Earlier this month, several imams joined U.S. officials to visit the Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps, a trip which resulted in the clerics issuing a statement condemning anti-Semitism and vowing "to make real the commitment of 'never again.'"
The eight Muslim-American clerics were joined by Hannah Rosenthal, the presidential special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, and a handful of other officials from the Obama, Bush and Reagan administrations.
But according to Politico, "Organizers of the trip say they were dismayed that the Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman lobbied U.S. officials against participating."
I hope the Abraham Foxman has a serious mental or neurological problem, because otherwise, he is just a pathetic bigot, and dementia is preferable to that.
*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). But in either case, you are jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.
Speaking as a Jew, and a Zionist, it is with no small amount of disappointment that I call on all people, regardless of faith to neither contribute to, or work with, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which was one the premier organizations opposing anti-Semitism.
They have formally come out in opposition to the congressional resolution decrying the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire during WW I. This Genocide is a FACT, and the idea that they would align themselves with those who would deny this fact is deplorable.
Their excuse is that modern Turkey, whose government had no role in the Genocide is an ally of Israel, and they do not wish to offend them. This is wrong and counter-productive.
Their statement follows, and I am willing to allow a representative to post here unedited to present their side.
ADL Statement on the Armenian Genocide New York, NY, August 21, 2007 Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued the following statement:
In light of the heated controversy that has surrounded the Turkish-Armenian issue in recent weeks, and because of our concern for the unity of the Jewish community at a time of increased threats against the Jewish people, ADL has decided to revisit the tragedy that befell the Armenians.
We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities. On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide. If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide.
I have consulted with my friend and mentor Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and other respected historians who acknowledge this consensus. I hope that Turkey will understand that it is Turkey's friends who urge that nation to confront its past and work to reconcile with Armenians over this dark chapter in history.
Having said that, we continue to firmly believe that a Congressional resolution on such matters is a counterproductive diversion and will not foster reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and may put at risk the Turkish Jewish community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey, Israel and the United States.
Don't give in to bullies. It just makes things worse.
FBI Director Kash Patel has ended a training and intelligence-sharing partnership with the Anti-Defamation League, accusing the organization of spying on conservative groups.
Patel announced the decision in a social media post Wednesday, criticizing a partnership celebrated under former FBI Director James Comey — a political adversary of President Donald Trump who was charged last week in an indictment sought by the Justice Department.
He singled out past speeches by Comey that the former director said amounted to “love letters” to the ADL, which has provided hundreds of tips about extremist activity per year to law enforcement agencies throughout the country.
“James Comey wrote ‘love letters’ to the ADL and embedded FBI agents with them - a group that ran disgraceful ops spying on Americans,” Patel wrote on X. “That era is OVER. This FBI won’t partner with political fronts masquerading as watchdogs.”
………
Trump allies have increased their attacks on the ADL in recent weeks following the killing of Charlie Kirk. A summary of Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA on the group’s website earlier this year accused Kirk of promoting “Christian nationalism” and detailed the group’s ties to the far-right.
The page has since been removed from the ADL’s website.
So the ADL caved and got smacked anyway.
Giving into bullies isn't just wrong, it's stupid.
Seriously, why the f%$# have you decided to line the pockets of this antisemite?
Following weeks [actually months, but who's counting?] during which Elon Musk has attacked the Anti-Defamation League and threatened to sue it for billions of dollars, the Jewish civil rights group announced that it would resume advertising on X, the social media platform Musk owns.
In a statement on Wednesday, the ADL said X, along with similar sites, still “has a serious issue with antisemites and other extremists using these platforms to push their hateful ideas and, in some cases, bully Jewish and other users.”
Elon Musk, the owner of the platform actively supports and follows antisemites and other bigots on the site. This is not a problem that everyone has.
Elon Musk is a bigot, and a racist, and he glories in promoting bigots and racists.
Musk and the ADL have been at odds for about a year. Soon after Musk’s takeover of the platform in 2022, the ADL encouraged companies to pause their ad spending on the site in protest of Musk removing guardrails against hate speech, though at one point, the ADL resumed its own paid ads on the platform.
