CMV: The Democratic party's sweeping anti-hate bill is a huge balk and looks more like "all lives matter" than a bill designed to fight growing anti-semitism.

I want to start this off my pointing out three things that inform my opinion.

I heavily lean Democratic so this is not a partisan issue to me.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a sweeping anti-hate bill. It's just bad timing.
The bill should have been targeted at anti-semtism and other bills cover other groups. This would have allowed the Democrats to point at certain Republicans for not supporting certain groups, not for opposing a sweeping bill. It's bad strategy to do it all as one.

I feel like the Democratic response to Rep. Ilhan Omar's statements and subsequent reactions was pretty weak. It reminds me of the pushback against black lives matter when conservatives would counter with "all lives matter".

There is a clear wave of anti-semitism in the US (and around the world). Fortunately, in the US it's not nearly as institutional as some other forms of racism, but it has recently reemerged as quite apparent on a cultural level nonetheless. If the Democratic party wanted to make a strong stand like many of them are trying to against police brutality and ICE harassment, etc, then they should have passed a bill distinctly condemning anti-semitism. This would have had two key benefits. First, it would have helped identify which representatives would have opposed the anti-anti-semitism bill. Second, it would set the stage for introducing more individual bills targeted at hate towards other groups and the same identification of opponents would have taken place. Instead, the Democrats basically said "all hate speech matters" and weakly passed a bill to try to relieve themselves of controversy instead of addressing it head on.

I don't mean this to say a misinformed criticism of Israel is equivalent to police brutality, because it isn't at all. My point is that the logic behind the sweeping anti-hate bill is the same as "all lives matter".

EDIT: I see people saying it's not a bill. Ok I get that now and thank you, but that doesn't argue against the point of my view which is the similarity between the resolution and saying "all lives matter".

CMV!

This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please read through our rules. If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which, downvotes don't change views**! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to message us. Happy CMVing!

Posted Mar 9, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC · edited

1545

Sort by:

finzipasca23∆•7 yr. ago

What you're referring to isn't a bill, it's what's known as a simple resolution.

Instead, the Democrats basically said "all hate speech matters" and weakly passed a bill to try to relieve themselves of controversy instead of addressing it head on.

Not really... you seem to be arguing that focusing on anti-semitism specifically would have exposed the true bigots, as if hating Muslims isn't true bigotry. Anti-Semitism is a problem, so too is anti-Muslim rhetoric. This resolution simply affirms that the House rejects these forms of bigotry. It has no legal weight and isn't actionable, so anyone opposing it would be doing so on purely ideological grounds... i.e. bigotry.

SlenderpmanOP47∆•7 yr. ago

Right so again, as I said above, more resolutions could have been passed by the majority against other forms of hate too. I'm just saying given the timing and the original purpose of the resolution, it should have just been about anti-semitism. All forms of bigotry are obviously wrong, I just find the rollout of this resolution to be really weak.

finzipasca23∆•7 yr. ago

Right so again, as I said above, more resolutions could have been passed by the majority against other forms of hate too.

Yeah I comprehend what you're saying here, but it doesn't support your view that a single resolution is somehow weaker... unless you view anti-semitism to be a "more legitimate" form of bigotry than Islamophobia. Is that the case?

I'm just saying given the timing and the original purpose of the resolution, it should have just been about anti-semitism. All forms of bigotry are obviously wrong, I just find the rollout of this resolution to be really weak.

...but you'd find a bandwagon of copycat resolutions to be stronger? I'm just not seeing how you're connecting the dots there.

And again, these aren't bills or laws. They're just the official opinions of the House. A specific incident occurred involving both antisemitism and Islamophobia, so the resolution concerns these two forms of bigotry. It's not like they shoehorned in homophobia and racism against Blacks and Latinos into the resolution. It's a PR response to a specific incident.

