my AK-47 across my knees.
So, how come he was an outspoken white supremacist when it came to black folks?
The man literally said that whites are a superior race. He even defended police profiling of minorities as necessary, because "they're mostly the criminals", he once said.
Bigotry against Jews and Blacks was always a tradition within the rightwing, even amongst the educated and genteel class.
They've never been outraged by it, except in a performative political display.
So basically, Candace Owens scammed a guy with a rather severe mental illness into buying her husband's failing company (he *is* the CEO) knowing that said mentally ill guy will never get a return on investment and her husband may wind up getting a nice parachute in the buyout....oooh Candi--you crafty B...go on with your crooked-ass self. I give you props for running the con, girl...
I'm afraid that "gravity" is as good a word for it as any, in the Aristotelian sense -- that heavy objects just always move to their true natural place. Much of America thought it was lighter than it actually is. Trump, building on what before him the Buchanans and Hasterts and Gingriches started, cleared that illusion away and now the real America is getting comfortable with its true, morbidly heavy self, and is sinking to its natural social, moral, and political level.
I just checked out the links in the Washington Free Beacon article Tim Miller tweeted. The offensive tweets are all still there! Khameini is a thousand times worse than Kanye West yet Barnes' praise is still there for all to see!!!
Democrats in Wisconsin deserve to have Ron Johnson for another six years.
Yeah, except for Trump's love of Putin, Kim Jong, Orban, MBS, Erdogan, constant praise of Xi, etc. Barnes is a bad candidate, but this seems to be yet another thing that is a political liability only for Dems.
Mandela Barnes experiences "living while black" every day, and you (and I) do not. Therefore IMO, we should allow his opinions re BLM as they represent his unique viewpoint, which we cannot share. He is, IMO, a weak candidate, but we should (and I shall) vote for him because we recognize his viewpoint, and besides, to not vote for him would be the same as voting for his MAGAt opponent.
One might excuse him for his support for the Marxist police-hating grifters who run BLM, altough that does show that his is a terrible judge of character. But there is absolutely no excuse for his support of Khameini and Assad. Even Ron Johnson doesn't do that.
Repeating my comment from Will and Charlie's podcast:
Sorry, folks, Trump’s antisemitism was on display early on…it’s just that people (not just Republicans) didn’t want to talk about it. Watch this carefully:
“Those that control the levers of power…” (flash to Soros, Yellen and Blankfein, hint hint.)
To me, this is pretty blatant stuff, a clear message of support to the anti-semites and neo-nazis out there...and. yet, crickets. From pretty much everyone.
Mandela Barnes is no more acceptable than Ron Johnson. The only reason to vote for Barnes would be that he would not be a material accomplice to the overthrow of the US Constitution and its replacement by an authoritarian regime. Not much of a recommendation. However, since he has no more chance of defeating Ron Johnson than I have of being nominated for the Nobel prize in physics, there is no need or justification for anyone to hold nose and vote for him. In his case, unlike the case with Donald Trump, it would be morally and electorally permissible to write in the old favorite Edmund Burke -- or Barack Obama, depending on one's preference.
No, I'm off the hook, I'm in Michigan. Here we don't have a Senate seat up this time, but we do have a full stable of horribles, ranging from insane to power-hungry to just plain vicious, all of whose electoral prospects are appallingly favorable, but against whom it is not outside the realm of possibility that voting for the other guy could keep one or two of them out of office--this time.
It happens that our Governor is pretty good, and our SOS and AG also, especially considering the times. But If one of the Dems here were Barnes, I'd have to vote for him, nostrils tightly clenched. Across the lake, though, there is no point -- Barnes is not even toast. And he is no fit hill to pointlessly die on.
"The only reason to vote for Barnes would be that he would not be a material accomplice to the overthrow of the US Constitution and its replacement by an authoritarian regime. Not much of a recommendation."
Sorry - that seems like quite a huge recommendation here and now in our country.
If he could win. But he not only can't win-- he is the dream image of what Republicans want the country to see when it sees a Democrat.
I guess maybe not the totally perfect such dream image -- there is Rashida Talib, and OAC, and what's-her-name from Minnesota (Omar?). But maybe he is even more useful than they would be. He's a defund-the-police black man chump who has said so many stupid things in the past he can't run away from and may even believe some of them.