Which it should never have done.
………
In its statement, the ADL repeated points its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, had made previously in recent interviews with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and other outlets — including that it wants to work with platforms to address antisemitism in a meaningful way; that it is committed to opposing hate across the political spectrum; and that it is not the driving force behind X’s significant loss of ad revenue.
Let Elon sue. You will tear him up in discovery.
Under Greenblatt's watch, Elon has regularly negotiated with the ADL and not held up his side of the bargain.
He is not credible, and he's a bigot, and he wants Twitter to be a cesspool of antisemitism and bigotry because these people are his Stans now.
It really does not get any more mainstream in Jewish American politics than the Anti-Defamation League:
As the controversy surrounding Benjamin Netanyahu speech to Congress reaches new heights, one of the Jewish community’s top leaders is calling on the Israeli prime minister to stay home. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti Defamation League said that the political uproar ignited by Netanyahu’s invitation to speak to a joint meeting of Congress makes such a move unhelpful and therefore it should be scrapped. “It’s a tragedy of unintended consequences,” Foxman told the Forward, describing how the idea of presenting Israel’s view on Iran spiraled out of control, reaching even the Jon Stewart show, a step, Foxman said, that “turned the whole thing into a circus.” “One needs to restart, and it needs a mature adult statement that this was not what we intended,” Foxman told the Forward. He said that going ahead as planned with the speech would be counter-productive, with all attention given to the political controversy rather than to the issue at stake. “It has been hijacked by politics,” Foxman said. “Now is a time to recalibrate, restart and find a new platform and new timing to take away the distractions.” Foxman noted that he does not dispute the seriousness of the Iranian nuclear issue and that he agrees with Netanyahu on the need to strengthen sanctions against Tehran, but he argued that recent events have derailed the initial intention of Netanyahu’s address to Congress. Among the potential alternatives mentioned by Foxman for Netanyahu’s congressional speech were coming to Washington only for the AIPAC conference, postponing his address until after the March 17 elections in Israel, or expressing his concerns over the emerging Iran deal in direct conversations.
This is a polite way of telling Netanyahu to STFU, and I don't recall the ADL EVER rebuking an Israeli PM so strongly.
Boehner saw it as a way of embarrassing Obama, and Netanyahu saw it as a way of boosting his own electoral prospects, and it looks like they are 0 for 2.
It is so good to see this blowing up in the faces of those weasels (Boehner and Netanyahu).
The timing, of course, was part of the intent. A gunman with a semiautomatic rifle walked into the Chabad of Poway synagogue during services Saturday morning and opened fire. It was the last day of Passover. At least one person was killed and three were wounded, while uncounted others have again been seared with mortal fear, all in the name of hate.
This is the second deadly synagogue attack in the United States in six months, following the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in October. That was the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history, leaving 11 people dead.
How can this be happening? What kind of shocking step backward is this?
For a while it was possible to look at anti-Semitic incidents — the swastikas painted on walls, the vile anti-Jewish rhetoric found on social media, the street attacks — as aberrational, as strange anachronistic bumps on the generally straight path forward for Jews in society.
But it is becoming clear that anti-Semitism is on the rise, both here and in Europe. France reported a 74% increase in anti-Jewish offenses in 2018, and in Germany, violent anti-Semitic attacks surged by more than 60%. In the U.S., the Anti-Defamation League has documented an alarming rise in hate incidents against Jews. According to the organization, anti-Semitic incidents jumped 57% in 2017 over the previous year. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned in January that “we must rise up against rising anti-Semitism.”
We still have more to learn about the Poway attack, but a 19-year-old suspect has been arrested, and local officials are calling this a hate crime.
Seriously, fuck them, and fuck Trump, and fuck anyone whose cowardice leads them not to speak up.
First bit is by the bigots, documenting their racism, the Sheriff's response starts at 1:30
And the T-shirt is available
The Volusia County, Florida (of course it's Florida) Sheriff Mike Chitwood has been facing demands for $100,000.00 in gold (nice touch) and an apology from an antisemitic militia because he called them scumbag.