SlenderpmanOP47∆•7 yr. ago

The resolution was delayed in order to accommodate Hispanic voices and language was eventually added on criticizing hate against basically all other notable minority groups. I'm not saying a whole bunch of copycat resolutions would be so much better, but given the timing of the issue at hand, the less urgent equivalent of this situation is "Jewish lives matter" "No, all lives matter". Except the Democratic response, instead of criticizing the "all lives matter" sentiment, completely agreed with it and refused to specifically condemn anti-semitism when anti-semitism was the main issue at hand.

unless you view anti-semitism to be a "more legitimate" form of bigotry than Islamophobia. Is that the case?

This is simply not my view in the slightest. In fact, I think both forms of hate equally deserve individual attention without being clumped into a larger group and have their urgency watered down.

A specific incident occurred involving both antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Not from the Democratic side. Sure, some conservatives and others that we already think are racist responded in an Islamophobic way. The Democrats don't need to address their Islamophobia NOW because they aren't the ones being Islamophobic NOW. The incident, within the party that introduced the resolution, is purely about anti-semitism. By clumping the two together, they made a stand on neither.

YossarianWWII31∆•7 yr. ago

Not from the Democratic side.

A lot of liberals contest that. Several Democratic presidential candidates, one of them Jewish, have spoken up in support of Rep. Omar and criticized much of the backlash against her from Democrats.

AGSessions14∆•7 yr. ago

It was not a bill. It was a House resolution “condemning hate” of all kinds. It doesn’t do anything, and it has no target other than the idea of hatred based on protected classes already existent in law. It isn’t sent anywhere outside the House.

It’s only point was to put the Omar situation behind the House. It wouldn’t serve a purpose to expand on the toothless resolution, because it wouldn’t pass the Senate as a bill or the president for signature if expanded greatly, or it wouldn’t do anything yet still create further divisions within the House on what hatred really means and what to do with it—for no political or legal benefit.

SlenderpmanOP47∆•7 yr. ago

Bill, resolution, whatever. It doesn't matter. This could have been done with more justice towards Jews specifically AND while still adhering to the opponent identification strategy as I described above. If anything, you're agreeing with me by saying the resolution was toothless and just "to put the Omar situation behind" them.

0†

AGSessions14∆•7 yr. ago

Actually it matters a lot, considering you made your view about this bill idea. I don’t agree with you, because it was never about hate, it was about a political audience insulted by Omar’s tweets over the last two months, in the face of the opposition party willing to tear them apart for any misstep.

Politics isn’t about ideals, it’s about politicking. You saw here how the sausage gets made, and it’s rare that everyone is happy in a strictly political maneuver.

SlenderpmanOP47∆•7 yr. ago

I see how the sausage got made and that's quite literally what I'm upset about. I know how politics work, but when the party in control of the house is passing a toothless resolution, they might as well have done so to try to address the original point instead of watering it down by trying to include everyone.

Actually it matters a lot, considering you made your view about this bill idea.

You're splitting hairs. I understand I made a small mistake calling it a bill, but a resolution is basically just a toothless bill. Expressing official policy goes through basically the same process as passing a law so all of the strategies that go into making a resolution are quite similar to those to try getting a law passed.

AGSessions14∆•7 yr. ago

The resolution is official policy of the House now. Resolutions are also the vehicle to counteract the president’s national emergency declaration as well.

It does not in any way go through the process of a law. A bill must pass the house and the senate and be signed by the president, and it can fail at any stage.

The more people involved in your resolution or bill, the two main forms of congressional action, the more stakeholders you have to please and that can derail the motion.

To understand this resolution you must, must, must understand what happened. The house leadership did not want this to happen: the far left and the right did. Anything the House or Senate ever has to vote on requires time, resources, and can split factions like the majority. The far left wanted what you wanted, the right wanted to have Democrat’s vote yes or no on anti-semetism, and the House majority and leadership wanted this situation to end.