He isn't a nescient madman like Herschel Walker, but he is identical to Walker in one respect: the only possible morally acceptable reason for voting for him would be to prevent someone even worse from attaining office.
And that is the excuse that will get Herschel Walker a Senate seat.
Sorry but I can't accept that. Barnes will cause so much damage to the Democratic Party if he gets into the Senate that I don't want to think about it. And the Democratic Party has no business supporting mass murderers like Assad and Khameini.
I agree, that is what will get Herschel elevated to the world's (formerly) "greatest deliberative body" and that is also why I would not vote for Barnes except in extremis.
I have to think the Republicans probably wish Barnes were running in a Blue state where he would actually have a chance of winning. Because a defeated Barnes removed from the stage is no use to them, but a living, talking, voting Barnes would be a permanent fundraising blessing for at least six years.
It is no longer valid to describe William F. Buckley as "the founder of modern conservatism." That brand of conservatism is dead, buried and all but forgotten. It would be more accurate to describe Pat Buchanan as "the founder of modern conservatism."
Trump has trafficked in antisemitic tropes for years, but usually gets a pass because of Javanka. And Melania made excuses for the antisemitic attacks on journalist Julia Ioffe after an unflattering profile.
Javanka, meanwhile, obviously believe that daddy's eccentricities go with the territory. They like the territory.
National conservatism's leading intellectual, Yoram Hazony, is an Israeli Jew who was raised in the US.
And there's Ben Shapiro.
Many Israelis let Trump off the hook because of the Embassy move, or the Abraham Accords, or some such - just as they excused Richard Nixon because he sent arms during the Yom Kippur War.
There's even a strain of Zionism which holds that all Jews belong in Israel anyway so it doesn't matter if they're forced to move there.
So - to wax euphemistic - it's "complicated."
What all these people are in denial about is how this kind of thing translates at the street level, where thugs don't make fine distinctions.
Once you excuse overt antisemitism in the name of political clan loyalty, it's only a matter of time before it becomes an "affirmative" part of the agenda. Indeed, it's not as if populism or authoritarianism (right or left) have ever had clean hands when it comes to vilifying Jews.
The question today is whether leading political figures and institutions retain the will to oppose it when the apathetic electorate arguably doesn't.
Sinclair Lewis wrote a dystopian novel in 1935 ("It Can't Happen Here") about a fascist ("populist") leader who came to power through the politics of resentment (mostly against Jews) as its core platform. But ultimately Lewis blamed an "apathetic electorate" for allowing it to happen. A prophecy for our times.
We are a small collective of writers who still believe the pen is mightier than the sword, and in these dire times have launched a substack newsletter - Neo-Fascism: a place to fight fascism with Words (blogs, comments, book reviews, and even humor). We invite you and all readers here to visit our new (free) site and provide us with your feedback, comments, and insight. Maybe we need to use our keyboards more effectively (and aggressively?) in this fight to save democracy. Thank you.
Most of you will probably be mystified by Kanye's line, "black people are actually Jew also." This sounds like Black Israelite ideology. It's the theory that Israel was originally a Black nation. The best known faction of the movement is Rastafarianism.
Maps
I may be losing it, but I heard Bernie Sanders on Sunday talking sense. He said that the Democrats are slipping because they don't have an economic message and they're relying too much on abortion. Indeed. Abortion has always been Lucy's football for Democrats. Charlie Brown, i.e. Democrats go to kick it and Lucy pulls the football away, with Charlie landing on his back. (Abortion has retreated to being a 5% issue in terms of importance and of those people you have plenty of single issue pro-life women voters. Meanwhile, Republicans are owning the economic message as well as crime.
Thank you for this, Charlie.
A couple of comments regarding American Conservatives and the Jews. Anti-Semitism has been rife in American life since there were enough of them to be noticed. It begins with the oppression of Union activity, the Frank Pencil Company fire, and Henry Cabot Lodge’s refusal to meet Louis Brandeis, hold a hearing, and allowing his nomination to languish for six months. Then Lodge decided to schedule a vote and Brandeis ascending to the Supreme Court. The trend continues with the barring of refugee boats during the Holocaust, the emergence of the KKK, and in the post war period the John Birch Society and others.
Buckley was a product of his class. He engaged in what a college professor of mine referred to as “polite anti-Semitism”. It was alright for them to write for his magazine but they should never darken his door let allow let alone eat in his house.
