Friday, December 11, 2009
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has an interesting and important report on the antisemitism that's found a home on some of our favorite web sites (he said ironically): Anti-Israelism and Anti-Semitism in Progressive U.S. Blogs/News Websites: Influential and Poorly Monitored by Adam Levick
- Sixty-seven percent of the worldwide internet population visit social networking sites and blogs (web 2.0). These are now outpacing email in popularity. According to Nielsen Online they have become the fourth most popular online category. The popularity of political blogs is increasing as traditional media struggle to stay afloat.
- The three most popular progressive political blogs in the United States are Huffington Post, Salon, and Daily Kos. These three together have over thirteen million unique visitors per month.
- Within these three blogs a number of historical anti-Semitic staples appear frequently: excessive Jewish power and control over society/government; Jewish citizens are more loyal to Israel than to their own country; Israel resembles Nazi Germany; Israel is demonized.
- In part because of the huge size of the blogosphere - there are thousands of bloggers at Daily Kos alone - such hateful commentary often escapes the kind of scrutiny that the traditional media faces. A major challenge is that anonymity provides bloggers with moral impunity.
The report features such leftist mainstream sites as Huffington Post, Daily Kos and the 'web's most dishonest blogger', Salon's Glenn Greenwald.
I wrote to the publication thanking them for finally noticing this. Several of my friends on the Left have been shocked and appalled by open racism and medieval conspiracy theories on theoretically progressive blogs.
We started PSU to track and record examples of Jew-bashing on progressive websites, which far exceed "criticism of Israel" - although "criticism of Israel" is used as the excuse for plain old antisemitism.
Nothing about racism is progressive. There are many examples also of overlaps between neonazi and KKK sentiments and what's been posted on "progressive" blogs and indeed so-called Leftists and "progressives" have actually been caught linking to obnoxious racist websites.
Also, theoretically progressive posters endorse repressive theocratic militias and regimes. This makes absolutely no sense. It also makes no sense for leftists who supposedly support women to endorse the oppression of women. It makes no sense for gays to endorse regimes who murder gays.
Something about the Arab/Israeli conflict serves as a "gateway drug" for insanity.
This is the 21st century. The internet with all its power to enlighten has become a tool for a medieval mindset and instead of helping moderate extremes it's sadly been used to polarize people.
Of course in Britain it's worse. Mainstream papers and TV outlets and playwrights and politicians and clergymen - Christians and Muslims alike - openly endorse antisemitism and support blatant racists and political and religious extremists as long as the target is Israel and/or Jews.
This is outrageous. But sadly it also isn't new.
Meanwhile look what happened to a Jewish boxer in Britain. The fact that he lost the fight isn't the bad part - it's the way he was assaulted by the crowd for being a Jew:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1134329.html
All this stuff is related and it's frightening.
Meanwhile it seems to be nearly impossible to reason with or even have a polite conversation with "proPalestinians" because they are brainwashed and have bought into a mindset straight out of the Dark Ages.
This goes clear across the political spectrum, from the far right to the far left. But it's most depressing from the Left because we are supposed to be the reformers, we are supposed to be the people fighting racism, not creating it.
What those darlings on the left don't realize or refuse to admit is that their saintly leader, Glenn Greenwald is neither progressive nor leftist by his own admission. He calls himself 'nonpartisan' but based on his own writings he's a far right anarchist libertarian isolationist in the meddle of Pat Buchanan, who Greenwald worked for, or worse, like Lyndon Larouche. Greenwald's CVs includes legal defense of Matt Hale of the Church of the Creator, a neonazi hate organization, in the name of 'free speech' for instance. Oddly though he's never actually stepped up to defend leftist causes let alone anything remotely Jewish. Only antisemites are worthy of defending in Greenwald's book. Similarly his partner in crime at Salon, John "Juan" Cole, sees the whole world in terms of crushing Israel and then world peace will magically flow.
I would also add that Greenwald, on Salon maintains a unique hands-on control of the 'letters' section to his own column and often and quickly deletes any comment that Greenwald disagrees with as well as any other comment that quotes it or refers to it. He has openly proclaimed this in letters to his own letters column, threatening other writers with immediate deletion and/or banning often calling his own readers 'psychopaths', 'dangerously mentally imbalanced' or 'liars'. This to him (Greenwald) is entirely acceptable under his own conception of 'free speech' since it's '[his] blog to do with as he wishes.'