dagblog - Comments for "Homeless anti-Semite was around long before Occupy"

Welcome. I was pleased to see

artappraiser — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 18:43:15 +0000

In reply to Hey AA, Thanks for posting

Welcome. I was pleased to see journalists working on who the guy was, not just letting it go. Perhaps it is good in a way that the wingers seized on it as agitiprop, as it inspired investigation and getting to the bottom of it.

I am waiting for same wingers to get around to Glen Beck and other tea party anti-semitic games now, probably waiting for a long time.

P.S. I did wonder about some mental instability on the perp's part (as regards our original discussion/video) in that his sign was not rational, seeming to say Jews=Wall Streeters=Nazis, as if not understanding or having any knowledge that Nazis attacked Jews. Just like using Nazis as a general term for evil bad guys, with no awareness that Nazis persecuted Jews.

Honestly, I do read others

Bruce Levine — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:38:43 +0000

In reply to Homeless anti-Semite was around long before Occupy

Honestly, I do read others besides Jeffrey Goldberg, but he's just another Jewish kid from Lawngoiland like yours truly, and he often writes in line with my thinking on this stuff. Here's Goldberg on right-wing bogus efforts to smear OWS as anti-semitic (emphasis added because I like to make mischief! :)):

I've been sent the link to this video, put out by the Emergency Committee for Israel, several times, and finally opened it this morning. It contains a handful of examples of anti-Semitic rhetoric expressed at unknown points, and at unknown places, in the Occupy Wall Street protests. The rhetoric is quite obviously anti-Semitic, but I was left thinking that if this was all the anti-Semitism the Emergency Committee could find, then they're going to have look harder before making definitive judgments.

Sure, there is going to be hostile anti-Jewish feeling expressed at the margins of any populist movement, but a) it appears as if the people expressing these thoughts in the video are real outliers; b) it's obvious to me that most people who attend these rallies are angry about corporate greed and excessive CEO compensation (among other financial concerns) and not about Israel or perfidious Jews; and c) this movement has (like most political movements, actually) disproportionate Jewish representation. To say that there are occasional outbursts of anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street is not to say that Occupy Wall Street itself is antisemitic. The University of Chicago has an anti-Semitic professor on the faculty, but does this make the university itself anti-Semitic?

Hey AA, Thanks for posting

Bruce Levine — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:31:46 +0000

In reply to Homeless anti-Semite was around long before Occupy

Hey AA,

Thanks for posting this; I hadn't seen this, and it's nice to see that the kids aren't tolerating this guy, which is not what I saw was going on when I first viewed the video of what happened and wrote about it. It looks like the wingers are running with this now, which again is no surprise, but not a reason for me to keep quiet even if I might sound like some of those folks in the process. Life, politics, and all that stuff ain't linear. And the guy sounds like he's in bad shape, which of course is a friggin' shame. I wish him well.

Bruce