The members of the "Goyim Defense League," a group that has littered Volusia County neighborhoods with antisemitic flyers, also want the sheriff to remove tweets about his “Scumbag Eradication Team” T-shirts.
The shirts depict the sheriff flushing some people, including one person with a swastika tattoo on his leg, down a toilet.
Jon E. Minadeo II, identified by the Anti-Defamation League as the leader of the GDL, was one of four members who filed the "notices." He complained he was targeted because the T-shirts depict sunglasses similar to his own next to the toilet.
Chitwood responded in a Facebook video post by tearing up the notices, tossing them in the trash, and calling group members "pieces of (expletive)."
But the sheriff did offer the group one thing: pacifiers.
“To acknowledge that we received this piece of crap on paper with misspelled words — you’re so intelligent — we will be mailing one of these to each one of you that filed a lawsuit,” Chitwood said. “And basically it says ‘Mike Chitwood hurt my feelings,’“ the sheriff said.
Chitwood then held a pacifier close to the camera.
“Here’s a shot for you to suck on the pacifier, because that’s about all you’re going to get from your lawsuit,” he said. (It's not a lawsuit.)
………
Chitwood responded in a Facebook video post by tearing up the notices, tossing them in the trash, and calling group members "pieces of (expletive)."
But the sheriff did offer the group one thing: pacifiers.
“To acknowledge that we received this piece of crap on paper with misspelled words — you’re so intelligent — we will be mailing one of these to each one of you that filed a lawsuit,” Chitwood said. “And basically it says ‘Mike Chitwood hurt my feelings,’“ the sheriff said.
Chitwood then held a pacifier close to the camera.
………
The sheriff's office stated Monday that the pacifiers had yet to be mailed.
I want that T-shirt.
This is how you deal with these folks, you mock them, you belittle them, and when they make criminal threats, you charge them.
So, it appears that anti-CRT = Pro Nazi, which is profoundly unsurprising:
A Jewish lawmaker in Ohio is deriding legislation to restrict race education in the state’s schools as the “draconian Holocaust censorship bill” after one of the bill’s Republican sponsors suggested that it is appropriate to teach about the Holocaust from the perspective of the Nazis.
State Rep. Sarah Fowler Arthur, who co-sponsored the bill, made the comments when explaining to a local news station why she believes that “divisive concepts” should be taught from multiple points of view.
“Maybe you’re going to listen to the perspective of someone from Poland when they were undergoing similar displacement, or when they were being incorporated into the war and to some of these camps."
"Or maybe you’re listening to it from the perspective of a Jewish person that has gone through the tragedies that took place,” she said, describing how a hypothetical lesson that complies with the law could unfold. “And maybe you’ll listen to it from the perspective of a German soldier.”
Fowler Arthur also mischaracterized how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and why they were murdered in her remarks, originally made to News 5 Cleveland in early March but not publicized by the station until Tuesday.
………
James Pasch, director of the region’s Anti-Defamation League arm, told the station that Fowler Arthur’s remarks showed “no baseline of even education there that 6 million Jews were systematically murdered, and millions of others.”
The Republicans don't care. They just don't want to allow a conversation about racism in the United States, and in order to promulgate their historical fraud, they are more than willing to promulgate other historical frauds.
White supremacist wing nut Hal Turner has posted on his blog (no link to him, ever) that he has an advance copy of the Treasury's bank stress tests, and that it shows that 16 out of the top 19 banks are already insolvent.
Were it from anyone else, I might be inclined to believe it, as it jibes with my sense of the state of the banking industry, but from him, I'd just as soon ignore it.
Only, I'm posting about it, which begs the question, "Why are you reading this?"
The answer is that I'm posting because a Treasury Department Spokesman formally denied Turner's claims:
A U.S. Treasury spokesman said there’s no basis to a blog posting that buffeted financial stocks by saying that most of the nation’s largest banks are insolvent.
Andrew Williams, a Treasury spokesman, dismissed the report from Hal Turner of North Bergen, New Jersey, “particularly given we don’t have stress test results yet.” Turner has advocated violence against blacks, Jews and immigrants on his Web site and Internet radio show, according to the Anti- Defamation League, created in 1913 to monitor anti-Semitism.
