Yves here. This post is more important than it might seem. I find it is taking more and more effort to navigate through the hall of mirrors of propagandizing, particularly in the geopolitical realm. Thus it is critical to read news on two levels: its content, and how it is presented, as in how it is framed, what experts are cited, what issues are buried or omitted. Living with all Pravda, all the time, is intellectually taxing, at least if you care to understand what is really going on.
Black presents a comparatively simple yet pernicious example of distortion, that of how the New York Times is promoting austerity by depicting opposition as stoking anti-Semitism. This echoes the manner in which anti-globalists were demonized as being violent and retrograde as a result of some protests getting out of hand. The trope here is “anti-orthodoxy = results right-thinking people agree is bad”.
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Originally published at New Economic Perspectives
I have written a series of columns describing the New York Times’ horrific coverage of austerity and the Great Recessions and Great Depressions that it has gratuitously inflicted on the people of the eurozone. I thought I was safe from such coverage, however, reading a NYT column entitled “Europe’s Anti-Semitism Comes Out of the Shadows.” Silly me.
It turns out that opposition to austerity is a key cause of Anti-Semitism – at least in the imagination of NYT reporters.
With Europe still shaking from a populist backlash against fiscal austerity, some Jews speak of feeling politically isolated, without an ideological home.
That sentence is odd on multiple dimensions. First, there is the question of what is “shaking” Europe. The NYT thinks it is opposition to austerity – not austerity – that is “shaking” Europe. That reverses reality. The troika’s infliction of austerity forced the Eurozone back into a gratuitous Second Great Recession and much of periphery into a gratuitous Second Great Depression. It has now pushed Italy into a third recession and the eurozone as a whole into “stagnation” – eight years after the bubbles burst and six years after the most acute phase of the financial crisis. Eurozone austerity is one of the great crimes against humanity.
Second, given the journalist’s stated logic, the economic devastation inflicted by austerity and German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s accompanying war on workers’ wages in the periphery is among the most important causes of Anti-Semitism. This means, logically, that the “populist backlash against fiscal austerity” is the potential solution that would greatly reduce Anti-Semitism.
To many residents, the demonstration, which was organized by outsiders on social media, was an indictment not of Sarcelles, but of France. Youth unemployment is soaring, especially in immigrant havens like Sarcelles, and many French-born children and grandchildren of immigrants have become alienated from French society.
‘They have a real hatred against the state,’ said Bassi Konaté, a city social worker, who added that many of the protesters came from poorer districts nearby. ‘A big proportion of these people feel neglected. A lot of these people don’t know anything about Gaza. But they want to confront the police.’
The NYT journalist (recently transferred to the EU beat from his long posting in Asia) never asks why “youth unemployment is soaring” – eight years after the bubble burst and six years after the most acute phase of the financial crisis. Absent the troika’s demands for austerity, youth unemployment throughout the eurozone would have fallen – and it would have done so at least five years ago and be fully recovered years ago. Why would young people feel “neglected” when France’s conservative leaders inflicted austerity on the Nation and caused “soaring” unemployment? Why would young people “have real hatred against the state” when Hollande was elected on a promise of ending the economic malpractice of austerity and refusing to enlist in Merkel’s war on workers’ wages – and then betrayed his promises and the Nation by purging his government of anyone who insisted on honoring those promises? How strange the young people of France must be to have these irrational responses to economic stupidity, brutal class war, lies, and cowardice by their national leaders.
Third, why is the “backlash” against the disastrous infliction of austerity limited to “populist[s]?” Austerity as a response to a Great Recession constitutes economic malpractice that is as self-destructive as bleeding a patient. Merkel’s demand that the EU engage in a war against workers’ wages constitutes economic malpractice and class warfare. Logically, the opposition to such economic malpractice should create a broad coalition. It is shameful and terribly destructive that this has not happened in the eurozone because of the troika’s cruel exploitation of the leverage provided it by the crisis to launch its class warfare in the form of its blitzkrieg against workers’ wages. Merkel leads the Schwerpunkt of this modern day Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein (the German code name for the operation that produced what we call the “Battle of the Bulge”). Brussels is now a full member of the German-led troika rather than simply supplying the Belgian battleground in the Ardennes. The right and the ultra-right dominate the EU parliament and many EU “left” leaders (Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and François Hollande) are neo-liberal allies of Merkel on these economic issues. None of these leaders of the neo-liberal “left” has ever mustered the guts to respond “Nuts!” to a German demand for surrender. Fortunately, General McAuliffe and the “Screaming Eagles” were made of sterner stuff.