I suppose Buckley’s position represents an improvement over his family’s. He lived in a home where pictures of Generalissimo Franco and pre Vatican II popes held pride of place.
The Buchanan imbroglio was not settled until Buckley was on his death bed where he grudgingly admitted that Buchanan had committed anti-Semitic acts and made anti-Semitic statements. Some observers are not sure Buckley fully excommunicated Buchanan. A person with whom I did business in the early 1990’s, who sported impeccable GOP credentials, told me that Buchanan was a fascist. It was comforting that someone said it out loud.
Jewish people came to America seeking economic freedom and not be chased in the street because of their religion . For at least three generations, this has been the case. Maybe we, as a people, have had a good run here and it’s time to continue our wandering. I, for one, think that’s not the case but I am convinced they will come for us if Trumpie becomes President again because we know that he is a despicable bigot and he thinks all we think about is Israel. No, Donnie the embassy moving to Jerusalem and making peace with two Emirates won’t cut it. Just like WEB DuBois, I will waiting for them with my AK-47 across my knees.
William F Buckley was against antisemites? Wow.
So, how come he was an outspoken white supremacist when it came to black folks?
The man literally said that whites are a superior race. He even defended police profiling of minorities as necessary, because "they're mostly the criminals", he once said.
Bigotry against Jews and Blacks was always a tradition within the rightwing, even amongst the educated and genteel class.
They've never been outraged by it, except in a performative political display.
I liked Mona's article. Damn straight.
So basically, Candace Owens scammed a guy with a rather severe mental illness into buying her husband's failing company (he *is* the CEO) knowing that said mentally ill guy will never get a return on investment and her husband may wind up getting a nice parachute in the buyout....oooh Candi--you crafty B...go on with your crooked-ass self. I give you props for running the con, girl...
I'm afraid that "gravity" is as good a word for it as any, in the Aristotelian sense -- that heavy objects just always move to their true natural place. Much of America thought it was lighter than it actually is. Trump, building on what before him the Buchanans and Hasterts and Gingriches started, cleared that illusion away and now the real America is getting comfortable with its true, morbidly heavy self, and is sinking to its natural social, moral, and political level.
I just checked out the links in the Washington Free Beacon article Tim Miller tweeted. The offensive tweets are all still there! Khameini is a thousand times worse than Kanye West yet Barnes' praise is still there for all to see!!!
Democrats in Wisconsin deserve to have Ron Johnson for another six years.
Yeah, except for Trump's love of Putin, Kim Jong, Orban, MBS, Erdogan, constant praise of Xi, etc. Barnes is a bad candidate, but this seems to be yet another thing that is a political liability only for Dems.
Mandela Barnes experiences "living while black" every day, and you (and I) do not. Therefore IMO, we should allow his opinions re BLM as they represent his unique viewpoint, which we cannot share. He is, IMO, a weak candidate, but we should (and I shall) vote for him because we recognize his viewpoint, and besides, to not vote for him would be the same as voting for his MAGAt opponent.
One might excuse him for his support for the Marxist police-hating grifters who run BLM, altough that does show that his is a terrible judge of character. But there is absolutely no excuse for his support of Khameini and Assad. Even Ron Johnson doesn't do that.
Repeating my comment from Will and Charlie's podcast:
Sorry, folks, Trump’s antisemitism was on display early on…it’s just that people (not just Republicans) didn’t want to talk about it. Watch this carefully:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vST61W4bGm8&t=17s
“Those that control the levers of power…” (flash to Soros, Yellen and Blankfein, hint hint.)
To me, this is pretty blatant stuff, a clear message of support to the anti-semites and neo-nazis out there...and. yet, crickets. From pretty much everyone.
To answer the "Cheap Shots" question:
The same reason the Republican party was afraid to call Trump out more forcefully for everything, BEFORE he got the nomination.
Mandela Barnes is no more acceptable than Ron Johnson. The only reason to vote for Barnes would be that he would not be a material accomplice to the overthrow of the US Constitution and its replacement by an authoritarian regime. Not much of a recommendation. However, since he has no more chance of defeating Ron Johnson than I have of being nominated for the Nobel prize in physics, there is no need or justification for anyone to hold nose and vote for him. In his case, unlike the case with Donald Trump, it would be morally and electorally permissible to write in the old favorite Edmund Burke -- or Barack Obama, depending on one's preference.