Why is the US Department of the Treasury responding to what amounts to semi-literate scrawls on the wall of a bathroom stall?
I see three possibilities, in no particular order:
Turner has a friend in the Treasury, who thought that an official denial would get him some air play.
He actually has preliminary stress test documents.
The Treasury has come to the conclusion that its credibility, and that of the US banking industry is so pathetically low that they have no choice but to respond.
Honestly, none of these alternatives are particularly good ones, and if I had to place a bet, it would be on the last one, which would indicate that in less than 100 days, Mssrs. Geithner & Summers have completely pissed away their credibility, and they know it.
Clearly, the problem is "Bernie Bros" saying nasty things on Twitter.
More seriously, why the hell aren't Sanders and Biden getting Secret Service protection?
Moments after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took the stage at his campaign rally in Phoenix on Thursday night, the crowd was on its feet cheering madly for the Democratic presidential candidate.
But those cheers were swiftly replaced by deafening boos when Sanders’s supporters noticed that one man standing behind the senator in an upper section of the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum wasn’t waving a “Bernie” sign like many of those around him.
Instead, the man was holding a red flag above his head — and it was emblazoned with a swastika.
“It was absolutely wild,” Brianna Westbrook, a national surrogate for the Sanders campaign, told The Washington Post. “I never thought I would have seen a swastika at a political event. It’s gross.”
While people near the protester quickly ripped the offending item out of his hands and he was removed from the arena, the mere appearance of a Nazi flag at an event dedicated to a democratic socialist who could become the country’s first Jewish president sparked outcry. The moment, captured in videos and photos that circulated on social media Thursday night, was denounced as an act of anti-Semitism and prompted increased concerns about Sanders’s safety on the campaign trail.
………
“I was expecting Trump supporters to be protesting. I didn’t expect a swastika flag to be unfurled,” Orlando Garrido, a rally attendee, told The Post. “I never thought I would actually see something like that.”
On Twitter, the display was widely condemned as observers pointed out that Sanders’s Polish relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.
………
The Anti-Defamation League identified the protester Friday as Robert Sterkeson, a resident of Arizona. According to the ADL, Sterkeson is “a self-described ‘stunt activist’ who has harassed a range of Jewish and Muslim organizations and events.”
The fact that the ADL is still trying to suck suck up to His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Doctor Elon Musk, VC, DSO, MC, CBE, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Texas in Particular.
He knew what he was doing:
Of all the dark moments during Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the darkest may have been the moment Trump acolyte and world’s richest man Elon Musk threw up not one but two Roman salutes—the gesture most strongly associated with Nazis and the phrase “Heil Hitler,” but also used as a symbol of support in other fascist regimes. The gesture was shocking, and observers from the left to the racist right alike agreed on what they saw. Neo-Nazis cheered. (“Holy crap … did Elon Musk just Heil Hitler at the Trump Inauguration Rally in Washington DC … This is incredible,” one prominent Holocaust denier wrote, later adding, “We are so back.”) Moderates and liberals were shaken.
All good people should have been shaken, regardless of political bent.
Again, I note: the Romans NEVER used this salute.
One group, though, was unbothered: The Anti-Defamation League, which has as its mission fighting antisemitism and bigotry more broadly.
“It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge,” the ADL posted on the Musk-owned X. “In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead.”
………
Perhaps Musk wasn’t throwing up a deliberate sieg heil; he is notoriously physically awkward, throwing his limbs around in ways that are often outside of the normal range of human movement. But Musk has made a series of public posts and comments that make it awfully hard to conclude he doesn’t actually harbor racist and antisemitic views, and that should at the very least make groups like the ADL think twice before extending the benefit of the doubt. He is loudly supporting a German far-right party with connections to neo-Nazis. He changed his X avatar to Pepe the Frog, a symbol of far-right racism and antisemitism. After violent anti-immigrant riots rocked the U.K. last summer, Musk sided with the rioters: He has been a vocal supporter of the British far-right hatemonger Tommy Robinson, and was incensed by the seven-year jail sentence handed down to a man who posted an image of a map with a mosque circled in red and the caption “TIME FOR WAR”—a post found to have incited some of the riots. (The mosque was indeed attacked; “we started the southport and liverpool riots, all it took was a telegram and a tiktok account,” the man wrote.) In 2023, after Musk allowed white supremacists to run rampant on his newly acquired social media platform, one X user posted: “Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much. You want truth said to your face, there it is.” Musk responded, “You have said the actual truth.”
