Do you think the fact that George Soros is Jewish has anything to do with it?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Recent Comments
. . . Earth’s rotation around its axis has anything to do with the Sun appearing to “rise” in the east each morning.
Don’t be silly!
It’s odd because they attack him as a Jew and as a Hitler-abetting anti-Semite. Each of these attacks works for a different portion of the GOP base.
And then there’s the fact that he’s just plain foreign, which is intolerable to all of them.
Then there’s the far-right Jewish contingent, for whom Soros is not merely a “self-hating Jew,” but “the archetype self-hating jew.”
oh, yes!
The accusation of being “< adjective > Jew” is …. well, it’s all-purpose, isn’t it? I mean, you can be a gentile and their enemy, in which case you get called-out for all sorts of things. But if you’re identifiably Jewish, well, that’ll be at the top of their list of attacks. Even being -associated- with Jewish culture in the most tenuous of ways [Nancy Pelosi? srsly? She’s Ballmer Catholic, man] is enough to roll out the attack.
I think it speaks to something deeply rotten at the base of Western culture. Sigh.
TL;DR YES
I still don’t know who this guy is or why he’s the right’s boogie man.
I think the fact that he’s a Jew has something to do with it.
And an advocate of liberal democracy. Both don’t play well in right-wing authoritarian circles.
Yes, he’s like Charles Koch but on the Left. However, they can’t see the symmetry.
Or perhaps they do see a symmetry (that isn’t there) and just assume he’s as big an asshole as the Kochs, he’s just not their asshole.
Voice, I expect this appearance by your Governor today must have warmed your heart.
Yeah, he’s going down like a stone. Signed some reasonable minor gun control legislation and a bill (HB40) keeping abortion legal in Illinois even if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade. These were unforgivable sins to the Right. He almost lost his primary to an obscure downstate Senator, winning by a razor thin edge. If she hadn’t started spouting off about gays in the last weeks of the primary, she might have beat him. I imagine that turned off rich conservative Suburban gays and suburban Republicans with gay children. The immigrant talk was OK (politically) because Latinos are sold (D) here.
Stuff like your link is just going to turn suburban R’s to the Conservative candidate, another maverick down state Senator who bolted the party, got 65,000 signatures and is running on the Conservative Party Banner. There is also a loon who won’t pay his child support running as a Libertarian. The Conservative Senator is at least a pro.
My fondest hope is that Rauner comes in third.
Worst IL governor ever and I include those (of both parties) that went to prison. Rauner is an ex hedge fund manager so you know he has the morals of an alley cat.
He likes to dress up doesn’t he? At other downstate rallies he dresses in jeans and plaid shirts and drops his g’s when speaking. A total phony. Like a male Republican twin of Hillary Clinton.
He founded the Open Society Foundations to fund democracies and open government around the world and here in the US. Since 1979 he has given $32 billion to the effort.
Well, we obviously need to confer with Oui about this.
Let me save you the effort — historically, Russia has no history of anti-semitism, and less now than ever, because Putin.
It is convenient. Some use it like an ‘add on’ item like when shopping at Amazon.
“Bigoted? Me? No! Never! You’re the bigot for pointing out my bigotry!”
This reminds me of the classic SNL sketch after a Nazi war criminal was found in Uniondale Long Island. A former member of the Romanian Iron Guard that committed all sorts of lovely war crimes. And of course they interviewed the neighbors, and the neighbors all said “what a nice man he was”, “always so polite and friendly. Kept to himself mostly, quiet sort, but never caused any trouble!” On and on.
So, Saturday Night Live did a sketch in which they interview actors posing as members of the town saying all these favorable things about this guy, and then as they go to commercial, the camera pulls back and you see that everybody in this restaurant set has a Nazi armband on. The whole town is full of Nazis!
That’s what we are dealing with here. Trump has allowed them all to come out of the woodwork and parade their bigotry. They always were taught to hate from their daddies, and they didn’t like society telling them that they had to be nice to black and brown people at work, and not call them offensive names, and all other “politically correct” b.s. like that. Now they get to let their freak flag fly.
So, it’s going to continue, until they suffer real losses from parading their bigoted beliefs. For most of the population bigotry against the Jews is just quaint. My grandmother had bigoted views against the Jews and Irish. It was just weird, like listening to a living fossil talking. And in a way that was what it was. She was born in 1900. It was a different world.
But, for our “Real Mericans” it’s real and immediate. The Jews are their enemies, except apparently the ones in Palestine who are God’s warriors or something. I don’t understand it. Jews are liberals. That’s the problem.
That makes them sort of honorary Muslims. When they don’t like somebody, they will look for a bigoted reason not to like them. They are black, brown or Asian, or different in some way – religion, whatever. And that’s “why” you see, that they are whatever the “Real Mericans” among us don’t like.
Booman asks:
No.
I do not.
I think the fact that Soros has been an effective thorn in the side of the right wing is the only salient fact in the matter. I mean…aren’t the right wing, racist Israelis Jews? Netanyahu? Please!!! Isn’t Jared Kushner Jewish? Orthodox Jewish? Didn’t Trump’s daughter marry Kushner and convert to Judaism?
C’mon!!!
These people seek ways to demonize their enemies. It’s as simple as that. Skin color, sexual leanings, cultural alliances, religion…whatever works.
End of story.
