by Oui
Thu Jan 2nd, 2020 at 07:44:12 PM EST
Smearing of progressives has become part of a new doctrine by populist rightwing politicians, media and the twitter rage. As the election results begin to shift due to social media bots and pressure groups, we should not only take notice but fight against the libel campaign. I've written about this phenomena in modern society for many years now. I must conclude that the propaganda has gone mainstream and needs to be halted. After the surprise win by Trump with alt-right support, The New York Times hired a new crowd of populist, rightwing proponents for the quick news cycle to feed the Trump supporters.
Palestinians can have human rights when they start winning Nobel Prizes -- Bret Stephens | Mondoweiss - Dec. 29, 2019 |
There is a big controversy unfolding over Bret Stephens's latest column, in which he says that the secret of Jewish genius is that Jews are more imaginative moral thinkers than anyone else. Even Fox News is saying that it is racist, and quoting Sen. Brian Schatz saying that the column crossed a line.
Stephens's argument is that Jews are not just smarter by IQ data, but they think differently. Jewish intelligence is "so often matched by such bracing originality and high-minded purpose."
Continued below the fold ....
A lot of smart people are taking Stephens apart on-line. Begin with Ben Ehrenreich here. I have three points:
- However smart Jews are or aren't, there is something unseemly about a mid-level thinker like Bret Stephens attaching himself to the coattails of Albert Einstein and Rosalind Franklin and Kafka on a racial basis. Stephens can boast none of those individuals' breath taking accomplishments. In fact, his own commentary should be judged by his own "high minded" standard: when he wrote that there is a "disease of the Arab mind," or repeatedly praised Netanyahu or said that Israel is justified in its slaughter of unarmed protesters and that the hundreds killed and thousands maimed are suffering from Palestinian "victimhood" and a bad culture. Stephens is an entitled twit.
- This is not a column about intelligence, but Israel. You are waiting for the reveal and it comes near the end. It turns out that Jewish specialness has caused a lot of Jew hatred, and it's directed at Israel. "It's no surprise that Jew hatred has made a comeback, albeit under new guises. Anti-Zionism has taken the place of anti-Semitism as a political program directed against Jews." This just goes to show what a sloppy thinker Stephens is. The issues of measurable intelligence and human rights are completely unrelated.
[...]
No good Jew should want any part of that; and it's a shame that The New York Times stable is now crowded with arrogant writers like Tom Friedman and Bari Weiss and Bret Stephens when there are many more thoughtful writers on pressing social questions available, to begin with Yousef Munayyer, Nada Elia, and Mairav Zonszein. I've met all three, and they are smart as they come.
○ Jerusalem Denial Complex | NYT Bret Stephens - Dec. 12, 2017 |
Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss can't wait to call you an anti-Semite in `The New York Times' | Mondoweiss - April 2, 2018 |
in a book review, Bret Stephens slagged Israel critics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt as bigots. In a throwaway line, Stephens wrote that Mearsheimer's "2001 magnum opus, `The Tragedy of Great Power Politics,' was later overshadowed by his tendentious and bigoted screed, `The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,' written with Stephen M. Walt."
So- two realist scholars at the University of Chicago and Harvard who argued that support for Israel is not in our national interest, and that neoconservatives had pushed the Iraq war for the sake of Israel's security -- they are bigots. And the Times offered no comment section on the piece for readers to question this clinker of viciousness from Stephens, a writer who has diagnosed the "disease of the Arab mind."

New York Times columnists discuss the virtue of thinking differently
A day later, Bari Weiss wrote that the far left in France is as threatening to Jews as the far right. Addressing the murder of an 85-year-old Jewish woman in Paris [NYT], she said that in France's political culture, "Jews are reviled on the far right and, increasingly, on the far left."
What is Weiss's evidence that the left is as anti-semitic as the nationalist right? An article in the Jewish Week saying French socialist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon is an anti-Semite because he: supports boycott of Israel, regards West Bank settlements as theft, condemned Israeli "war crimes" in the last Gaza massacre, and has attacked the French Israel lobby for rallying French citizens to serve a foreign flag.
Weiss- who got her career rolling by attacking any candidate for tenure at Columbia who supported Palestinian rights- says leftists are giving a pass to anti-Semitism: "attacks on Jews have been explained away as politically motivated by events in the Middle East."
How Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss have taken the NY Times' campus concern trolling to new heights in just 2 years | Media Matters - April 6, 2019 |
Hiring Stephens was a controversial move given his history of denying the reality of human-caused climate change, engaging in Iraq War revisionism, and disputing the existence of the campus-rape epidemic. And Stephens did little to assuage critics of his hire; his debut column for the Times was an error-riddled op-ed misrepresenting the state of climate consensus in the scientific community. That article was later held up by Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt to defend his personal skepticism of climate science.
Stephens was joined at the Times by fellow Wall Street Journal alum Bari Weiss. At the Journal, Weiss wrote about things like "campus rage," "the PC police," and "social justice warriors" who were supposedly outraged over the film Sausage Party. In another memo to staff, Bennet announced that Weiss would "be writing and commissioning the kinds of quick-off-the-news pieces that are such a critical part of our efforts to amplify the section's already important voice in the national conversation."
[...]
In a piece titled "We're All Fascists Now," [NYT] Weiss bemoaned Lewis & Clark Law School students' protest of a speech by American Enterprise Institute's Christina Hoff Sommers. On Twitter, Weiss called this incident "a 21st-century auto-da-fe," referring to public executions carried out during the Spanish Inquisition. But far from the teeming masses her article made the protest out to contain, video shows only about a dozen demonstrators in total.
Weiss also took issue with students' characterization of Sommers as a "fascist," noting that she is "a self-identified feminist and registered Democrat." As this piece illustrated, Weiss has a tendency to give incomplete and often inaccurate descriptions of her stories' protagonists. In this case, Weiss failed to note that Sommers was a prominent voice in the anti-diversity "GamerGate" movement, has joined panel discussions alongside the likes of neo-Nazi sympathizer Milo Yiannopoulos and far-right troll Steven Crowder, has appeared on Fox News to argue against perceived liberal causes, and has been a guest on white supremacist YouTube channel Red Ice TV's Radio 3Fourteen.
My original diary bemoaning Bret Stephens @BooMan fell on deaf ears and got me multiple troll ratings. A progressive community, blinded by uncritical love for HRC. Bernie Sanders got trampled by the DNC apparatchiks ...
○ IHRA is a Sham, and It's a Shame | Tikun Olam |
Last August, h/t generic ...
○ Bretbug Gate
My recent posts @EuroTrib
○ Murdoch's The Sun and Campaign Fraud
The New York Times and Editorial Diversity
Bret Stephens, WSJ/Murdoch Are Inseparable