Elon Musk is a bigot, and more specifically, he is an antisemite. He has already shown us this, and the ADL is still sucking up to him.
Do not make donations to the ADL. Refuse to talk to their fund raisers.
At a minimum Jonathan Greenblatt and the rest of his cronies should be fired ……… out of a cannon ……… and into the sun.
Donald Trump has made warnings about the threat of antifa and “far-left fascism” a central part of his re-election campaign. But in reality leftwing attacks have left far fewer people dead than violence by rightwing extremists, new research indicates, and antifa activists have not been linked to a single murder in decades.
A new database of nearly 900 politically motivated attacks and plots in the United States since 1994 includes just one attack staged by an anti-fascist that led to fatalities. In that case, the single person killed was the perpetrator.
Over the same time period, American white supremacists and other rightwing extremists have carried out attacks that left at least 329 victims dead, according to the database.
More broadly, the database lists 21 victims killed in leftwing attacks since 2010 , and 117 victims of rightwing attacks in that same period – nearly six times as much. Attacks inspired by the Islamic State and similar jihadist groups, in contrast, killed 95 people since 2010, slightly fewer than rightwing extremists, according to the data set. More than half of these victims died in a a single attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016.
………
While researchers sometimes disagree on how to categorize the ideology of specific attacks, multiple databases that track extremist violence, including data maintained by the Anti-Defamation League, and from journalists at the Center for Investigative Reporting, have found the same trend: It’s violent rightwing attacks, not “far-left” violence, that presents the greater deadly threat to Americans today.
If the right wing were treated as the threat that they actually are, we'd have hundreds of co-conspirators in prison serving sentences or awaiting trial right now.
Eleven people are dead and six more are wounded — including four police officers — after a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood Saturday morning. The shooter, who officials said had an assault-style rifle and three handguns, is in custody, Pittsburgh police report. Officials have confirmed he is Robert Bowers, 46, of Baldwin Borough. He is in Allegheny General Hospital in fair condition with multiple gunshot wounds, officials said.
………
Gunfire erupted shortly before 10 a.m. as a baby-naming ceremony was getting underway, officials confirmed.
………
The Anti-Defamation League said it believed it was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the U.S. history.
There was an initial confrontation in which two officers were injured, Mr. Hissrich said. Two more who are members of SWAT were injured in a later confrontation, Pittsburgh Police Chief Scott Schubert said at the news conference. Officials said they believe the suspect was acting alone.
Someone posting under the name Robert Bowers on the social media site Gab.com, wrote on or around Oct. 10: "Why hello there HIAS! You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among us? We appreciate the list of friends you have provided," and included a link to the website for HIAS National Refugee Shabbat, formerly the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society. HIAS was founded in 1881 to help Jews fleeing Eastern Europe. In the 2000s, it expanded its work to include non-Jewish refugees, including those fleeing Afghanistan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Hungary, Iran, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Tunisia and Vietnam. HIAS led events held last weekend and billed online as "a moment for congregations, organizations, and individuals around the country to create a Shabbat experience dedicated to refugees." Jewish Family and Community Services is listed on the HIAS website as a partner of the organization. The website indicates that JFCS and three Pittsburgh congregations were participating in the group's awareness campaign last weekend: Beth Shalom, Dor Hadash and Makom HaLev. Robert Bowers on Gab.com indicated a week ago that he "noticed a change in people saying 'illegals' that now say 'invaders' I like this." He also called one other poster on Gab.com a "deceptive little oven dodger" in response to a post debunking a rumor that trucks marked with the Star of David were bringing Central American migrants to the U.S.
