Leftists' Own Albatross

The left-wing, which now controls the Democrat Party has been very successful in playing the race card for the last 50 years or so and more particularly in the last five years. Does anyone seriously doubt that if Obama had white skin that he would have been elected? A lot of voters were so enthralled with idea of having a black President that they were willing to overlook a serious lack of credentials and some really troubling past associations. Leftists love to hang Republicans out to dry when they get involved in sex scandals since it seems the height of hypocrisy given the Republicans' supposed miss goody two shoes attitudes towards sex. Likewise, accusing your opponents of racism means you had better not have any of your own problems with race, religion, ethnicity or gender.

You need to be a white pot before you can call the kettle black. You just cannot afford to have even a hint of skeletons in your own closet on trashing an identifiable subgroup of the population lest that skeleton becomes an albatross around your own neck. Unfortunately for leftists/liberals/progressives, the skeleton in their own closest has been rattling so loud lately that it is beginning to attract unwanted attention. Oh surely not, you say, there is no way those bleeding heart liberals would not have a soft spot for any minority let alone detest them. Gee, that's funny because they sure seem to have nothing but hate for Jews in general and Israel in particular.

What is really strange about leftists and their antisemitism is that Jews in America are very inclined to be liberals themselves. Apparently these Jews either do not have strong feelings about their heritage or do not like themselves for one reason or another. Antisemitism is in decline among the general United States population according to a survey on the question. Yet at the same time it is on the rise among the left-wing in America and even more so in Europe. The Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) suggests the following:

• Left-wing Antisemitism is particularly dangerous because it comes from the liberal/ intellectual/"progressive causes" world - and is therefore publicly palatable, but more importantly: it thus becomes acceptable to certain opinion and decision makers.
• It is no longer a fringe movement, nor is it confined to the university campus.
• It is often expressed by persons within politically correct circles, considered beyond the pale of racism and xenophobia, - and who therefore do not recognize their own sentiments as Antisemitism.

  Today, left- wing Antisemitism is virulent and advances unabated.

  “Israel has become the Jew among nations,” says Mort Zuckerman, who - in addition to his media holdings - is the former chairman of the Council of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. “It is both the surrogate — the respectable way of expressing Antisemitism — and the collective Jew.”
  The Return of Antisemitism http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/religion/features/n_9622/index1.html

Well, what about the right wing? The same JAFI article has a section of that, too, but all of the examples given are from Europe and none are from the the United States where we have a different right wing. In Europe, the right wing is mistakenly identified with Nazis and fascists whereas in the United States the right wing describes conservatives who detest both of those ideologies. Indeed, the evangelical wing of conservatives are often philo-Semitics, the exact opposites of anti-Semitics. They agree that the Jews are God's chosen people and since Jesus was a Jew, we have a Judeo-Christian country rather than just a Christian one.

What is interesting is that many Jews with their own leftist orientations look askance at this support especially when Bush was in the White House and seemed to agree with this view. Perhaps now with someone like Obama in the White House, they will think differently. Like all leftists with the notable exception of Helen Thomas, Obama is careful to keep any anti-Semitic thoughts to himself, but he clearly has no use for Israel as Charles Krauthammer points out. There is a new book, The Post-American Presidency, coming out that claims to have meticulously researched the case it makes for Obama's antisemitism amongst other things.

The point of all of this is that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Antisemitism is rife among the leftists, liberals and progressives, so calling conservatives racists invites a serious case of payback. After all, if one can make a case for conservatives, tea-party advocates and Republicans being racists when it clearly is not true, surely a case can be made for calling liberals, leftists and Democrats anti-Semites especially when it is true.