New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg just offered a 6 month plea deal to a violent criminal who said, “I would do it again.” This is instead of a 7 year sentence if he was actually convicted. Bragg is pro-violent crime. Shame on him!
https://nypost.com/2023/01/12/manhattan-da-offers-cushy-deal-in-brutal-anti-semitic-attack/
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg offers sweetheart plea deal to suspect in brutal anti-Semitic attack
By Elizabeth Rosner and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
January 12, 2023
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office is offering a sweetheart plea deal to a suspect charged in the brutal anti-Semitic beating of a Jewish man in Midtown, prosecutors confirmed.
Waseem Awawdeh — who defiantly said “I would do it again” after his arrest in the cowardly assault on Joseph Borgen near a pro-Israel rally — has received a six-month plea deal offer from the controversial prosecutor.
That would be a slap on the wrist compared to the up to seven years he would face if convicted of the charges, including attempted assault as a hate crime, at trial.
Awawdeh, 24, was part of a gang of brutes busted in the May 20, 2021 attack on Borgen, who was wearing a yarmulke as he walked to a pro-Israel rally near Broadway and West 49th Street.
Borgen, an Upper East Side accountant, said his attackers called him a “dirty Jew” and yelled “F–k Israel, Hamas is going to kill all of you” as they pummeled him.
“I felt a liquid being poured on my face, and at first I thought I was getting urinated on,” Borgen told The Post at the time.
“But it turned out I was getting Maced and pepper-sprayed,” he said. “My face was on fire. That pain was worse than the concussion and all the other stuff that followed.”
Awawdeh, of Brooklyn, and three Staten Island men, Mahmoud Musa, Faisal Elezzi and Mohammed Othman, were all hit with charges over the attack, including assault as a hate crime and gang assault, following their arrests.
At his arraignment, prosecutors said Awawdeh told jailers he had no regrets.
“If I could do it again, I would do it again,” he said. “I have no problem doing it again.”
He has remained free on $10,000 bail while the case is pending.
Awawdeh’s lawyer, Peter Marc Frankel, confirmed the DA’s plea deal offer, which was first reported by the New York Sun.
“The six-month plea deal has been offered at this point,” Frankel told The Post on Thursday. “No decisions have been made by [my] client on what to do. We have been in contact with the DA for over a year about this case.
“It’s complicated,” he said. “This is not the potential outcome I was looking for but this is their current position. I am going to discuss this with my client.”
A spokesperson for Bragg’s office defended the deal Thursday, claiming Awawdeh did not initiate the attack but rather was the sixth person to join and left before it was over.
The spokesperson noted that Awawdeh is charged with beating the victim with his crutch, but that he did not pepper-spray, punch or kick Borgen and that he has no prior convictions.
“Anti-Semitic hate has no place in Manhattan and the office is requiring felony hate crime pleas and incarceration for three men charged in connection to this despicable act,” Emily Tuttle said in a statement.
“Our Hate Crimes Unit made these appropriately strong recommendations following a thorough investigation that illuminated facts, evidence and varying levels of culpability among this group of individuals.”
Among the other accused attackers, Othman and Musa — who both face class C felonies — have not been offered plea deals, the rep said, while Elezzi has been offered one in his misdemeanor case. All appear to have pleaded not guilty.
The incident came amid high tensions between Jews and Palestinians, with several clashes in New York City during protests and demonstrations.
“It really is outrageous,” former state Assemblyman Dov Hikind said on Thursday. “What do you have to do? Kill a Jew to get justice? It seems like Jewish blood is cheap, especially with the Manhattan DA, a guy who clearly has greater pity for the perpetrator than the victim of the crime.”
Black Lives Matter Joins Anti-Israel Demonstrators in ‘Day of Rage’
Black Lives Matter Joins Anti-Israel Demonstrators in ‘Day of Rage’
By Joel B. Pollak
July 2, 2020
Black Lives Matter protests joined anti-Israel demonstrators in a nationwide “Day of Rage” on Wednesday that included calls for Israel’s destruction and claims that Israel murders children, an allusion to medieval antisemitic blood libels.
The Jewish News Service reported that antisemitic and anti-Israel groups organized the “Day of Rage” on July 1, the first day that Israel’s government said it could extend its law to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”).
That process of extending sovereignty, commonly known as “annexation,” would include the strategic Jordan Valley, and would leave much of the remainder of the territory for the Palestinians to create a state under the peace plan introduced earlier this year by President Donald Trump. The plan gives Palestinians $50 billion in aid — if they renounce terror and agree to a demilitarized state on the territory offered, with a capital east of Jerusalem. In four years, the offer expires.