This is a direct result of Donald Trump and his rhetoric.
The right wing has been weaponizing bigots and the mentally ill to intimidate the rest of us since at least the Reagan administration.
We've seen it with mass shootings, the assassination of Alan Berg, violence against abortion clinics, etc.
There is an entire domestic terrorist infrastructure that the right wing has built, and it needs to be taken down.
Account
@gasthejews6969
has not broken
@X’s safety
policies because “gas the Jews” notably is not “threatening violence
against someone or a group of people” and definitely isn’t “celebrating or
praising violence” whatsoever…
First, in the US at least, the truth is always a defense.
Second, I'd pay good money to be in the room, or on Zoom, when Elon has to sit
down for discovery.
Elon Musk has threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League after accusing
the US-based civil rights group that
campaigns against antisemitism and bigotry
of trying to “kill” his X social media platform.
The owner of X,
formerly known as Twitter, said the ADL was trying to shut down his company
by “falsely accusing it and me of being antisemitic”.
In a series
of posts on X, Musk said advertising sales for the business were down 60%
and “based on what we’ve heard from advertisers, ADL seems to be responsible
for most of our revenue loss”. ………
The Anti-Defamation League has, over the past few years, attempted to forge ties with the Christian Right, because they are perceived as "Pro-Israel."
It should be noted that the fundamentalist Christian definition of supporting Israel means that they want Jews to be around to die horribly and painfully during the Armageddon that follows the rapture, which is a different definition of being "Pro-Israel" than I was previously aware of.
Well the latest big of demagoguery coming from our Christo-Fascist friends is their Jihad against an Islamic center being built in lower Manhattan, largely because they think that this is an act of bigotry that can play well for them politically.
In response, to these contemptible proclamations from Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and the rest of the merry band of bigots, the ADL has come out against the complex with a bizarre statement saying that the people screaming are bigots, but that the screaming has upset 911 victims, and that any construction should therefore be stopped.
The ADL has affirmatively allied itself with the philosophical descendants of the bigoted thugs who lynched Leo Frank, which, ironically enough, was the event that led to the creation of the ADL in the first place.
A group of noe-Nazis defaced a Jewish cemetery in Michigan, but instead of Swastikas, we goe "Donald Trump" and "MAGA".
The world is a truly horrible place:
The red spray-painted letters were first spotted on Monday morning, scrawled on the tombstones in a century-old Jewish cemetery in Grand Rapids, Mich.
“TRUMP,” they combined to read across several headstones. Two more gravesites displayed another message in red graffiti: “MAGA.”
This act of vandalism at Ahavas Israel Cemetery, discovered hours before President Trump arrived across town to stage his final rally of the campaign, has rattled the tightknit Jewish community in western Michigan’s largest city. The crime is being investigated by law enforcement officials, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Near the end of a bitter, divisive presidential campaign, the desecration marks yet another instance of political tensions apparently producing ugly and sometimes violent attacks. In Florida and the Berkshires, yard signs have been bulldozed and lit on fire. In Boston and Southern California, ballot drop-off boxes have burned to the ground. Across the country, dueling political rallies and protests have devolved intophysical confrontations.
Jews need to remember that even if they aren't first on some bigot's hit parade, they are ALWAYS second.
As the reader(s) of my blog may know, I am not a big fan of Elon Musk. I think that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ was born on third base, and thought that he hit a triple.
This is a guy who wanted to move PayPal's back-end to Windows® in 1999, when Microsoft could not get a Hotmail to work on Windows for another 5 years, and email hass the most fault tolerant software application in common use since the days of 300 baud modems.
First, we already know that social media has been used to foment and organize genocide. Most notably the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™ in Myanmar, but Twitter has been used aggressively by Hindu nationalists for similar purposes, with Musk's personal acquiescence.
Elon Musk is more Julius Streicher than he is Adolph Ochs:
I understand what he is doing, he is presenting an impossible to disprove counterfactual argument, because he is an antisemitic fuckwad who wants to pretend that he is not. (You can find a list of particulars here)
But he was treated as a heroic figure at the EJA [European Jewish Association] conference, in keeping with his reception among right-leaning Jewish audiences generally. To demonstrate how X might have mitigated the mass murder of Jews, EJA Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin played a video that scrolled through an imagined X feed during World War II.
