{"id":6827,"date":"2012-01-20T01:08:53","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T01:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=6827"},"modified":"2012-01-20T01:25:53","modified_gmt":"2012-01-20T01:25:53","slug":"everyone-is-a-racist-and-an-anti-semite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/everyone-is-a-racist-and-an-anti-semite\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyone is a racist and an anti-Semite"},"content":{"rendered":"

It looks like the Left-leaning Center for American Progress<\/a> is under fire for “anti-Semitism.” The issue at hand is the use of rhetoric such as “Israel-Firster.” CAP’s problem is that it fancies itself a mainstream organization which endeavors to effect policy. That means an honest and candid assessment of America’s peculiar relationship with Israel, and the rather lopsided center of gravity of the American political landscape in relation this issue, is not politic. Over at Salon<\/i> Glenn Greenwald<\/a> outlines exactly how CAP and its junior staffers were subjected to a organized campaign by AIPAC and its fellow travelers. He relates the following:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Last month, my Salon colleague Justin Elliott revealed that AIPAC\u2019s former spokesman, Josh Block, had been encouraging neoconservative journalists and pundits on a private email list to attack as \u201canti-Semites\u201d various Middle East commentators employed by two of the most influential Democratic-Party-aligned organizations: the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Media Matters (MM). Block distributed a dossier containing posts by these CAP and MM writers about Israel and Iran that he claimed evince anti-Semitism, and then issued these marching orders (emphasis in original): \u201cYOU SHOULD AMPLIFY this. And use the below [research] to attack the bad guys.\u201d <\/b>The predictable roster of neoconservative, hatemongering extremists on that email list \u2013 led by The Washington Post\u2018s Jennifer Rubin, who recruited the Simon Wiesenthal Center to the cause \u2014 dutifully spewed out articles echoing Block\u2019s attacks against these mostly young, liberal writers: Matt Duss, Ali Gharib, Eli Clifton and Zaid Jilani at CAP\u2019s ThinkProgress blog and Media Matters\u2019 MJ Rosenberg (a former AIPAC employee).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You know what this reminded me of? Spencer Ackerman encouraging fellow liberal journalists to destroy a conservative pundit as a racist<\/a>:<\/p>\n

take one of them \u2014 Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares \u2014 and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is hardball. It’s American politics. “Discourse” if you will. Communist. Islamophobe. Socialist. Racist. Anti-Semite. Anti-Christian. Class-warfare. Anti-Catholic. Sexist. Homophobe. Where is the necessity for an argument if you can name<\/i> the enemy?<\/b> It doesn’t matter what they say, it matters who you define they are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It looks like the Left-leaning Center for American Progress is under fire for “anti-Semitism.” The issue at hand is the use of rhetoric such as “Israel-Firster.” CAP’s problem is that it fancies itself a mainstream organization which endeavors to effect … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[220,366],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6827"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6830,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6827\/revisions\/6830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}