THE TRUMPED UP, literally, outrage over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying what is obvious, that the so-called "Anti-Defamation League" has discredited itself by defending Elon Musk's not one but two Nazi salutes includes Rupert Murdoch's NY Post accusing her of "Jewsplaining" which, it being the Post and a Murdoch site is to AOC's credit. "Jewsplaining" being used by a Murdoch lie machine in any circumstances is a red flag that it a term invented for the most dishonest of purposes. Especially clear in this context by that toilet paper.
That many Jews and Jewish groups have criticized the ADL and its director over their defense of Elon Musk, the white supremacist, sponsor of Nazi social media, Trump's major patron, his co-president, I'd say his brain, such as it is, defending giving a clear and unambiguous Nazi salute as part of an American Presidential inauguration is not being mentioned much at all compared to using AOC's comment as a weapon against an anti-Nazi democrat.
That is as the director of the ADL , Jonathan Greenblatt has been profligately throwing around accusations of antisemitism against just about anyone who is even moderately critical of the Netanyahu government and its genocidal policies in Gaza makes this exactly what AOC said it was, a definitive discrediting of him and the organization he heads. "Antisemitism" has clearly become another such marker of dishonest accusation in order to suppress the truth.
But there has to be a more basic question asked about this issue of Elon's Nazi salute. Granted Jewish People in the United States and around the world have an unquestionable right to call out Nazism, as do members of other groups that the Nazis murdered as policy, groups hardly acknowledged to have been targeted. Poles, other Slavic People, Roma, disabled People, Gay men, etc. For members of all of those groups calling out and opposing ANY AND ALL MANIFESTATIONS OF NEO-NAZISM IS ertainly not only a right but a moral responsibility. But it isn't a responsibility that is universally or uniformly fulfilled as the ADL and, I'm sorry to say, Deborah Lipstadt* seem to prove in this case.
But the right and responsibility to do that isn't confined to any of the groups that the Nazis targeted or that the neo-Nazis still target. EVERYONE HAS BOTH THE RIGHT AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY TO CALL OUT NAZISM, WHETHER OR NOT YOU OR YOUR FAMILY IS ON THEIR DEATH LIST, whether or not your parents signed up to fight Nazism, fascism and Japanese Imperialism in WWII. To not call it out, as our media has not, as Republican-fascists largely have not, is as discrediting of them as it is the ADL and its leadership.
AOC has that right and moral responsibility as much as anyone who is on the neo-Nazi hit list or on the original one in Germany. She has a perfect right to call out the ADL's hypocrisy and outrageous forfeiture of credibility. Those who are slamming her for calling out the ADL which has forfeited its credibility for the richest man in the world, Trump's owner, his puppeteer, his brain, have discredited themselves exactly as much as the ADL and its leadership have. I have to wonder how they'd have behaved in Germany or Austria in 1933 at the start of Germany's great evil. We very well be at the start of America's.
* And Deborah Lipstadt, who served as the Biden administration’s special envoy combating global antisemitism until this week, downplayed the incident.
“I believe we have much, much bigger things to worry about regarding contemporary antisemitism than this particular issue,” Lipstadt told JTA, saying she was referring both to Musk’s salute and the ADL’s response. (Lipstadt separately told the Forward she accepted the ADL’s reading of the gesture as “awkward.”) The U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum did not respond to a request for comment on Musk’s gesture.
I used to have a lot of respect for Lipstadt but I have to admit that I don't much respect her anymore. Especially not over this normalization of Nazism. This is a definitive discrediting of anyone who is unwilling to slam the richest man in the world who has bought himself an American president.
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