Set to dramatic music, the posts included messages such as, “The Nazis told the Jews to get inside the synagogue – entire families, infants in their mothers’ arms, right? They’ve closed the doors and windows with metal bars and then SET IT ON FIRE! OH. MY. GOD. The world must know!”
………
Musk endorsed this alternate historical universe. “If there had been social media, it would have been impossible to hide,” he said about the Nazis’ campaign against the Jews. “If there had been freedom of speech, as well. One of the first things the Nazis did when they came in is they shut down all the press and any means of conveying information.”
Let's be clear. We know how social media is used with regard to genocide, and it is largely a tool of the perpetrators.
Let's also be clear, the European Jewish Association are a bunch of Kapo.
We also KNOW that when the Modi government demanded censorship from Musk just ahead of Indian elections, he gave them their censorship.
Every time that I think that one of these right wing nut-jobs cannot go any lower, they resume digging.
I did so in a way that specifically mentioned Jews.
Saturday, I took a rare day off from blogging, and on Sunday, I noted, among other things, that Trump had not mentioned Jews at all in their Holocaust Remembrance Day message.
Given the sh%$ storm that erupted, it was at the end of this post, though.
Senator Tim Kaine said on Sunday that it was “not a coincidence” that the White House did not mention Jews or Judaism on Holocaust Remembrance Day yet Donald Trump signed an executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.
“The final solution was about the slaughter of Jews,” said Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate in her defeat by Trump in November, in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “We have to remember this. This is what Holocaust denial is.
“It’s either to deny that it happened, or many Holocaust deniers acknowledge, ‘Oh, yeah, people were killed. But it was a lot of innocent people. Jews weren’t targeted.’ The fact that they did that and imposed this religious test against Muslims in the executive orders on the same day – this is not a coincidence.”
Kaine spoke after White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, appearing on the same show, stood by the original statement.
“I don’t regret the words,” Priebus said, adding: “I mean, everyone’s suffering in the Holocaust, including, obviously, all of the Jewish people.”
On Friday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the White House said: “It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.”
Pressed on the omission on Saturday, after criticism from the Anti-Defamation League and Anne Frank Center, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told CNN: “Despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered.”
Certainly, one of the tropes of Holocaust deniers from the more antisemitic side of that crowd (there is also a more pro Nazi side) is to assert that the deaths of Jews,* and say that everything has to be viewed in the context of overall Nazi brutality.
Steve Bannon is clearly on one of those sides, and given that Trump just put him in every meeting of the National Security Council, it's pretty clear that he is the power behind the throne right now.
So I am inclined to agree with Kaine's assessment, though it is unclear to me whether or not this was Bannon freelancing or not.
In the final analysis, it does not matter, and my Orthodox Jewish friends and relatives who voted for Trump need to keep this on their list when asking God for forgiveness on Yom Kippur.
*Pretty much everyone ignores the Roma (Gypsies), because they are perhaps the most despised minority in the Western world.
I'm shocked! Shocked! To find that gambling is going on this
establishment! Your winnings, sir.
I have noted that the behavior of police during protests is objectively pro
white supremacist, and frequently pro Nazi. (Search is in the upper left
corner)
Well, it appears that
someone leaked the membership list for Oath Keepers, and there are a lot of senior police, as well as a significant number of
elected officials and members of the military on the list as well.
Rather unsurprisingly, Texas is on top of the list for elected officials and
total number of members, New York (mostly upstate?) leads in law enforcement
officials, and Virginia leads in the number of active duty military.
Given that Virginia, the home of the Pentagon, is a distant 3rd in active duty
military among the states, this implies that the insurrectionist racist group is almost certainly overrepresented among senior military officials.
Cue Inspector Renault:
Hundreds of elected officials, military members, and law enforcement officers appear on the membership lists of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, according to a new report published Wednesday by the Anti-Defamation League. [The ADL report has a useful interactive map, and numerous reports of people attempting to use their official positions to benefit the radical organization.]