Fourth, the journalist appears to have chosen the word “populist” for its negative connotations, which can include anti-intellectual and appealing to the “prejudices” of “ordinary people.” The implication is that their “backlash” against austerity must be the product of bad economics. This reverses reality. While austerity and reducing workers’ wages is bad for the nation and terrible for workers, it can be an excellent strategy for the ultra-wealthy.
Fifth, the journalist uses the same word (“insidious”) that Roger Cohen used to decry what he claimed was the Scots’ disgust with the City of London’s financial giants’ frauds that caused the financial crisis and other huge abuses of customers. The journalist “there is also concern about what some see as an insidious ‘softer’ anti-Jewish bias….” As I explained in a recent column, Cohen did not explain why he claims that the Scots’ disgust with the City of London is “insidious.” If he is claiming that the Scots’ aversion to fraudulent bank elites constitutes Anti-Semitism he should be explicit and support his claim.
Sixth, the pro-austerity forces in the EU have prominent bigots that the NYT ignores or even praises, so why is the NYT singling out anti-austerity forces as purportedly stirring Anti-Semitism while praising the pro-austerity bigots? One of the most prominent proponents of austerity was the CEO of Switzerland’s oldest private bank, Herr Hummler. I devoted a column to his blatant racism in works he sent to over 75,000 elite recipients in Europe. Hummler was treated as one of Europe’s most distinguished financial officials and observers. Alas, in addition to his racism he ran a bank that was a criminal enterprise according to the Department of Justice.
The even more prominent austerian is Herr Henkel, who ran the German equivalent of the (combined) Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. Henkel is also openly racist, and a supporter of other prominent German bigots, as I have explained in prior columns.
Americans, of course, are not unique in being susceptible to the bigotry. Consider the policy advice that Mr. Henkel gives in the German context.
Dr Thilo Sarrazin, a member of the executive board and head of the [German Central] bank’s risk control operations, told Europe’s culture magazine Lettre International that Turks with low IQs and poor child-rearing practices were “conquering Germany” by breeding two or three times as fast.
“A large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose number has grown through bad policies, have no productive function other than as fruit and vegetable vendors,” he said.
“Forty per cent of all births occur in the underclasses. Our educated population is becoming stupider from generation to generation. What’s more, they cultivate an aggressive and atavistic mentality. It’s a scandal that Turkish boys won’t listen to female teachers because that is what their culture tells them”, he said.
“I’d rather have East European Jews with an IQ that is 15pc higher than the German population,” he said.
Henkel promptly wrote to offer his absolute support for Sarrazin’s bigotry, using a title that stressed that he supported these statements unconditionally (“Ich unterstütze Sarrazin ohne Wenn und Aber” – I support Sarrazin without any “if” or “but”).
Henkel also claimed that the global financial crisis occurred because Democrats ended “red-lining” – the openly racist practice of refusing to make loans to blacks to purchase homes in areas that had been all-white. Henkel was, at the time he made these statements, Bank of America’s lead advisor on its European operations – a position that he continued to hold despite my blowing the whistle on his racism to Bank of America and the public. He only resigned the position when he became a leader of the new ultra-right German party that is rabidly pro-austerity. The NYT, in an article that passes all understanding, recently wrote that Henkel’s leadership role in the new party demonstrated that it was a party deserving of great respect.
If the NYT wants to write about open EU bigots and racists – ones with strong ties to pro-austerity forces in the EU and the U.S. – Henkel is the perfect candidate for the profile. But that would be inconvenient to the NYT’s standard EU memes – austerity and crushing workers’ wages are vital “reforms” essential to cure the mess that the “insidious” EU left has created. Imagine what the NYT writers would have done with a leftist EU leader who said that he agreed unequivocally with leftist German central banker who believed that Turks were so inferior and posed such a danger of polluting the purity of true Germans that it would be better to have “Jews” than Turks move to Germany.