This was the best decision for the House Democrats. A resolution without targeting anyone in particular. It looks like it did something without actually punishing anyone or doing anything in particular. They survived a situation of their caucus’ own making with barely any fallout, except from the far left, which isn’t the priority of the 233 House Democrats and 47 Senate Democrats. And they preserved for the future the opportunity to censure members for hatred: this was a warning shot, and the house leadership is already pissed at Omar and King for putting them in a position they did not plan for. Everyone knows it now.

begonetoxicpeople16∆•7 yr. ago

I am a pretty left leaning Jew, who thinks Omar was anti semitic in what she said. But I dont see an issue wih how the reolution played out.

First off, we cant ignore the awful smears from (I believe) West Virginia, where she was linked to the 9/11 terror attacks. This was a disgusting display of islamaphobia against Omar, and I think the GoP has been pretty weak in condemning that just like Dems have been in condemning Omar (and no Im not saying its equal, just that both have been poor in their response).

Second, its just more practical. The house could pass 100 resolutions against individual bigotrys, and they would still probably miss something. In contrast, a resolution condemnign all hate speech covers all their bases.

Should we just pretend anti semitism doesnt exist? Of course not. Am I a little nervous at how aggressively Omars defneders have acted towards me (and other Jews I know)?Yes, to an extent. But I dont think this resolution was bad or a problem in any way.

SlenderpmanOP47∆•7 yr. ago

I don't at all want to ignore the blatant Islamophobia coming from the right. We can't let Republicans hide their bigotry behind support for Israel.

But politics isn't practical all the time. Sometimes bills and resolutions that need to be passed should just be passed. The house Dems were clearly concerned about inner party anti-semitism from the left, but they failed to do anything about it by watering down their resolution.

And like I said in the post, passing a resolution wasn't the problem at all. I also think that if the timing were different, they could have passed this exact same one without my complaint. My issue is that they allowed a discussion about anti-semitism to be co-opted by every other minority group to the point where it no longer means anything.

iammyowndoctor5∆•7 yr. ago

Ugh, let's be honest, anything the government does advertised to be "fighting" prejudice is just a big show to look good to their constituents who ostensibly care about such things, just not enough to put that much effort into fixing them.

Btw this needs to be said. BLM, well intentioned as it was, was a fucking terrible slogan, and it deserved to be trolled with an "all lives matter." Cause it's not like there are also poor Hispanic, native American, and hell, even poor white people who get routinely profiled by the police. It's uselessly divisive to call your black lives matters when the issue is bigger than that.

Anti-hate legislation anyway tends to be patently dumb and never achieves anything. You want some real anti-hate legislation? Maybe try to undo the damage done by decade of the prison industrial complex and the War on Drugs, for starters. That might actually achieve something.

I'm not sure why anti-Semitism is their focus compared to the much larger generalized inequality between the poor, especially poor minorities, and the rich. Because a few country bumpkins, likely with penis size issues like to dress up and play Nazi?

Or is this one of those things where anti-Semitism is slapped on any instance of someone pointing out how Israel has been returning the favor of genocide onto the Palestinians since whoever first had that genius idea to make Israel a thing again years ago? They were like, here's a solution, remember that genocide caused by that fascist government who wanted to establish an militarized ethnostate? Well let's give the victims on the genocide their OWN militarized ethnostate, that will balance it out. Brilliant idea. We wouldn't want them to miss out on the fun of subjugating a less powerful group of people! They're entitled to it! That's the rules. You get genocided and then you get to be the genocider, what a great cycle!

SlenderpmanOP48∆•7 yr. ago

Sorry I'm just seeing this.

Btw this needs to be said. BLM, well intentioned as it was...

I see what you're saying and kind of agree, but overall the "all lives matter" pushback from white people wanting to ignore the problem is, in my opinion, worse than the BLM folks initially prioritizing their own oppression in the face of some widely publicized cop on black man violence. Yeah they could have been more inclusive to other specifically affected groups, but the hot topic then was murders of black men.