Why it matters: The Oath Keepers have risen to national prominence for their alleged role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The events of Jan. 6 also highlighted fresh concerns about domestic extremism in the military, after several former and current military members were charged for their involvement in the Capitol riot.
State of play: The leaked membership list was published by the journalism collective Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) in September 2021. The ADL's Center on Extremism went through the 38,000 names on the lists to identify those who held "sensitive positions," the group said in the report.
The ADL identified 373 people named on the Oath Keepers membership list who are currently serving in law enforcement agencies across the U.S., including at least 10 chiefs of police and 11 sheriffs.
The group also identified 117 people currently serving in the military, on top of 11 people serving in the reserves and another 31 who are military contractors or hold civilian positions.
It said the list included "86 active firefighters (including several fire chiefs), 19 active paramedics, and 31 active emergency technicians appearing in the membership list." The ADL identified 81 people who were holding or running for public office across the country as of Aug. 8. "These individuals run the gamut from local office — mayors, town councilmembers, school board members — to state representatives and senators," the report stated.
Worth noting: "An individual’s inclusion in the Oath Keeper database is not proof that they were or are still an Oath Keeper, that they hold or held all or some of Oath Keeper ideology or viewpoints, or that they ever actively participated in Oath Keeper activities," the ADL's report stated.
(emphasis original)
I'm not sure what to do here.
For elected officials, it's simple, watch them like hawks, and vote them out.
For members of the military and the police force? I'm not sure that they should be fired, but they should be thoroughly investigated, and any sort of security clearances that they possess should be revoked until it can be shown that they are not a security risk. (Clearances work on guilty until proved innocent, as well they should)
At the start of the protests following George Floyd's murder by a cop, a mysterious masked man carrying an umbrella started smashing windows and spray painting, "F“free sh%$ for everyone zone," which triggered looting in the area.
So the looting was started by a white supremacist attempting to create violence, arson and looting to discredit the protests, just like those hippie pinko protesters claimed.
So not surprised:
Minneapolis police have identified a suspect whom they believe helped initiate the riots and destruction in the city following the killing of George Floyd.
According to a search warrant filed earlier this week, the man is associated with the “Aryan Cowboys,” which the Anti-Defamation League lists as a White supremacist prison and street gang. The warrant does not label them as a White supremacist group, but describes them as a “known prison gang out of Minnesota and Kentucky.” On its Facebook page, the group says it does not care, “about a person’s color.”
CNN is not naming the suspect, who was dubbed “Umbrella Man” following the demonstrations, as police said no charges had been filed as of Tuesday afternoon.
Clearly, they are dotting their "i"s and crossing their "t"s, which, given that it's the Minneapolis PD, is a strong indication that their suspect is white. If he were black, he would already be in a cell.
………
Video of the “Umbrella Man” went viral after protesters in Minneapolis confronted and filmed him on May 27 while he was in the act of smashing several windows of an AutoZone store.
An arson investigator wrote in a search warrant affidavit that the man also spray painted the words “free sh*t for everyone zone” on the doors of the AutoZone. Not long after he smashed in the windows, looting began, and a bit later the AutoZone was set on fire, the affidavit said.
“This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and looting throughout the precinct and the rest of the city,” Sgt. Erika Christensen, a Minneapolis police arson investigator, wrote in the affidavit, which was filed in court on Monday.
“Until the actions of the person your affiant has been calling ‘Umbrella Man,’ the protests had been relatively peaceful. The actions of this person created an atmosphere of hostility and tension. Your affiant believes that this individual’s sole aim was to incite violence.”
………
Christensen said in the warrant that police recently received a tip regarding the identity of “Umbrella Man.”
The tipster told the investigator that the man “wanted to sow discord and racial unrest by breaking out the windows and writing what he did on the double red doors.”
Law enforcement are luck that white supremacists just cannot keep their mouths shut.
Or maybe they weren't looking too hard for the guy, and the tip forced their hand.
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This is one big shark that he jumped.