Seventh, it is the EU’s pro-austerity leaders of the right who are infamous (or, like Sarrazin and Henkel, applauded) for their constant bigotry towards the peoples of the EU periphery. They openly and loudly treat southern Europeans as inferior. The people of the periphery hear and read these jibes incessantly. German troops acted monstrously in most of the periphery (as did their fascist allies in Spain). Now German politicians deride the descendants of those victims in the EU periphery on a weekly basis and demand that Greece sell its islands to wealthy Germans. Merkel is creating the conditions that could threaten the continued existence of the EU and that create the potential (though still unlikely) of renewed civil wars in Greece and Spain.
The three best things that the EU could do to reduce bigotry and the loss of social cohesion are economic. Replace austerity with stimulus, end the war on workers’ wages, and provide a job guarantee for everyone able and willing to work. Each of these actions would aid the economy in achieving rapid growth. Again, the NYT’s reporters that cover the EU urgently need to read Paul Krugman and my colleagues. The reporters are still aiding and abetting the quacks that want to flog the workers and demand until morale improves in the periphery.
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Bill Black is correct about austerity and what ought to replace it to revive Europe. I am afraid he is disingenuous, however, to ignore the possibility, indeed the liklihood, of rising anti Semitism as a response to austerity’s effects on a powerless and bewildered population. The forces of European history are not so easily vanquished
That’s exactly what he said actually. Cheers
You’re missing Bill’s points. One is that its austerity, not anti-austerity that is most likely to cause anti-semitism, which is the exact opposite of the position taken in the Times piece. Another is that the actual anti-semites are in the pro-austerity camp, which is also the reality that stands in opposition to the Times article. Bill isn’t making light of austerity’s destructive nature in the slightest. The article tries to pretend the opposite which is why he’s calling it out.
Not missing Bill’s points. Just making one of my own. Check the comments below, including those later today which neither of us has read yet.
No, you did miss what Black said. That is the message of his post. Reading comprehension fail.
Black is stating that austerity measures have led to increased bigotry in the EU. This is rather different than stating that bigotry is the effect of “populist backlash,” as the NYT does. Bill is not denying the existence of bigotry in the EU (or anywhere else)–he’s just pointing out that the cause is not “populism” but austerity.
Good luck with this. In my personal opinion, we are many years away from a time when this matter and the various vital related aspects of it can be openly and thoroughly discussed without fear or bitter rancor in any such open public forum.
Those who doubt that should reflect: have you ever thought of posting something in a comment here or, moreover, elsewhere–since this blog is by some respects relatively tolerant of deviance from its own cherished views of basic reality– have you ever, that is, censored your own comments out of a belief that the part you censor would or likely might make you subject to being denounced as anti-semitic? Hands up, all those who have to in all honesty say “yes” to that.
I can personally refute as generally false this, from the NYT article:
…”and many French-born children and grandchildren of immigrants have become alienated from French society.”
The exceptions are a distinct minority–in fact, French-born children and grandchildren (with respectable standard polls to support the finding) largely embrace French society and even identify themselves as part of it. What they reject is French officialdom and the many ugly harms it systematically produces. That’s the view, I daresay, of the children of most French-born immigrants –including those of parents with Arabic-speaking social origins.
Please, show us how you can detect the insidious hand of the international banking Jew holding its knife to the throat of god-fearing Christians. Shall we begin… “Now I’m not anti-semitic, but…”
I intended to write,
…”of the French-born children of most (esp., in this context, socially-Arabic) immigrants to France…”
rather than …”of the children of most French-born immigrants–“
I would no doubt be considered by some as being Anti-Semitic for writing this, but these cries of Anti-Semitism from the Israeli’s , Neo-Cons & other assorted highly placed Jews, annoys the hell out of me. It’s like some get out of jail card than can be used to avert any criticism. Historically the Jews have suffered terribly at the hands of racist people, who in my experience also generally apply their bigotry to any other group who doesn’t match their own particular so called superiority. I can understand the residents of Ferguson believing that the actions of the authorities are Anti – African American, but those people are actual victims.
I hate the fact that the internet is full of true Anti – Semitic BS that blames Jews / Zionists for just about everything, but these schmucks who try to excuse their bad behaviour in this way are likely to only inflame this, & unfortunately if there is ever a kickback, it will no doubt as usual fall on the innocent at the bottom, while those at the top will escape any retribution whether deserved or not.
