Friday, September 23, 2022

Searching for anti-Semitism on the right while ignoring it on the left -

  Jonathan Tobin (jewishworldreview.com)


"The comments of a speaker at a recent rally that featured an appearance by former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania is being widely cited as justification for President Joe Biden's labeling of his opponents as "semi-fascists." That talk, which served as one of several warm-up speeches prior to the main event with Trump, involved comments in which a defendant in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was spoken of as a victim even though the person in question has been credibly accused of also being a Nazi sympathizer. Those remarks are therefore being put forward by some on the left as evidence for the thesis that under Trump, the Republican Party has become a home for anti-Semites, if not Nazis.

"In a campaign where Biden's Democrats have begun to gain some ground recently in a midterm election that had heretofore seemed to promise disaster for them, the focus on Trump and his alleged soft-spot for extremists has proved to be a brilliant tactic. Instead of defending their dismal record on the economy, inflation, crime and other issues, Democrats are doing their best to change the subject to Trump and Jan. 6. This is also tied to an unseemly and highly politicized set of actions undertaken by the Department of Justice — like the raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence — that seems akin to the typical banana republic practice of a government seeking to jail their political opponents. Justified or not, Democrats gain when the discussion is about the party that is out of power rather than the one that has been in control of everything in Washington for the last 20 months.". . .

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