IT REALLY IS TELLING how the abominable expression of antisemitism on college campuses in the aftermath of the atrocities of the Netanyahu regime, carried out by the Israeli military are getting such fevered and universal coverage EXACTLY IN THE WAY THAT THE FAR MORE WIDESPREAD AND FULLY PRESENT ANTI-BLACK RACISM ON CAMPUS NEVER HAS GOTTEN. Almost as telling, though it's been talked about a bit is the obsession with the American media about the small percentage of college aged kids (and non-student agitators) disrupting campuses, especially on the Ivy level INSTEAD OF CONCENTRATING ON THE ATROCITIES HAPPENING IN GAZA. The media did the same thing during the widespread student protests against the war in Vietnam which are the obvious models for today's would-be student radicals. The romanticization of that previous, failed, counter-productive debacle which didn't end the war, though it brought Nixon to power, is a criminal use of free press privileges.
And even more telling about the American "free press," the media, the laughably self-congratulating and glorified business of "journalism" has made that antisemitism the fault of antisemitism rejecting Democrats and, especially, Joe Biden while not attributing it to a man who regularly spouts the old chestnuts and lines of the crudest antisemitism, Donald Trump and his racist, not infrequently antisemitic Republican-fascist part. The corporate media's motives in this could hardly be more transparent than they were in 1968 when they actively but tacitly supported the election of Nixon.
The stupidity of the reaction against the crimes against humanity of the Israeli government and military which risks putting the tool of Netanyahu (and, so, I'd argue Putin and, ironically the Iranian government) Trump back in power doesn't shock me, now. Americans, whose "educations" has long been in the hands of the mass media aren't equipped to even begin to grasp the reality of the situation. While I'd have to do something I'd be loathe to repeat, re-reading the writing and words of the big-name student "radicals" of my youth to find out, I have the feeling that fifty-years on in the dumbing of America by the media that today's media presented student "radicals" sound atl least if not as stupid as my generation's student radical. And I was one of those radical who has become, if anything, far more radical than I was then.
I would favor giving the Israeli government an ultimatum, either stop the war crimes and genocides and, I have every confidence this might turn into, another land-grab in Gaza or they are cut off. I have no patience for the argument that the Israeli population wants to dump Netanyahu and his corrupt government because they've had literally decades of supporting that fascist at this point as they supported his fascistic godfather, Menachem Begin. The fact is that for the last half century of Israel's existence, it has been mostly in the hands of those who have more than a tendency towards fascism, as I've pointed out here for many years now, when, at the start of the Israeli government, Begin was touring the United States looking for funding and support for his faction, a group of the most prominent Jewish intellectuals warned in the New York Times that Begin and his gang were fascists with a record of terrorist violence and murder. That same gang in the form of the Likud party* has, in fact, dominated Israel for most of its existence, now.
But it can be pointed out that the factions governing Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere are hardly any better, Hamas committed a crime against humanity in its attack on Israel which gave Netanyahu his excuse for his far larger crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and humanitarian workers carried out by the wrongly idolized Israeli military. That Hamas certainly did that at the urging of the Iranian fascist-theocrats and with training widely reported coming from the big boss of current fascism, Vladimir Putin certainly does nothing to raise the moral status of the Hamas government. There is, however, a difference between its relationship to the population they dictate to and that of Israel to the Netanyahu government, they have regular elections in Israel and Hamas followed that tragic pattern in so much of the third word where there's one free election then not another after that. It's the same pattern that Putin retains power through, as well as the Iranian theocratic-fascists. There is a lot harder case to make that the Netanyahu government lacks legitimacy through the support of the majority in Israel, though at this point it's quite possible he is merely kept in place through the corrupting inertia of political process. I think another condition of continued aid from the U.S. is that there be an immediate referendum on the fascists in Israel, that aid being conditioned on them not being returned to power. If the Israeli population puts it back in out of anger at that condition, that's their choice but it should not govern the choice of the American People or our government.
Back when the odious antisemite and otherwise bigot Louis Farrakhan was much in the news, back in the 90s, it became the practice in the American media to demand that any Black Person being interviewed be required to condemn him, even those who had absolutely no connection with or previous association with him or the Nation of Islam. Even those in show biz and the entertainment industry, having nothing to do with politics or religion. That became so ubiquitous that I remember the poet Gwendolyn Brooks pointed out that she'd been the target of that phenomenon in one of her talks about her work.
I never remember any similar requirement that members of other groups be required to automatically condemn the far more often expressed anti-Black racism, anti-Latino hatred, or other far more widespread and demonstrably murderously consequential tidal-waves of such ethnic and racial hatred in the United States. I don't remember anyone in the same business being required to condemn Andrew Dice Clay or Jackie Mason or John Wayne or even David Duke by those in the media. I don't even remember the racists and bigots in the media such as Lou Dobbs being the focus of such an on-demand degradation ritual.
I'm not complaining about the media calling out antisemitism when the topic or person being interviewed has some relationship to it or to a legitimately identified antisemitism - there is certainly more than enough blatant antisemitism and enough blatant antisemites without unjustly or dishonestly assigning that lable where they aren't in evidence. I'm pointing out the dishonest political uses to which that particularly potent political label by the corporate media, the social-disease of social-media (ironically, the primary spreader of such diseased thinking today) and not a few would-be more legitimate authorities.
I've pointed out that distinguishing between different groups of targeted people to put a variable value on their lives and bodies is exactly how Nazis thought, declaring that I refused to think like a Nazi does, to behave like Nazis did. That isn't restricted to Nazis, it's how white supremacists or any other species of bigots think and act. That is, though, demonstrably, how the American media behaves in its actions and words. I think it does that because there is nothing to prevent them from doing it, things such as anti-hate talk laws in other countries. While those might not work perfectly, especially in this age of the social-disease of "social" media, not having them is a certain guarantee that hate talk will flourish and double-standards of valuation among different human groups and different human beings will become the standard default of thinking, talking and action.
It has long been astonishing to me when the members of any group targeted for bigotry takes up bigotry instead of realizing they are on the same side as those who are targeted. That used to be true of Irish Catholics in the United States, it isn't anymore, not much. I think that the less that a formerly targeted group experiences that kind of bigotry, the less likely they are to allow that experience to impinge on their habits of thoughts and what's left of their moral discernment and sense of obligation. I think there are far too few People who know the experience of real, dangerous discrimination in the media, certainly too few of those in charge of the media, which I think accounts for all of the above. I don't know if being a gay man was what saved me from that kind of hypocrisy, maybe it did, it's clear that among gay men who can pass that's no kind of a reliable inoculation against it. Lindsay Graham, Andrew Sullivan, those fascist and neo-Nazi gay boys that Trump has to dinner, getting a pass from the media and political punditry.
* In line with my critique of 18th century, libertarian style "liberalism" it should be pointed out that Likud organized by a number of smaller fascistic parties styled itself as an expression of "liberalism," the National Liberal Movement. No liberalism which rejects equality will avoid devolving into fascism, I suspect.
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