Please read the article. Your comment has very little to do with the issues raised. By your own admission, it’s a drive-by pet peeve.
No, actually, I am, properly speaking, “anti-semitic”–as that is commonly intended–since I find “jewish” tribal identity, as prescribed by maternal blood-lines and all that goes with it—inter-tribal marriage (even among the “secular” jews) to be no less abhorent than Christians’ or Muslims’ similarly cloistered social beliefs and habits. But there are a number of distinctions which simply don’t translate across the religious specrum. There’s no similar epithet for a person who criticizes another who, it happens, is a Christian. I can bad-mouth Obama all day long and no one will denounce me as a disgusting anti-Christian bigot–will he? Few will even voice an objection that, by criticizing Obama, I’m revealing my innate prejudice toward all blacks. (Though we do observe some of that occasionally, it’s nothing compared to the wide and automatic knee-jerk denunciation of any who dare to criticize Jews (except, of course, other Jews, among whom criticizm of “their own” is practically a defining characteristic–yes, that’s partly, but only partly meant in jest since it’s so very much a matter of fact.) Of course not. Alone among the wide variety of social and ethnic identities, the Jews enjoy a special place in which, simply because they are Jews, they may object to any and all criticisms of them as tainted, and automatically so, by default with being the product of the critics’ own bigotry—all other reasonable explanations are thereby routinely dismissed from consideration. And that, of course, is the whole point and design and purpose for protecting and perpetuating this special exceptionalist claim.
As I do Christians and Muslims and essentially all other religious groups, I consider Judaism a blight upon the human race and something we’d be better off if somehow we could be rid of peacefully, through a process of mature growth by which we leave it behind the same way we’ve left behind ritual child-sacrifice to pagan gods. There is simply no reason why, merely because one’s mother or father or both told one that he or she is Jewish, that the person concerned has to accept that as factually true and as a socially benign fact. It can be–and by some it is–denied, rejected, dismissed as the vestige of ancient fairy-tale nonsense.
But those people are exceedingly rare–unfortunately. Just as they are among Muslims. Now, as for Christians–there, apart from infant baptism, which typically must be reconfirmed after having attained the age of intellectual consent–no one is thought to be or claims to be “Christian” solely by virtue of his mother’s or his father’s Christian identity. No. One becomes a Christian through a deliberate act of volition. That’s an essential distinction between Christians and Jews. But it needn’t be. Christians, had they chosen to, could have as easily adopted a blood-line based identity and formed their culture and traditions around it.
I have no patience or sympathy for people who assert that they are persecuted for their religious identity which they cannot help but assume–one which, by birth, is “theirs” whether they like it or not or claim it or not. That is blatant nonsense. “Jews” are socialized to believe and to assume their cultural identity as Jews–the same way any other people are made to be, formed, from their earliest years to believe a host of stories, all myths, about their origins and their history. Once a person is an adult, he or she is directly and personally responsible for the utter nonsense which he or she believes and practices–and for the social horrors which are a consequence of that nonsense.
I renounced my Christian faith. Jews and Muslims, seeing the harms that so many of their fellow produce out of a belief in some version or other of their religion, could do the same. And, if they were actually enlightened, they would. It is no longer a punishable crime to announce to one’s mother or father, “No, ma, no, pa, in fact I’m not Jewish. I’m just a person–no different than anybody else.
Such are the kinds of things that still today may not be said or discussed in open fora.
Nice try, but you can’t just wish away 2000 years of history. Jews remain Jews whether they like it or not, whether they are observant or not. Being Jewish is defined by the Gentile world. You might want to read a little book called The Popes Against the Jews, which despite its inflammatory title is just straightforward research in the Vatican archives opened up to outsiders in the Sixties.
You sound like certain black authors who think that blacks should get a pass for their criminality and antisocial behaviors because of the distinctly hideous way white America has treated them. Nice try, as you say, but people are responsible for their actions. A distinctly huge number, as compared to their numbers in the population, of the leaders of the financial industry happen to be Jewish, and the financial industry is running our civilization off of a cliff. Is the Jewish pharmacist or the Jewish teacher or the Jewish file clerk in any way responsible for this? No, absolutely not. Is the Jewish financier? Absolutely. But that is a fact that must Never be mentioned. Or do we have to “be careful”, as Larry Summers warned/threatened the Harvard faculty about criticizing Israel, when denouncing the Blankfeins and Dimons of this world?