Similarly, and I know some insensitive comments do not equate to police killings, Jewish people want to prioritize speech directed against Jews while it's a relevant topic. It's only fair that different groups who have public attention take turns in the spotlight instead of being forced to share it.

Anti-hate legislation anyway tends to be patently dumb and never achieves anything. You want some real anti-hate legislation? Maybe try to undo the damage done by decade of the prison industrial complex and the War on Drugs, for starters. That might actually achieve something.

Both of these things can happen at the same time and I would support it all the same.

Because a few country bumpkins, likely with penis size issues like to dress up and play Nazi?

I mean that's certainly part of it. I don't really want to write an essay about the history of how Jewish stereotyping has directly translated to persecution and oppression in the past, but the main idea here is that the exact same tropes, cliches, and stereotypes that existed in the past are being used to criticize Israel and US Israel policy as though they don't matter anymore.

I also don't really want to get into why Israel exists because again that's outside the scope here, but there's a huge difference between criticizing Israel's far right government and denying the Jewish people the right to a nation among nations (the literal goal of zionism). I'm no fan of Netanyahu nor the continued swiss cheesing of the West Bank, but that's a fair policy debate. Nobody says that Saudi Arabia shouldn't exist for murdering Yemeni children or hanging homosexuals. Nobody is calling for the dismantling of China for their persecution of Muslims, Tibetans, and continued quid pro quo economic development in Africa. Should Bolivia or Thailand not exist because of their ongoing state takeovers of indigenous lands? Why is Israel the devil to so many people when the clear origin of their problems is a war in which Arab nations threatened to wipe the Jewish people in Israel off the map?

iammyowndoctor5∆•7 yr. ago

I think Israel gets brought over those other examples just because it's such a relatively recent thing, being established just after WWII. And not in the way other nations were similarly "established" either (such as Germany becoming east and west germany), in that they were essentially just the new versions of older states. I mean Israel itself hadn't existed as a geopolitical entity for centuries if not millennia and yet they chose to give the original real estate back of all places despite its being home to another ethnic group for all that time since Israel's last incarnation.

I don't even want to abolish it at this point though, I just decry what a phenomenally stupid choice it was to begin with. Why not give the news their own homeland out of a chunk of North Dakota? No one's using that? It was like they couldn't have picked a worse spot for the amount of conflict it would cause. At this point I almost think Israel should be secularized and the Jewish homeland idea moved elsewhere. If you want to have a majority Jewish secular state right there that's one thing, but a militant religious ethnostate is quite another, it's the last thing that whole region needs, from any religion or people.

Saudi Arabia is way worse than Israel by any stretch of the imagination btw. I mean for it's religious right of course. But in it's defense Saudi Arabia is run by the people who have lived there for centuries, and they generally try to stay out of conflict, comparatively speaking.

It would be best if in general the religious right lost power in the middle East, both in Jewish, Muslim, Christian and whatever else regions.

bigtoine2∆•7 yr. ago

I'm not going to try to convince you that your stated view is wrong, because I completely agree with you. The resolution was absolutely intended not to focus on anti-semitism, but hate in general.

What I disagree with is your apparent idea that a resolution dedicated to condemning anti-semitism was warranted at all, given the circumstances that it stemmed from. Yes, anti-semitism is a problem in this country. Yes, it has become a bigger problem ever since Trump got elected. However, there have been dozens of anti-semitic comments made by politicians since that point, including by Trump himself, but this resolution was crafted in direct response to the comments of Ilhan Omar. The problem here is that her comments are not anti-semitic, because they're true.

Here are the comments she's been criticized for.

It’s all about the Benjamins baby

This was the first one and was referring to the influence Jewish lobbyists have on US politicians. This is called anti-semitic because it plays on the stereotype that Jews control the world through money. This is true in so far as it conflates the concepts of Jews, control, and money. By that measure though, the entire concept of a lobbying organization focused solely on pro-Jewish policies is anti-semitic. We can talk about the problem with money in politics when it comes to tobacco, guns, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and any other number of industries. But we can't talk about the problem with money in politics when it comes to the Jewish identity because it happens to line up with unfounded historical stereotypes? No organization should be allowed to use baseless claims of bigotry to shut down legitimate criticism of it's activities.