But the Palestinians have rejected the plan thus far — and anti-Israel demonstrators teamed up with Black Lives Matter on Wednesday, part of a series of anti-Israel demonstrations in a series of American cities over the next several days.
In Washington, DC, the two messages were joined as one — as marchers chanted extremist anti-Israeli slogans, as reported by the Washington Examiner:
The march, led by Harvard University rising senior Christian Tabash, attracted about 200 people who carried signs with messages either supporting the Palestinian Liberation Organization or Black Lives Matter.
As the march progressed, Tabash led his followers in alternating chants about Israel and racial justice.
“Israel, we know you, you murder children, too,” the crowd chanted at one point.
The crowd immediately followed that chant with alternating rallying cries of “Black lives matter!” and “Palestinian lives matter!”
https://twitter.com/NicXTempore/status/1278457182657413120
The idea that Israelis kill children has its roots in the “blood libel,” the false claim that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood in unleavened bread for Passover. The libel has migrated in recent decades to the Muslim world.
Breitbart News reported on a related protest in Los Angeles featuring signs such as “Palestinians for Black Power,” and calls for Israel to be replaced by a Palestinian state. There were confrontations with pro-Israel counter-demonstrators.
Israel has delayed a decision on annexation until it can complete consultations with the U.S. government, and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said it is likely to announce a decision on the issue next week.
New York City, controlled by racist Democrats, is using COVID-19 as an excuse for the police to harass racial minorities
New York City is controlled by Democrats. It’s one of the bluest cities in the country. The mayor is a Democrat. Of the 51 members of the New York City Council, 48 are Democrats. In the 2016 election for U.S. president, 79% of the voters in New York City voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton. That makes New York City one of the bluest, most Democratic controlled cities in the country.
Democrats, as we know, are the party of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, and school segregation.
After a Democratic U.S. Senator named Robert Byrd started his own chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and recruited 150 of his friends and family members to join it, Democrat Hillary Clinton referred to him as “my friend and mentor.” After Clinton praised the Ku Klux Klan leader, 79% of the voters in New York City voted for Clinton for U.S. President.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the racist, Democratic controlled city of New York is using COVID-19 as an excuse for police officers to harass racial minorities.
This recent article by NBC News it titled
Violent encounter in New York City prompts concerns about unequal policing of social distancing
The article’s first two paragraphs state:
A violent encounter between a New York City police officer and a bystander that police said began as an attempt to enforce social distancing rules has prompted concerns about unequal policing.
New York City’s public advocate Jumaane Williams posted pictures on Twitter on Sunday — one of swarms of white people sitting in parks and three images from what appeared to depict encounters between police and people of color.
This is the tweet that the article is referring to:
The same NBC News article also states:
Last week, de Blasio personally oversaw the dispersal of a crowd of mourners in the Williamsburg neighborhood at the funeral of a Hasidic rabbi, that he and the commissioner said drew thousands of people.
Clearly, the racist Democrats who control New York City don’t think the First Amendment’s protections of freedom of assembly and freedom of religion applies to minorities such as Jews.
It is very clear and obvious that New York City, controlled by racist Democrats, is using COVID-19 as an excuse to harass racial and religious minorities.
Rashida Tlaib falsely blames “white supremacy” for blacks murdering people at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City
Rashida Tlaib wrongly claims ‘white supremacy’ behind Jersey City slaughter
December 12, 2019
Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib appeared to blame the Jersey City shooting on “white supremacy” Thursday — even though the attackers have been identified as members of an extremist “anti-white and anti-Semitic” movement.
The Democratic congresswoman retweeted a photo of one of the victims of Tuesday’s shooting, 24-year-old Moshe Deutsch, an Orthodox Jew, with the caption: “This is heartbreaking. White Supremacy Kills.”
Twitter users were quick to call out Tlaib.
“Um, @RashidaTlaib the shooters were black…,” wrote conservative political consultant @CalebJHull.
Shooters David Anderson and Francine Graham were followers of the Black Hebrew Israelites, a fringe religious movement, not affiliated with mainstream Judaism, that’s been labeled a hate group by experts who track extremists in the US.
The tweet, which was posted to her personal account, had been deleted by Thursday afternoon.
David Anderson and Francine Graham, the suspects in the Jersey City shooting.