AG
You’re confusing two different things. Trump doesn’t give a rip about Jews marrying his daughter. It’s just the Real Mericans who care. I don’t know how they process contradictions like Kushner, probably they don’t. They seem to be able like the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland to believe contradictory things at the same time and simply ignore the contradictions:
Fox News conditions them, as Noam Chomsky says “to become psychotic” and not care at all about anybody else but themselves.
If you are remotely inclined to doubt their bigotry just go on any of their Infowars websites and then do a search for George Soros. You’ll find plenty of bigoted anti- Semitic posts. They don’t think it’s any big deal either.
This post pretty much sums up the informed Jewish opinion of people I know:
I will say it again. Whether it’s Trump or any other right-wing controller, Jews (Or other fill-in-the-blank groupss…gays, minority people, “them nasty Russkies,” eggheads, libruls, etc., etc. etc.) are merely a convenient enemy used to stir up the uninformed/misinformed/disinformed/lunkhead masses. The only common grounds that these targets share is a generalized “difference” from those that are being encouraged to hate them and simultaneously being a numerical minority that cannot effectively protect itself.
Booman asked :
“Do you think the fact that George Soros is Jewish has anything to do with it?” and linked that question to an article the headline of which is:
My point is that this “incendiary garbage” has absolutely nothing to do with Soros’s’s hereditary religion other than the plain facts that Jews are in a minority position in this country and yet have been exceptionally successful in all walks of life. He is simply a convenient rallying point to be singled out and used to stir up the 27+% lunkhead base, which is almost entirely of European/Christian lineage if not belief. The same can be said of the idiot publicity stunts surrounding Obama’s lineage during his presidency. These people only recognize power and profit, and will prey on whomever is handy to try to get and keep those things. Unlike say racist madmen like Adolph Hitler, they will cooperate with…and protect/arm…anybody of any ethnicity whatsoever who promises to be of use in their search for dominance.
Again…Booman’s question :
And my answer:
Was Obama “Jewish?”
No.
He was not.
He was simply an obstacle to the right’s capture of power.
Is Netanyahu Jewish?
At least hereditarily?
Bet on it.
Is he…and Israel as well…part of the west’s Blood for Oil policy in the Middle East?
Bet on that as well.
Thus no demonization of him, Israel or whatever other Jews and Jewish/israeli organizations that play effective ball with that policy.
This is not anti-semitic publicity, it is simply anti-opposition publicity.
AG
P.S. Sheldon Adelson
Do you see any right-wing publicity machine demonizing this Jew? Of course not. He’s on the controllers‘ side.
My point…
Arthur, you obtuse right wing asshole, Sheldon Adelson is financing the movement which is attacking Soros with anti-Semitic tropes. Right wing Jews have made common cause with anti-Semitic political forces throughout modern history. Prime Minister Netanyahu is making common cause with Saudi Arabia at this moment.
Sheldon Adelson is safely ensconsed behind his virtual moat. He’s not a Jew who is made vulnerable by the rhetorical kerosene his movement is spraying around. As long as the anti-Semitic movement helps Adelson again even more money and more power, Sheldon will be fine.
Honest to God, AG, you’ve jammed your fingers into your eyes and plucked them out. You can fuck off with your tiresome work to try to get us to pluck our own eyes out as well.
Bonus points for your bizarre “Is Obama Jewish?” tack. President Trump, whose campaign you rhetorically worked for at this website in 2016, was endorsed by the KKK, yet that gave you no pause. The KKK, and the President whose actions they continually celebrate, moves their eliminationist rhetoric and actions through many, many cultural groups.
I disagree. I think it has a lot to do with it. Yes, they would hate him even if he wasn’t Jewish. But being a “Jew Banker” ties into their Rothschild conspiracy theory.
I had to check the date of the post to know which event was being referred to.
And now a Pittsburgh synagogue has been shot up, with multiple casualties, by a white guy who frothed anti-Semitism on social media.
They’re boiling out from under the rocks now, aren’t they?
What do you suppose is causing them to bubble up from the rocks?
It’s like the guy on that plane who groped a sleeping woman and when arrested upon landing complained to the cops that hey, what’s the big deal, Trump said it was okay to grab women.
https:/www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2018/10/23/accused-groping-southwest-flight-trump-wome
n-private-parts/1736728002
The president of these here United States is making it clear that being a bigot is downright patriotic, doncha know?
I think that being Jewish opens Soros up to a higher level of hate talk. They do hate a liberal Jewish benefactor at Faux News. The hate emanates from Trump and is broadcast at his rallies and at Faux News. He is the prime mover of what is going on. It is not a both sides do it. It is the right wing under Trump. Listen to one of his rallies and it sounds like he is giving instructions. In time he may cause both sides to engage in violence at which time we may enter a hot civil war.
I think that being Jewish opens Soros up to a higher level of hate talk. They do hate a liberal Jewish benefactor at Faux News. The hate emanates from Trump and is broadcast at his rallies and at Faux News.
The Soros conspiracies started with Glenn Beck. He was the first big promoter of them. Beck mainstreamed it. It’s sick that Samantha Bee tried to help rehab his reputation right around the 2016 election.
. . . and apropos this serious question would soon become when you posted it.
Trump apparently has the solution to this. First he said if they had an armed guard at the synagogue ( they do at times I heard) this whole affair would not have happened. And now he says we need to dress up the death penalty laws. But I think the NRA still has a gag order,on him about tighteneing up gun regulations. We need one of those kids from Florida like Emma to fill him in. Be nice though if he could stop calling for people to hurt his opponents, like body slamming them. That would be nice.