WH Plan To Combat Antisemitism Takes On Centuries Of Hatred, Discrimination And Lynching In America

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1458713

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Being an antisemite is bad. It says to me the antisemite rejects the teachings of two religions.
Hate is corrosive. Then again I must admit that there are things and people I hate so I am far from perfect.

torty back ride

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I am glad that I am not the first here today to decry that antisemitism, present here since colonial days, is as “American as apple pie.” It is a shanda!

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The continuing descent into Nazi-ism. Always looking for the scapegoat without admitting to and dealing with one’s own shortcomings.

With the demise of the last of the tattooed prisoners of war from Germany and Poland, the history for this is being erased.

We’re not coming after conservatives. We’re coming after hate. Big difference.

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While I don’t think that President Ulysses S. Grant gets the credit that (I believe) he deserves, he also had his failings.

Yet during the Civil War, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant did expel Jews from his military district, the District of the Tennessee, which spanned from the southern tip of Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico, an order President Abraham Lincoln countermanded.

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Here in her home state we’ve weaponized antisemitism and the results prove her point. We elected and reelected a Jewish AG and a Jewish, openly gay, governor, neither of whom is a conservative or a member of whatever cult Boebert worships. QED, not to be confused with GED.

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I believe the destruction of Christianity is mostly coming from within, most people are turned off by hatred and violence.

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It is hard not to see antisemitism as baked into America when even Christian evangelicals and many others that love Israel do so for fundamentally antisemitic reasons, i.e., as the proper place for Jews. What’s shameful is how both the Israeli right wing and many American Zionists countenance, if not encourage, these folks.

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I’m not sure what you mean about U.S. Grant, and why he should be given credit. Tell us more, please.
I was actually referring to Peter Stuyvesant, trying to eliminate Jewish refugees from Brazil seeking refuge in this “new” land. Remember, the Jews had already been through their own diasporas since Before the Common Era.

But, I’m sure that Stuyvesant was just following the traditions and biases of the Dutch West India Corporation.

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The MAGA wing of the GOP is only a step away from fully embracing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

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The stories of how we treated the Diaspora on the rise of Fascism in Germany are simply not related in US History courses.

How did the United States government and American people respond to Nazism? | Holocaust Encyclopedia (ushmm.org)

It’s why the Jewish State is so critical - never again will Jews have nowhere to go when they are banished from western nations.

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That’s part of it. The other part is Christian Zionism, the idea that the gathering of the Jews in Israel is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus, the apocalyptic End Times. At which point they’ll all be converted or slaughtered, of course. Support for Israel is a fig leaf masking this belief for many anti-Semites.

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It’s funny - when Republican politicians want to “own the libs”, they go after unprotected minorities like trans people and POC. When progressives try to protect these same people and reduce hatred, they are accused of attacking Republicans.

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Protocols: Last time I checked, still selling this online.
I wonder how many persons know its origins – know, or care that it’s a totally fabricated document.

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Apropos of nothing, I’m not sure that highlighting Jewish achievements and accomplishments throughout American history will help. Isn’t jealousy a significant driver of antisemitism?

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I agree. I formally left “Chriastianity” and theism of all sorts behind when the self-proclaimed “Moral Majority” became ascendant. These folks have only gotten more vicious and anti-decency since.

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I dunno. Witch burning, mass diasporas, lynchings, KKK, Nazi Concentration camps, Japanese internment camps, gay bashing, killing trans people, sending refugees at the border back to certain death… Seems to me “It’s been a long time comin’ but now it’s here .”

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My apologies. I did not realize that your original comment referred to Peter Stuyvesant. I assumed that your comment was more generalized. I merely mentioned Grant, because he is also mentioned in the TPM article.

I believe that U.S. Grant was a better president than he is given credit, especially when considering that he was dealing with reconstruction, civil rights and voting rights for former slaves, and battling the Ku Klux Klan.

As commanding general, he did err in his treatment of the Jews during the Civil War

As for occasional talk of removing Grant statues because he once issued an order expelling Jews from a military area under his control, Chernow says the people who call for that usually don’t know the full story, in which Grant made up for his error with later public support of the Jewish community.

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You can find antisemites in small communities where not a single Jew lives.
I once asked a fellow soldier from a Confederate state how many Jews he knew.
He said they had a single Jewish girl in his high school and “she was real stuck up”.
Until I was 12, I lived in a small town in NE PA. We had two Jewish families. Each owned one of the two general stores in town. I’m embarrassed to say I had in-laws who believed Jews were “taking over the country”.

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