Reached for comment, Tlaib’s spokesman directed The Post to the congresswoman’s official account.
“It was beyond heartbreaking to learn of what appears to be another anti-Semitic act of violence. The hate growing in our country is toxic,” the tweet on her official account said.
“We must do so much more to fight it and stem the tide of gun violence. My love goes out to the victims, the first responders, their families, and the community of #JerseyCity.”
NBC News fact checker Erin Biba falsely blames “white supremacy” for a black man stabbing five Jews in Monsey, New York
Erin Biba is a fact checker for NBC News.
After a black man stabbed five Jews in Monsey, New York, Biba falsely blamed the stabbings on “white supremacy.”
After Biba’s tweet was proven to be a lie, she deleted her entire Twitter account.
Fortunately, before Biba deleted her account, Just Val saved a screenshot of Biba’s lie. Here it is. Source: https://twitter.com/Valnofux/status/1211193586290700288/photo/1
Here’s a photograph of the “white supremacist” who committed the five stabbings. Source: https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/29/us/new-york-stabbing-rabbi-home/index.html
I’m not sure why a fact checker for NBC News would call this person a “white supremacist.”
I hope NBC News will explain their logic behind this ridiculously inaccurate description.
Black Brooklynites Attack Hasidic Jews, De Blasio Blames Trump And ‘White Supremacy’
Black Brooklynites Attack Hasidic Jews, De Blasio Blames Trump And ‘White Supremacy’
May 13, 2019
In a recent spate of hate crime attacks on Hasidic Jews in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, virtually all the perpetrators have been African-American, according to local activists, elected officials, and victims.
Yet at a recent news briefing reporting an 82 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the city, when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was asked about the attacks, he connected the attacks to national trends, blaming “white supremacy” and “nativism.”
“It’s really clear that forces of white supremacy have been unleashed,” de Blasio said in a press conference earlier this month. “A lot of folks used to be told it was unacceptable to be anti-Semitic, it was unacceptable to be racist and now they’re getting more permission. We’ve got make it very clear it’s unacceptable in our society. And the best way we do that here is by finding the perpetrators and prosecuting them and ensuring that they feel the consequences of their acts.”
Yet there is no evidence any of the perpetrators in Brooklyn (“here”) were nativists or white supremacists. In most of the attacks caught on video, it is clear the perpetrators are black.
For example, in a prominent case late last year, a black teenager was arrested after being caught on tape furiously beating a Hasidic man with a wooden stick.
Then, in late January, three men were caught on video shoving a Hasidic man violently to the ground, punching him and leaving cuts and bruises. Three African-American men — Nazar Walters, Teshon Bannister, and Joshua Peters — were arrested for the attack and face hate-crime charges. The three are also suspects in another attack the same night.
And last month, a Hasidic man who said hello to an African-American man smoking a cigar says the man cursed, punched, and choked him, saying he hates Jews and blames them for his economic problems. The attack was caught on security video.
Crown Heights residents confirm those and many similar videos are representative of the spate of violence.
For example, District Leader Geoffrey Davis, an elected official in New York’s 43rd assembly district, said the attacks are due to black racism against Jews. Davis, who is African-American, called the violence “a misplaced anger by black people who have a tendency of lashing out at Jewish people under the assumption that they are creating havoc in our community — which they are not.”
Crown Heights has been the site of ongoing tensions since a three-day race riot in 1991 in which black youth attacked Jews on the street, killing one rabbinical student, although Davis said he does not see a direct connection between those riots and today’s violence.
Nonetheless, one Hasidic hate-crime victim said all three of his attackers were African-American. Mendy, a Crown Heights resident who asked that his last name not be used, described walking down the street late at night when a black man punched him in the face “quite hard” and ran off with two other men.
He said in his opinion “the vast majority” of the recent attackers have been African-American: “it’s completely one-sided. People in the Jewish community aren’t walking down the street attacking others. We’re not interested in fighting with our neighbors.”
The racial makeup of the perpetrators of the hate crimes does not appear in question. For example, City Councilman Chaim Deutsch, who represents part of Brooklyn, confirmed that most of the Crown Heights attacks were by African-Americans, and community activist Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, director of Operation Survival, said that of at least two dozen cases of anti-Hasidic attacks he’s aware of in the last year, all but two were by blacks. (The other two were by people of indeterminate race.) Behrman complained that the media blames the spike in hate crimes “on the far right” whereas locally people understand the attacks in the local context.
