The other day I was reading the Daily Kos and my wife came up and read my laptop over my shoulder. She asked “why are you reading a site that is mostly progressive propaganda?”
“I am tired of reading the conservative sites,” I answered. “All they talk about is the economy stinks, the government is getting too big, and on and on. It gets depressing. But sites like the Daily Kos make me feel empowered. They keep talking about how the Jews control the media, the Jews control the banks, the Jews control the government.”
The progressive world is usually very quick to place the “bigot” label on people. The people who opposed the ground zero mosque are Islamophobes, critics of the President are doing so because Obama is partially of African descent. It is interesting that some of the same progressive media that tries to brand the tea party movement as racist spews bigoted venom against Jews.
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, published a report that examines anti-Semitic cartoon content used in some of the major progressive sites, such as Mondoweiss, The Daily Kos and Indymedia. Some of the content of these blogs pointed out in this report is short of startling. The sites use “political cartoons: to reinforce negative stereotypes against Jews. The cartoons cloak their anti-Semitism in a veil “anti-Israelism.”
This is not in any way to suggest that all anti-Israel expressions are anti-Semitic, but it is clear that these cartoons have crossed the line. The cartoons show Jews or Israelis as being Nazis trying to paint Jews as the ultimate evil and at the same time diminishing the evil of the Holocaust. Other illustrations try to perpetuate the anti-Semitic canard that Jews control the world, or the blood libel about Jews using Gentile children to satisfy some imagined blood lust.
All this is happening despite the fact that these blogs publish policies which expressly prohibit content that contains “hateful” or “inflammatory” content; most of the time, these hate cartoons are not removed from these sites.
The Daily Kos, used an image of a bloodstained Israeli flag with the “Jewish Star” morphed into a swastika. It was part of a post called “Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel,” which warns of “a Zionist movement multiplying like cancer cells.” This post and cartoon was still on the site as of 9/7/10, despite the fact that Kos also published a comic in which the Israeli security fence, built to prevent deaths via homicide bombings, was compared to Auschwitz. This one too is can still be seen at the Daily Kos as of this writing. Again the question is why Kos allows its rules against hate posting to be violated over and over.
To go along with a Daily Kos post, “Zionism was and remains a racist ideology,” The site created an image that pictured a face that was half Hitler, half Israeli foreign minister Lieberman. Behind the face was the word Zionism written in blood on the wall and next to the figure a hand holding a skull with a Jewish Star on its forehead. This post was popular attracting 564 comments, many of them defending the cartoon. One comment suggested that “the artist was not claiming Jews are Hitler. He was comparing the behavior of Avigdor Lieberman to Hitler.” Yet the word Zionism in blood and the Skull with the Star of David, belie that claim.
Other examples of the Nazi theme include DC Indymedia posts, one with a cartoon showing former Israeli PM Sharon kissing Hitler, another on DC Indymedia compared the war in Gaza with the genocide of Jews by the Nazi.
To commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day UK Indymedia, ran a cartoon featuring a Jewish concentration camp victim, stuck to a barbed wire fence, limbs bent in the shape of a swastika, and the words “never again.” Next to the Jew was an Arab in the same exact position, with the word Gaza written on his jacket. Under the Arab was the words “over again”
During the 12th century, Christian England invented the “blood-libel” which spread the hateful notion that Jews needed Christian blood for their Passover service. The libel portrays Jews not only as murderers, but murderers who prefer to target children. Some of the cartoons used in progressive blogs have updated that theme:
DC Indymedia published an image of former Israeli PM Olmert, sleeping with a dead baby from Hamas in his arms, behind him were votes going into a ballot-box. Suggesting that not only do Israeli leaders intentionally kill Palestinian children, but they also practice infanticide to get votes.
There are also cartoons promoting the hateful canard that there is a worldwide Jewish conspiracy controlling American foreign policy and indeed the world.
One posted on Daily Kos but was eventually taken down showed some neocons looking as if they came from the Sopranos delivering dead fish to the President of Yale. It ran with a story by the author alleging that the vast Jewish conspiracy was preventing Dr. Juan Cole from being appointed to a position at Yale.
Sometimes Jews are promoted as animals, savage beasts that are less than human. A favorite is casting Jews as a multi-armed octopus overtaking anything it approaches. Hitler used that image in Nazi propaganda, so did a Mondoweiss blogger, named Seham, who used the Jewish Octopus to represent the IDF when writing about the violence occurring with the terrorist-led flotilla back in May.
Sometimes I am asked why Jews seem to always vote Democratic. Part of the answer is that until William F Buckley, Jr., came along and purged the movement, the conservative world was very anti-Semitic. Despite the fact that the Progressive movement has many Jews within their ranks, progressivism has taken over the anti-Semitism mantle. While the conservative movement has become very inclusive in its tone, the progressive world has become anti-Semitic.
What makes the hatred of these sites so hypocritical is these progressives are usually the first to label any criticism of President Obama as racial hatred. Some progressives under the umbrella of George Soros’ Media Matters have even created a website to track the non-existent racist hatred coming from the Tea Party movement. Maybe before they look to find hatred that doesn’t exist from the Tea Party movement, they should look to clean up their own house.
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