I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country [Israel]

This is simply a factual truth. There are bills circulating through Congress right now that want to legitimatize the actions by some states to enact economically punitive policies against companies that support the BDS movement. In the light of the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United, we can safely say that this is an unequivocally unconstitutional action. So you've got congressional representatives of the United States who are actively promoting an unconstitutional ban on certain corporate speech because it is harmful for a foreign country. Is this another statement that adheres to a historical anti-semitic stereotype? Absolutely. Again though, how is a person supposed to articulate legitimate criticism against a group of people who are literally acting out those stereotypes in real life?

chronus_poo13∆•7 yr. ago

In your analogy, the resolution denouncing antisemitism would be "black lives matter", while the resolution denouncing bigotry more generally would be "all live matter". You use this analogy to suggest that the original anti-antisemitism resolution was better than the more inclusive resolution. However, consider for a moment the negative aspects of "black lives matter". It is undeniably interpreted by some in two very divisive ways: 1) the suggestion that many people (ie. anyone not politically aligned with those using the slogan) don't think black lives matter, and 2) that only black lives matter. Both negative interpretations, while undoubtedly not what the slogan's creators meant, illicit a defensive reaction from a large portion of the population.

Similarly, the resolution specifically focusing on antisemitism was already being interpreted negatively by many people. You have to consider that such a bill may actually be counter productive, as it feeds into antisemitic tropes - such as that Jews control the government and get special treatment. Remember that these are the exact tropes that critics of Omar's statements cite. The compromise bill is a way of cutting off that line of thinking while still affirming the United State's opposition to antisemitism.

cresloyd7∆•7 yr. ago

Given that the ~~bill~~ resolution was introduced just after the uproar over Rep. Omar's statements, and no similar resolution was introduced after any of the many anti-Muslim comments, or anti-African-American comments, or anti-somebody-else comments, that seems to indicate that its primary target would be those anti-Semitic comments. I think they were clever to use that "all lives matter" language in hopes that the brouhaha would die down.

"I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings, and I HATE people like that" - Tom Lehrer, "National Brotherhood Week", 1965

Trorbes1∆•7 yr. ago

The resolution did help identify which representatives don't condemn hate. I'm not sure why more specific or more numerous resolutions condemning specific hatred would be necessary for this, because here we had an incredibly broad statement for the House to make against all hatred, and two dozen representatives still couldn't vote for it.

There's also no reason for you to compare it to Black/All Lives Matter. BLM is a movement protesting extraordinary prejudice from law enforcement and the justice system, whereas you yourself argue anti-semitism is "not nearly as institutional as some other forms of racism."

reed791∆•7 yr. ago

Just as almost all democrats voted against restricting post birth abortions.

Trorbes1∆•7 yr. ago

There's no such thing as a "post birth abortion."

YossarianWWII31∆•7 yr. ago

You want to throw some statistics about these supposed "post-birth abortions" at me? Because I don't think you have any actual understanding of what they are, or rather aren't.

SlenderpmanOP47∆•7 yr. ago

Yeah no this is nothing like the Republicans trying to pass an excessively restrictive law that discourages doctors from performing legal abortions when there was already a law protecting children born alive after an attempted abortion.

SlenderpmanOP47∆•7 yr. ago

The problem is that the issue at hand is anti-semitism. When the issue at hand is anti-semitism, you take action against anti-semitism, not every other form of hate.

Similarly, when the issue is police brutality against black people, you take action against police brutality against black people. You don't say "all lives matter" because that's not the issue at hand.

There is no other comparison other than that the action taken (or the opposing sentiment) completely misses the point. I know Jews aren't nearly as much victims of institutional racism as black people, but when the issue is about Jewish lives, for some reason the Democrats made it about "all lives", missing the point of attacking relevant anti-semitism.

