Pinning An ‘Antisemite’ Label On President Trump – OpEd
By Adam Dick
In a Friday The Intercept editorial,
Mehdi Hasan wrote that President Donald Trump “and his acolytes” have
been “banging their anti-Semitic drum in plain sight” since United
States House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s September 24
announcement of an impeachment inquiry in regard to Trump. But, Hasan
then offers no substantial evidence to back this bold claim.
The first pittance Hasan presents as supposed backing for his claim is a September 28 Twitter post
from Trump. In the tweet, Trump complains about the treatment of Trump
by “Do Nothing Democrat Savages, people like Nadler, Schiff, AOC Plus
3.” The people referenced are all House members: Reps. Jerrold Nadler
(D-NY) and Adam Schiff (D-CA), as well as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
(D-NY) (“AOC”) and three other freshman House members who are seen by
Trump and many other people as forming a group with Ocasio-Cortez based
on common interests — Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and
Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
Hasan notes that Schiff and Nadler are
Jewish. Hasan also mentions that Ocasio-Cortez is a “woman of color.”
Plus, observes Hasan, Trump only chose to mention these House members
from among the more than 200 House members who “have signed onto an
impeachment inquiry.”
From this information, Hasan presents the
following rhetorical question as if he has proven something: “How is
such rhetoric not racist?”
How, indeed? A negative comment does
not become a racist comment just because the individuals about which
the comment is made are of particular races, ethnicities, or religions.
Of course, Trump has a long and well-known record of harshly
criticizing people of various races, ethnicities, and religions. The
fact that his presidential primary and general election opponents were
not mostly Jewish people or “women of color” did not prevent Trump from
leveling at many of them verbal and written attacks similar in strength
to the attack found in the tweet Hasan references.
Further,
there is good reason, other than racism, that Trump would single out the
House members he did for criticism. Nadler and Schiff, as Hasan notes
in his editorial, are chairmen, respectively, of the House Judiciary and
Intelligence committees. In those roles the two men have been devoting
much time and effort to developing and promoting the case for Congress
removing Trump from the presidency. While “AOC Plus 3” lack committee
chairmanships, they have been very harsh in their criticism of the
president. Trump’s inclusion of these four additional Congress members
in the tweet also makes sense as part of his ongoing trading of barbs
with them.
So, in answer to Hasan’s question, there is plenty of reason not to interpret Trump’s tweet as racist or antisemitic.
Next up, Hasan makes this claim:
On October 2, Trump escalated his brazenly anti-Semitic attack on Schiff. ‘We don’t call him “Shifty Schiff” for nothing,’ the president told reporters in the Oval Office. ‘He’s a shifty, dishonest guy.’
Hold on. Why is this a “brazenly anti-Semitic attack”? It just sounds
like Trump being Trump. He frequently attacks people verbally and in
writing, often doing so by calling them names. Wikipedia even provides a
long list
of nicknames, many of them negative, that Trump has used for people.
Among the listed nicknames are multiple negative nicknames for people
including Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Nancy Pelosi, and
Chuck Schumer (most of whom are not Jewish), along with Schiff.
But, insists Hasan: “The stereotype of Jews as ‘shifty,’ the suggestion that they are sneaky and manipulative, has a long and ignominious history.” Whatever. There is a long history of people calling non-Jewish people shifty too.
An obvious reason Trump would choose to use the insulting nickname
“Shifty Schiff” is because the nickname is made up of two words that
share a first syllable. That helps make the nickname catchy. Indeed,
looking at the Wikipedia list, you can see Trump has applied similar
types of nicknames playing on the sound of people’s names before — “Lamb
the Sham” for House Member Conor Lamb (D-PA) and “Wacky Jacky” for
Senate Member Jacky Rosen (D-NV), for example.
That’s it for
Hasan’s argument that Trump is saying antisemitic things since Pelosi
announced an impeachment inquiry regarding Trump. Talk about
underwhelming.
Just as underwhelming is how Hasan then proceeds
to argue in support of his assertion that Trump’s “acolytes” are doing
the same thing. To support the claim, Hasan points to two October 2
Twitter posts from Trump’s son Donald Trump, Jr.
Before dealing
with those tweets it should be noted that it is absurd to have trump’s
son stand in for all Trump’s “acolytes.” Even if Donald Trump, Jr. wrote
something antisemitic that does not mean that all supporters of
President Trump, or even a substantial portion of them, agree with it.
Hasan points to Donald Trump, Jr. saying in two October 2 tweets
that Schiff is a “radical liberal” who “has been hand picked and
supported by George Soros” and is “a George Soros *puppet.*” Hasan
apparently has a problem with these tweets because Soros is Jewish.
Hasan writes:
Radical liberal. Handpicked by George Soros. A Soros puppet.
Don Jr.’s tweets provoked a rare response from Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, who referred to his invocation of Soros, a left-leaning Jewish billionaire, as an ‘anti-Semitic trope’ and a ‘dangerous’ insinuation.
Alleging politicians are taking actions and making public stands because
of pressure from wealthy individuals, or from businesses or interest
groups, is common practice in American political debate. Soros comes up
in some of those allegations, but so also do many other individuals,
groups, and organizations — Charles Koch, the military-industrial
complex, and the National Rifle Association, for example — that are not
generally seen as connected to Jewish ethnicity or religion.
The truth is that Soros directs much effort to influence political
action in America and across the world. Saying that people should
refrain from noting and criticizing such effort because Soros is Jewish
is saying that some major players in political influence should have a
free pass from recognition and criticism. That is not a call for
suppressing antisemitism. Rather, that is a call for suppressing debate.
After presenting his milk-toast evidence, Hasan asks the following question:
So why isn’t there more outrage over Trump’s blatant and dangerous anti-Semitism, in the specific context of this impeachment inquiry?
All that “blatant and dangerous anti-Semitism” is in Hasan’s head, not in reality. Hopefully Hasan, and other people offering the spurious arguments in Hasan’s editorial, will find little success in their effort to recruit people to believe their fantasy assertions of Trump’s expressions of antisemitism.
This article was published by RonPaul Institute.