Third Graders Forced to Reenact the Holocaust

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You know, I like to think of myself as immune to antisemitism. I wasn’t raised to think of myself as a jew. That came over time. And because of my background, there are jews who would think I wouldn’t qualify. And because I grew up in Oregon where other jews were scarce, I didn’t encounter much in the way of overt antisemitism as a child. Third to 7th grade when I was in private school a bit, but nothing that gave me lasting scars, old wounds that might be extra sensitive to pain.

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QAnon, self parody on steroids

So, apparently Q has gone quiet since not long after last November’s US election. As a result there is a power vacuum, or perhaps “influence” vacuum, since QAnon isn’t precisely a hierarchical movement where anyone is overtly or specifically empowered to order others to take action. Whether in practice people have sufficient influence to declare an action needs to be taken and can expect that QAnons, at least some of them, will take that action is a separate question. (And I think the answer to that question is yes.) But call it power or influence, the vacuum exists, and there are many people who covet that power/influence and will pursue it.

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I’m a Nazi, Says Nazi. World Topples in Not-Shock.

The Proud Boys and other so-called alt-right have often maintained that they aren’t Nazis. For instance, in 2017 before, during, and after the Charlottesville travesty where the Proud Boys and their allies and fellow travelers shouted “Jews will not replace us!” they also insisted to the media that they were neither anti-semitic nor Nazis.

Well, apparently not so much. I know. You’re shocked.

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So… Slavery Did Not Exist?

There’s this thing that’s been in the news lately. It’s actually quite an interesting bit of awful, and exactly the kind of thing we would normally discuss on FtB: an educator who abhors asserting facts because some people refuse to admit the truth of those facts. Now, the right wing loves to claim that this is a common left wing practice, routinely employed to hide facts supportive of conservative opinions, religions, or ideologies. (For our purposes in this post, we’ll follow the Fox News formula and accept arguendo that anyone working in the public schools is a “lefty”.) I don’t particularly see that, and more telling still, the examples that Fox News blowhards tend to cite don’t actually show that when one returns to original sources. If this really were happening all the time, one would think that the conservatives opposing the practice could come up with at least one good example. In these cases, then, the absence of evidence is waggling its eyebrows suggestively and mouthing, “Hey! Look over there!”

But that doesn’t mean that ignoring fact in favor of opinion or “belief” is something of which we on the left are  never guilty. Just recently, the news has gotten hold of a story about a principal in Boca Raton, Florida, where many of the large contributors to local taxes are Jewish. What was the story you ask, as if you didn’t both already know?

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Jeffress in Jerusalem: Hyperbole is Insufficient

So, let me start by saying that I am conflicted and don’t know where I want this post to go: I’m just going to write a bit and explore what comes up.

Robert Jeffress, a man of truly horrible behavior, is a right-wing pastor that does not believe in freedom of religion. Today he gave a christian prayer as the celebrated invocation at the opening of the new US embassy to Israel in Jerusalem. He has also repeatedly insisted that all faithful Jews are going to hell. Now while he’s also condemned just about everyone else to hell, I want to focus on his antipathy towards Judaism for a moment.

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I Have Been Naive

Don’t get me wrong, I’m aware of anti-semitism, but RightWingWatch has delivered a disheartening quote from a prominent guest on something called “The Richie Allen Show” and I don’t care how fringe this is, it’s awful:

“Pedophilia is rampant within the Jewish religion, from what I’ve researched,” Crokin said. “I’ve also discovered that predators prey on children at Jewish camps. Now, it is interesting how pedophilia has been exposed within the Catholic church but there hasn’t been a huge scandal about the pedophilia that goes on within the Jewish community. We do know that the Jews control most of the mainstream media and Hollywood, so you’re probably on to something with that.”

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When do we take them at their word?

 

Sean Spicer:

I think when you come to sarin gas, there was no, he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Ashad [sic] is doing … there was not in the — he brought them into the Holocaust center, I understand that, but I’m saying in that the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down, to innocent, into the middle of towns, it was brought, the use of it,

Steve King:

Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.

Emphasis mine.

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