Originally published via Armageddon Prose Substack:
It’s unclear, at this rate, how much moral currency, if any, accusations of “antisemitism” will have in a year’s time. There are simply too many lesbian teachers’ union bosses crying wolf for the Salem Witch Trial hysteria to sustain itself.
“If you’re a member of a minority group, well, there’s lots of antisemitism. I happen to be… married to a [lesbian] rabbi. And I happen to really believe in my faith. And there’s a lot of homophobia. And I happen to be the first out lesbian as a labor leader in the country.”
Consider the vacuousness when Randi’s rhetoric is stripped of its liberal window-dressing down to its brass tacks: “let me force-mask and inject your children with whatever Pfizer requires or you hate Jews.”
Like the limerick goes that my Irish-Catholic grandmammy used to regale me with as she bounced me on her knee in the Midwestern spring air while the pie cooled in the windowsill: “Well, Boy-O, if everyone’s an anti-Semite, then no one’s an anti-Semite.”
Weingarten herself, in a savory irony, was the target of the “anti-Semite” smear a few years ago when she refused to open the schools and force her lazy government employees to work for a living. She reportedly derided her opponents on the re-opening issue as members of the “ownership class,” which the American Jewish Committee took to be an attack on Jews.
Via American Jewish Committee, 2021:
“Randi Weingarten is no antisemite, but her comments, in a JTA interview regarding Jewish critics of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union she heads, are nonetheless offensive and unforgivable. She dismissed Jewish critics of her union’s resistance to opening public schools now as being members of the “ownership class,” who should have no voice on the issue.
Weingarten’s remarks were particularly puzzling as the organized Jewish community has not taken on the issue. Individual Jews may have, but that hardly justifies speaking of Jews as a class, a common tactic of antisemitic bigots.
If such remarks had come from Minister Farrakhan or a leader of the Proud Boys, they would correctly have been condemned as raw, unadulterated antisemitism.
The sweeping claim that Jews are in the “ownership class,” and thus have no business criticizing public school teachers and their unions for resisting reopening public schools due to Covid, will inevitably aid and comfort those who thrive on propagating the imaginary notion that all Jews are rich and use their wealth to somehow control everyone else.”
For every finger you point, ten point back at you, Randi! That’s called karma, bitch, and you’ve got a whole lot more coming for you one way or another, in this life or the next.
Like an old war horse, the purveyors of the “anti-Semite” smear appear to have gotten all of the mileage out of it they’re going to. From here on out, we’re in the land of diminishing returns.
When I hear or see the overblown term “antisemitic,” which has been squeezed dry of all of its meaning, it literally says nothing to me of the person or group being accused of the thing; maybe they’re antisemitic or maybe they’re not, but I’m certainly not going to take it at face value.
On the contrary, all it does for me is call into question the person or group making the accusation. 90%+ of the time, the smear “anti-Semite” is used as a weapon to silence political speech whatever party is doing the smearing wants silenced, or for other nefarious purposes, such as running political cover for Israel.
The “shut up, Nazi” smear is akin to the Trump-corporate media phenomenon. What the MSNBCs of the world, unless they are playing 3-D chess, apparently fail to grasp is that the more they attack Trump on specious grounds, the more popular he becomes, not less.
And yet they persist.
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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