Palin-haters are attempting to turn Gov. Sarah Palin’s reasonable and empathic response today to the Tucson atrocity into an antisemitic outburst.
Palin, like Glenn Reynolds (and, independently, Andrew Breitbart) used the term “blood libel” to describe the way in which opportunistic politicians and journalists seized on the shooting spree to demonize the Tea Party and conservatives in general.
The original “blood libel” is the false accusation (originating in medieval Europe, still repeated in the Arab world) that Jews murder non-Jewish children for ritual purposes, a claim used throughout history to incite hatred and sometimes violence against Jewish communities.
Some conservatives–including Reynolds, Gov. Palin, Breitbart, and others–are suggesting that today’s media climate, in which millions of people are being falsely accused of complicity in the Tucson murders simply because of their belief in limited government, has analogous features. (Charles Krauthammer used the term “libel” today in the Washington Post, without the additional word “blood,” and it is possible that he intended to imply similar metaphor, albeit less directly.)
Of course, the Jews of medieval Europe who were the victims of the blood libel did not have the political freedom that Americans enjoy today, and which we conservatives are using to defend ourselves. That is such an obvious difference that no one felt it necessary to make the point when using the analogy–which, like any analogy, is inexact and open to debate.
There is also nothing unusual about using a term with a specific historical origin and applying it to other cases. We use the term “lynching” to describe the unfair targeting of a particular individual, even though lynching emerged from a very painful context of racial prejudice against blacks the American South. Few argue that the term “lynching” is off limits for that reason.
Similarly, we use the term “quisling” to describe a sellout, even though the original quisling was Vidkun Quisling, a Nazi collaborator in Norway. We often use the term “chauvinism” to describe bigotry against women, even though Nicolas Chauvin was supposedly a French soldier in the 18th century.
The test of any analogy is not just whether it is appropriate, but also whether it is accurate. Anti-Israel activists have spent the past decade campaigning on false analogies between Israel and apartheid South Africa, without regard to the facts of life and law in either. (Often, like Jimmy Carter, they invoke the Israel-apartheid analogy even as they admit it is not true–their purpose is simply to demonize Israel and isolate it as part of a calculated political strategy).
As Jim Geraghty has pointed out, American commentators on both the left and the right have long used the term “blood libel” as an analogy–often with far less justification. In addition, Jews and Israelis commonly use the term in discussing unfair accusations in the context of debates about the Middle East and other issues.
So there is nothing offensive per se about using the term “blood libel,” in an analogy, as long as it is appropriate and bears some reasonable relation to the facts, which I believe it does in this case.
Some of Gov. Palin’s critics go even further in their attacks, speculating–without proof–that she does not understand what the term “blood libel” means: “[O]ne wonders if Sarah Palin is familiar with its actual definition and history,” one wrote.
And so we have moved from “blood libel” to political lynching, in which Sarah Palin is presumed guilty no matter what she says or does, and must be punished.
Worst of all, the attacks on Gov. Palin obscure the terrible event itself, and the continuing struggles of the bereaved and wounded in Arizona. We ought to remember the words of George Orwell, who wrote, in “Looking Back on the Spanish War”:
Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence… But unfortunately the truth about atrocities is far worse than that they are lied about and made into propaganda. The truth is that they happen.
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