What’s “wished for” may be “wished away“–at least in theory.
RE:
“Jews remain Jews whether they like it or not, whether they are observant or not.”
“Being Jewish is defined by the Gentile world.”
You might consider the rather insulting implications of those claims for any self-respecting self-identifying Jewish person who was raised by parents from infancy to believe he or she was Jewish. But, that aside, and somehow despite that, both of these claims are integral parts of boiler-pate secular Jewish orthodoxy’s mythology– and so, “secular Jews,” are the most ardent proponents of these views. But both are flatly false–and not simply false, they are astoundingly, spectacularly, false.
Cultural norms are inculcated. As anyone who knows anything at all about sociology and anthropolgy knows, such cultural norms have to be inculcated in order to persist reliably. There is something really peculiar and interesting about the fact that so many secular Jews–and I’d say, especially their English-speaking members–can be so oblivious to the primacy of cultural inculcation.
Stil, with all that, the long-held identification can be rejected, thrown off, deliberately.
Prior to the 18th and 19th centuries’ legal emancipations of Jews–formally allowing them to fully belong to civil societies in countries across Europe, nearly all Jews were born, raised in and died in their local religiously-directed social world, governed sometimes more or less benignly, sometimes very harshly, by the Rabbincal elders. Life outside their purview was, in those pre-emancipation times, truly not an option. So, by mutual accord, life in Jewish Quarters of otherwise Christian nations remained confined and controlled by the Jewish (male) authorities and this suited the élite of both Jewish and Christian (male) society. But, even today, try telling Rabbis anywhere–especially in Israel— that “Being Jewish is defined by the Gentile world.” Their reactions should be instructive as to the validity of such a ridiculous idea.
People wish away history all the time including Jews–the Israelis if you prefer. The Nakba would be one example. Bill Black is making an important point about the falsity of this latest “best defense is a good offense” argument. Accused of acting immorally toward their populations these elites respond by claiming the accusation itself is immoral or racist. Changing the subject is always a good strategy for those who have nothing else in their arsenal. They know a shallow and sympathetic MSM will amplify all claims.
What the NYT article in question seems to be doing is reducing economic problems to attitude problems. If only people wouldn’t be so gosh darned negative about unemployment, underemployment, increasingly shoddy public services and increasingly venal political systems then austerity would work just fine. Blame the victims, in other words.
RE:
“What the NYT article in question seems to be doing is reducing economic problems to attitude problems. If only people wouldn’t be so gosh darned negative about unemployment, underemployment, increasingly shoddy public services and increasingly venal political systems then austerity would work just fine.”
That’s it, exactly, and in a nutshell. Bravo!
“The beatings will continue until moral improves.”
Dr Thilo Sarrazin, a member of the executive board and head of the [German Central] bank’s risk control operations, told Europe’s culture magazine Lettre International that Turks with low IQs and poor child-rearing practices were “conquering Germany” by breeding two or three times as fast.
“A large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose number has grown through bad policies, have no productive function other than as fruit and vegetable vendors,” he said.
Dr Sarrazin reflects the sentiment of practically all senior technocrats. People below them have less value than cattle. Interestingly, Dr Sarrazin uses an “economist’s” term, “productive function” and to him being a “fruit and vegetable vendor” has evidently near zero value.
No one is coerced into buying that “fruit and vegetable vendor’s” produce, and it is a free exchange between customer and seller. Mutually beneficial.
Consider banking, which Mr. Sarrazin is involved with. It has morphed into a criminal enterprise, stealing the wealth of the “fruit and vegetable vendor” a few Euros at a time through bank scams and charges and lending money ghosted out of thin air to the “fruit and vegetable vendors”, to be raped a second and third time by the same banks Mr Sarrazin oversees. We can see now that it is Mr Sarrazin that has zero “productive function”, other than parasite.
The only point to reading the NYT is to figure out what people are expected to believe, and assume the opposite is somewhat closer to the truth. They have no other “productive function” to me.
This is the money quote from the NYT:
‘Europe has seen protests and outbursts of anti-Semitism whenever the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has erupted.’