Trorbes1∆•7 yr. ago

Did they miss the point, though?

SlenderpmanOP47∆•7 yr. ago

Yes. As soon as they made it about everyone and not about the intended target (anti-semitism) they missed the point.

Trorbes1∆•7 yr. ago

I think you missed the point. I think it wasn't about denouncing anti-semitism, or there would've been just as much outcry over Rep. Jordan's "$teyer" remark.

No, I think was about Rep. Omar, and about making the Democratic party eat its own. In that case I think they did right by condemning all hatred, and revealing the ones who refuse to.

foot_kisser12∆•7 yr. ago

It reminds me of the pushback against black lives matter when conservatives would counter with "all lives matter".

I broadly agree with your criticism of the weaksauce bill. I don't see why you'd compare it with "all lives matter", though.

The weaksauce bill, besides including everything under the sun to make it clear it wasn't about antisemitism and pointedly refusing to name Ilhan Omar or discuss her behavior, also includes rhetoric about "Islamophobia". Not only did they weaken criticism of Ilhan Omar to the point of nonexistence, they made sure to give her a political victory to reward her misbehavior.

"All lives matter" was not a defense of any police officer's actions, was not a reward to a police officer, and I don't really think you could even call it "pushback" against BLM.

SlenderpmanOP47∆•7 yr. ago

I disagree because I still see the point of the resolution as addressing anti-semitism, but the watering down of the point by including all of these other valid issues was a mistake. It's not like they tried to pull shit out of thin air. They just tried too hard to make a victim coalition when all of these groups' problems are unique and distinct. The message to Omar was clear, but to the American people who see a sweeping anti-hate bill it is much less clear.

"All lives matter" was not a defense of any police officer's actions, was not a reward to a police officer, and I don't really think you could even call it "pushback" against BLM.

I see what you're saying, but this resolution (not a bill, my mistake) was not meant to reward or dignify Rep. Omar in any way. She was legitimately receiving bigoted and unjustified hate for her words when all that really needed to happen was a commitment against her message, not some 9/11 conspiracy bullshit that she didn't deserve.

All lives matter, on the other hand, is entirely a pushback against BLM even if it doesn't try to wrongly justify police brutality. In fact, ALM comes purely from ignorance about the issue, in my opinion, and not from bigotry towards black people. It's just wrong, not racist. Similarly, the resolution was, in my mind, other groups pushing back against what some call "Jewish particularism". The Democrats were wrongly worried that a resolution solely about anti-semitism would alienate other groups so the pushback was to water down the resolution to include everyone, i.e. all hate is wrong vs. Jewish hate is wrong.

foot_kisser12∆•7 yr. ago

this resolution (not a bill, my mistake) was not meant to reward or dignify Rep. Omar in any way.

She must have been happy to see the inclusion of "Islamophobia" on equal footing with anti-semitism, and she likely appreciated that her name wasn't mentioned at all. The Democrats also took some not-so-veiled shots at Republicans in it.

Democrats have a problem with Omar, and they're trying to hide it, obfuscate it, shield her, and avoid dealing with it.

The meaning of the resolution was fundamentally "we don't want to acknowledge anti-semitism in our ranks".

"All lives matter" is the opposite. There is no hiding there. It is not an effort to avoid dealing with something.

Democrats are the group responsible and the group hiding. In the analogy with "all lives matter", the ones with the message are not hiding anything, and the group being blamed is a different group and (at least mostly) being unfairly blamed, whether you count the group being blamed as cops or as white people.

The problem BLM claimed exists doesn't. They say that racist white cops are killing black people and not getting punished. If you look at statistics, a white person is more likely to get shot during an interaction with cops than a black person, and a black cop is more likely to shoot a black person than a white cop is. If you look at individual cases put forward by BLM, you never find an instance of all of the elements of their story coming true.