So… you’re voting for Ron Johnson then?
No, I'm off the hook, I'm in Michigan. Here we don't have a Senate seat up this time, but we do have a full stable of horribles, ranging from insane to power-hungry to just plain vicious, all of whose electoral prospects are appallingly favorable, but against whom it is not outside the realm of possibility that voting for the other guy could keep one or two of them out of office--this time.
It happens that our Governor is pretty good, and our SOS and AG also, especially considering the times. But If one of the Dems here were Barnes, I'd have to vote for him, nostrils tightly clenched. Across the lake, though, there is no point -- Barnes is not even toast. And he is no fit hill to pointlessly die on.
"The only reason to vote for Barnes would be that he would not be a material accomplice to the overthrow of the US Constitution and its replacement by an authoritarian regime. Not much of a recommendation."
Sorry - that seems like quite a huge recommendation here and now in our country.
If he could win. But he not only can't win-- he is the dream image of what Republicans want the country to see when it sees a Democrat.
I guess maybe not the totally perfect such dream image -- there is Rashida Talib, and OAC, and what's-her-name from Minnesota (Omar?). But maybe he is even more useful than they would be. He's a defund-the-police black man chump who has said so many stupid things in the past he can't run away from and may even believe some of them.
He isn't a nescient madman like Herschel Walker, but he is identical to Walker in one respect: the only possible morally acceptable reason for voting for him would be to prevent someone even worse from attaining office.
And that is the excuse that will get Herschel Walker a Senate seat.
Sorry but I can't accept that. Barnes will cause so much damage to the Democratic Party if he gets into the Senate that I don't want to think about it. And the Democratic Party has no business supporting mass murderers like Assad and Khameini.
I agree, that is what will get Herschel elevated to the world's (formerly) "greatest deliberative body" and that is also why I would not vote for Barnes except in extremis.
I have to think the Republicans probably wish Barnes were running in a Blue state where he would actually have a chance of winning. Because a defeated Barnes removed from the stage is no use to them, but a living, talking, voting Barnes would be a permanent fundraising blessing for at least six years.
It is no longer valid to describe William F. Buckley as "the founder of modern conservatism." That brand of conservatism is dead, buried and all but forgotten. It would be more accurate to describe Pat Buchanan as "the founder of modern conservatism."
Trump has trafficked in antisemitic tropes for years, but usually gets a pass because of Javanka. And Melania made excuses for the antisemitic attacks on journalist Julia Ioffe after an unflattering profile.
Javanka, meanwhile, obviously believe that daddy's eccentricities go with the territory. They like the territory.
National conservatism's leading intellectual, Yoram Hazony, is an Israeli Jew who was raised in the US.
And there's Ben Shapiro.
Many Israelis let Trump off the hook because of the Embassy move, or the Abraham Accords, or some such - just as they excused Richard Nixon because he sent arms during the Yom Kippur War.
There's even a strain of Zionism which holds that all Jews belong in Israel anyway so it doesn't matter if they're forced to move there.
So - to wax euphemistic - it's "complicated."
What all these people are in denial about is how this kind of thing translates at the street level, where thugs don't make fine distinctions.
Once you excuse overt antisemitism in the name of political clan loyalty, it's only a matter of time before it becomes an "affirmative" part of the agenda. Indeed, it's not as if populism or authoritarianism (right or left) have ever had clean hands when it comes to vilifying Jews.
The question today is whether leading political figures and institutions retain the will to oppose it when the apathetic electorate arguably doesn't.
Sinclair Lewis wrote a dystopian novel in 1935 ("It Can't Happen Here") about a fascist ("populist") leader who came to power through the politics of resentment (mostly against Jews) as its core platform. But ultimately Lewis blamed an "apathetic electorate" for allowing it to happen. A prophecy for our times.
We are a small collective of writers who still believe the pen is mightier than the sword, and in these dire times have launched a substack newsletter - Neo-Fascism: a place to fight fascism with Words (blogs, comments, book reviews, and even humor). We invite you and all readers here to visit our new (free) site and provide us with your feedback, comments, and insight. Maybe we need to use our keyboards more effectively (and aggressively?) in this fight to save democracy. Thank you.
https://neofascism.substack.com/
It will not be confined to Jews. They want a WHITE CHRISTIAN nation, and at some point that will certainly mean the right kind of CHRISTIAN.