In fact, the article goes on to disentangle opposition to Israeli policy from anti-Semitism. But those who don’t read on down will absorb the MSM meme: protesting Israeli policy = anti-Semitism.
There is a great difference between Zionism and Judaism. Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jewish. Just look at the Evangelical Christians who believe the success of the State of Israel is a necessary precondition to the Second Coming and the End Times.
Particularly now, there are many Jews, including me, who reject the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. To me, the Israeli leadership have become what they despise. Their illegal settlements on the West Bank and the vastly disproportionate response to the rarely dangerous rockets from Gaza have destroyed any claim to legitimacy they may have had.
You have really gone off the reservation on this one, Prox. I hardly know where to start there are so many false assumptions in your comment.
You make it sound like Jews are a monolithic group who all accept the bloodline determination of Jewishness without question. You are apparently unaware of the vast diversity of opinion in the Jewish community as well as the vast number who do not accept their Jewishness. Those who fit your assumptions are a small minority, mostly Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox. Marriage to non-Jews is so common in the US that the leaders of the non-Orthodox community are worried that so many are leaving Judaism and not raising their children as Jewish that there are not enough to prevent the Jewish population from shrinking as the elders die off.
As for self-criticism, the favored epithet is “self-hating Jew” and it is no less derogatory than being called anti-Semitic. And Jews are far from the only group that tries to reject criticism as inherently bigoted. Those knee-jerk responses come from certain groups that have a platform, such as the ADL, but don’t necessarily reflect the majority opinion in the Jewish community.
Also, the “volitional” choice to be Christian may have been required in the group in which you were raised, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t just as much socialization of Christian youth into the culture and mythology of Christianity. And there is no ex-communication or shunning in the Jewish community.
Jews who assert they are persecuted by virtue of their religious identity are making an intellectual choice to accept that religious identity. And they are generally correct as Jews have been the favorite scapegoat for most of Western history for all the bad things that happen.
You are correct that most religions have been responsible for many social horrors. They have also been responsible for many of the great advances in civilization. Just as an example, the Jesuits were the keepers of knowledge through the Dark Ages, but were also responsible for the Spanish Inquisition. No religion is all good or all bad.
Your rant against all religions makes me wonder what kind of religion-based trauma you might have experienced to be so angry.
“You are apparently unaware of the vast diversity of opinion in the Jewish community as well as the vast number who do not accept their Jewishness.”
I think you mean the religious beliefs in Judaism –of whatever flavor. But they manifestly do not “not accept their Jewishness” since they avowedly identify themselves as “I’m Jewish, but I don’t ‘practice’ ” –is the typical expression for this. Otherwise, I did misunderstand you and you really do mean that such people ( “the vast number” ?) reject both the religious aspect and the cultural identity of “being Jewish.”
You did misunderstand. If I had meant “religious beliefs”, that is what I would have said. Of course there are many non-practicing secular Jews, including most of the population of Israel.
Yes, a “vast number”. See above re: Jews marrying non-Jews and not raising their kids as Jewish and the potential for a declining Jewish population in the US.
Did you read the post? This is a rant utterly unrelated to what Black wrote.
I can’t tell if your question is addressed to me. But, if so, the answer is, Yes, I read every word of it and read most of the related NYT article, too. Sorry if that isn’t obvious or if you think my comments aren’t pertinent.
“Bill Black: The New York Times Claims Opposing EU Austerity Leads to Anti-Semitism”
Well, Susan Webber is one step ahead of NYT by using Anglo pen Yves Smith. Smart thinking! LOL.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Capitalism
I happen to a WASP, so if you are trying to insinuate I have a dog in this fight, you’ve just revealed your bigotry. Webber is an English name, and all of my grandparents on that side of the family go back to the Mayflower. They’ve been in the Casco Bay area of Maine for over 300 years.
Black has a perfectly reasoned post about the NYT using anti-Semitism as a weird defense of austerity. I see it has brought out all the crazies.
All I have to say about the NY Times is “Judth Miller.”
And I hope one day the term anti-Semitism is no longer used to mean anti-Jewish. The Palestinians are Semites, for example.
Comments closed: the heat/light ratio wasn’t good enough to justify the moderator time soaked up.
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