The problem Republicans claim exists with Ilhan Omar is easy to demonstrate with evidence, and even Democrats accept that it exists, though they try to downplay it by claiming she "didn't know what she was saying".

Omar said anti-semitic things. People who say "all lives matter" do not say anti-black things.

The analogy doesn't work.

SlenderpmanOP47∆•7 yr. ago

I see now that you must be somewhat of a conservative so I guess my liberal logic won't cut it for you. Though I disagree with him choosing not to vote for the resolution, my opinion sort of mirrors Rep. Zeldin's remarks about the resolution.

I'm against the moral equivalency of anti-semitism and Islamophobia, but I at the very least acknowledge that both are legitimate problems in our country. The intention of the original version was to condemn anti-semitism, which should have been more than enough to tell Rep. Omar that she has to fix her rhetoric.

"All lives matter" is the opposite. There is no hiding there. It is not an effort to avoid dealing with something.

This is categorically false. I don't even think I could explain this further because it's so simply wrong.

Democrats are the group responsible...

Democrats are not "responsible" nor "in hiding" on this issue. I didn't see any Republicans condemn Kevin McCarthy or Jim Jordan or Steve King for that matter (though please correct me if I'm wrong). I understand that King was rightfully removed from his committee assignments and that was an appropriate step, but he's been a congressman for 16 years and nobody did anything about his bullshit until this cycle. On the other hand, the Democrats at the very least acknowledged a problem with her words as soon as she said them.

The problem BLM claimed exists doesn't...

I'm not going to pretend I'm the biggest fan of BLM and I especially don't love the people running the show, but again your view is a classic oversimplification of the police-black people dynamic. I'm not going to dive too deep into this because that's not why I posted this post, but you saying this is certainly not changing my opinion.

The problem Republicans claim exists with Ilhan Omar is easy to demonstrate with evidence, and even Democrats accept that it exists, though they try to downplay it by claiming she "didn't know what she was saying".

But saying "she didn't know what she was saying" is better than 16 years of doing nothing about Steve King. And to be fair, Omar is very young and not well rehearsed in either the history of anti-semitism nor the geopolitics of Israel. That's a problem in and of itself, but not any bigger issue than Steve King's 16 years of loving white supremacy.

Omar said anti-semitic things. People who say "all lives matter" do not say anti-black things.

This is a gross generalization. I agree that not everyone who disagrees with BLM is a racist, but the most vocal counters to BLM were often from people who are genuinely racist or at the very least prejudiced.

-1

foot_kisser12∆•7 yr. ago

I see now that you must be somewhat of a conservative so I guess my liberal logic won't cut it for you.

Feel free to use liberal logic. I won't necessarily share your preconceptions and assumptions, and I may not be persuaded to agree with your conclusion, but I'm more than willing to take your assumptions for the sake of argument to see if they lead to the conclusion you're drawing.

Democrats are not "responsible" nor "in hiding" on this issue.

They aren't automatically responsible for her just because she's a Democrat, but they are deflecting, minimizing, and shielding her from the consequences of her actions. That makes them responsible for shielding anti-semitism in their party.

This is categorically false. I don't even think I could explain this further because it's so simply wrong.

It's hard to respond to this. Clearly it's true, but you think it's false. Why?

Do you think there's hiding? Who's doing the hiding? Folks saying "all lives matter" aren't hiding from anything, they're engaging BLM activists. They aren't avoiding a conversation, they're starting one.

Is there avoidance of a problem? What's the problem? If it's the standard BLM narrative, "all lives matter" people will tell you that it isn't correct, and then they'll tell you why, which isn't avoiding the problem, it's dealing with it. If it isn't, who's doing the avoiding?

This is at the heart of my objection to there being an analogy between the two things. Clearly the Democrats are hiding and avoiding WRT Omar. If "all lives matter" types were hiding and avoiding, clearly there would be an analogy to make.

he's been a congressman for 16 years and nobody did anything about his bullshit until this cycle. ... not any bigger issue than Steve King's 16 years of loving white supremacy.

I know what white supremacy looks like, and nothing Steve King has said has resembled it.

Omar tweeted "allahu ackbar" in 2012 on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, within an hour of sunset, which is when Yom Kippur starts. There are 8,760 hours in a year, and only one of those is the hour when Yom Kippur starts. The odds that she wasn't tweeting that at Jews in an anti-semitic way are almost zero. If looking at several years of previous activity is mandatory, why won't Democrats look at hers?

I looked around for information on Steve King, and found this NYT article. They claim that he has a "long history of racist comments", and you'd expect that they'd have facts to back it up. They don't. They list a lot of things, the majority of which have nothing whatsoever to do with race, even arguably, they're just things Democrats wouldn't agree with. When I looked for facts about details of the rest, it became clear that they were being misrepresented.

So we've got a guy who's had a history of being misrepresented by journalists, and a lady who's got a history of real racism. The guy being misrepresented by journalists got taken off of committee assignments and had a resolution made that names him by name. The lady who has a history of anti-semitism kept her committee assingments and the watered-down resolution avoided naming her or even describing her problematic behavior.

I didn't see any Republicans condemn Kevin McCarthy or Jim Jordan

I assume that they were maligned by a hostile media, rather than that they said anything really bad. If you want to get into that in detail, we can.

your view is a classic oversimplification of the police-black people dynamic

I wasn't talking about the police-black people dynamic, I was talking about BLM's narrative, which is also not about the police-black people dynamic. Convincing people that there's something wrong with the police-black people dynamic would be pretty easy.

If BLM had acted better with respect to the "blue lives matter" response, they could have gotten most cops on their side. Instead, they chanted "pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon".

the most vocal counters to BLM were often from people who are genuinely racist or at the very least prejudiced.

If you want me to buy this, you're going to have to back it up with something. We don't have to go down that rabbit hole if you don't want.

omid_16∆•7 yr. ago

I don't see how even if this resolution only mentioned antisemitism and no other form of hatred, it would somehow "combat antisemitism". Do you really think antisemites look to the US Congress for the queues? No, they consider it to be ZOG and illegitimate. So how does some resolution, not even a bill that allots funding to investigating right-wing extremists, supposed to do anything?

What's missing from all of this is the simple matter that this was all supposed to be about the mistreatment of PALESTINIANS by the Israeli government. But AIPAC has successfully shifted the narrative to American Jews being the real victims even though Ilhan Omar said nothing about Jews. The whole "antisemitism" charge has been used nonsensically, even to the point where a Jewish cartoonist mocked Meghan McCain for her crocodile tears and Meghan (who is not Jewish) accused the Jewish cartoonist of antisemitism

I highly encourage you to listen to actual Jews discuss this issue critically:

Check out @ajplus’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/ajplus/status/1103804184812552194?s=09

I think it's very important to note that Ilhan Omar's district has Jews and they are wholeheartedly supporting her (her district has a Cook PVI of D+26, where Republicans have never received more than 40% of the vote in any election there in the past 50 years).

So this pivot to condemning all hate, including antisemitism, was actually a brilliant strategy in terms of scoring PR for the Democratic Party, and a bad result for the 20 or so Republicans that voted against it (including one of the Republicans in New York who accused AOC of antisemitism). But it should be important to note that obviously there's a difference between having good PR vs actually combatting antisemitism, but as I said earlier, even if this resolution did that, it wouldn't have done anything to combat antisemitism.

Finally, the a big difference between this and "all lives matter" is that "all lives matter" is intended to silence and shut down black lives matter. Oftentimes, supporters of ALM accuse BLM activists of lying/exaggerating about the oppression of black people in this country, or even justifying it via racism (black people commit more crime cuz their DNA/culture encourages it). This resolution does the opposite of that, recognizing the legitimacy of the threat of antisemitism, but also acknowledges other forms of hate too.