Every Brooklyn resident interviewed for this story strongly rejected the idea that forces often linked to President Trump had anything to do with the attacks. Mendy said that the attackers “aren’t white supremacists wearing MAGA hates and shooting up black churches.”
As for de Blasio, New York Councilman Kalman Yeger, who represents a district in Brooklyn, praised the mayor for “standing up tall and forcefully against anti-Semitism” but said he did not see a causal link between the president’s rhetoric and the attacks.
Mayor de Blasio, in fact, has not delineated the connections he sees between white supremacy and black-on-Hasidic crime in Brooklyn, but his reference to “white supremacy … unleashed” and “they’re getting more permission” echoes language he’s used in the past linking President Trump to white supremacy and nativism.
Muslim who murdered Jewish pensioner Sarah Halimi will not face a criminal trial
Muslim who murdered Jewish pensioner Sarah Halimi will not face a criminal trial
May 27, 2019
The claim seems to be, “the marijuana did it”, ignoring his previous anti-Semitic taunts, his screams of “Allahu Akhbar” during the actual killing, being pictured smiling with a mein kampf. Now considered unfit to stand trial.
Clearly Kobili Traore had been practicing Islam to the letter:
Narrated ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar: I heard Allah’s Apostle saying, “The Jews will fight with you, and you will be given victory over them so that a stone will say, ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew behind me; kill him!’”
Sahih al-Bukhari Book 56 Hadith 791
This is an insult to both marijuana users and people with mental health issues, neither of which would be a lone cause of violence and the desire to murder a 65 year old Jewish woman. Traore’s desire to practice jihad is the only cause of her death.
A leading French Jewish organization said on Friday that it had “learned with consternation” that the man accused of murdering Jewish pensioner Sarah Halimi in April 2017 will not face a criminal trial.
In a statement carried by the Jewish publication Alliance, the BNVCA — a Paris-based group that works with victims of antisemitic attacks — said that the investigating magistrate in the Halimi case had concluded that the murderer, Kobili Traore, was heavily intoxicated on marijuana when he committed the killing, and mentally unfit to stand trial.
The BNVCA did not disclose its source for this information, which was unreported in the French media on Friday.
Referring to the numerous political and legal obstacles encountered by the Halimi family in their fight for justice over two years, the BNVCA said that it had “sensed from the beginning of the investigation that this crime would go unpunished.”
Halimi, 65-years-old at the time of her death, was subjected to a frenzied beating and then hurled from a third-floor window in the early hours of Apr. 4, 2017, by Traore, a neighbor in the same public housing project in eastern Paris who broke into her apartment.
Terrified neighbors who alerted police after hearing her cries for help reported that Traore had shouted the words, “Allahu Akhbar,” and, “Shaitan” (Arabic for “Satan”), during Halimi’s ordeal.
Police investigations later revealed that Halimi had told relatives that she was scared of Traore, who insulted her visiting daughter as a “dirty Jewess” a few weeks before the murder.
Traore’s lawyers, however, have insisted throughout that their client was too intoxicated from his ingestion of cannabis to be held responsible for his actions. On March 20, a third psychiatric report commissioned by the investigating judge in the Halimi case concurred with this assessment, arguing that Traore’s consumption of cannabis had eliminated his “discernment” (a clinical term for “judgment”).
In its statement, the BNVCA pointed out the “paradox that a driver under the influence of alcohol has his sentence heavily aggravated, and a drug user is exonerated.”
The group added that it was now “very pessimistic about the real possibilities of eradicating antisemitism when the culprits are neither tried nor sentenced.”
It concluded: “We fear that this decision will encourage other so-called mentally ill people to commit other anti-Jewish crimes.”
The BNVCA’s announcement came two weeks after magistrate Anne Ihuellou announced the end of her investigations into the murder, setting off concerned speculation among observers of the Halimi case that Traore would escape a criminal trial.
A mass shooting in my own neighborhood
This morning, when I was in my apartment (which does not face the street) and I heard a very long succession of sirens from emergency vehicles going by, I suspected that something really horrible had happened, and the only possibility that entered my mind was either a bombing or a mass shooting at one of the nearby synagogues.
With large crowds of people, including large numbers of women and children, all together in an enclosed space, I’d thought for years that something like this could happen. But I never thought it would happen.
They still haven’t published the victims’ names, pending notification of their families.
I’m 47, and I’ve lived in Squirrel Hill my entire life. I’m hoping for at least another 47 years in this neighborhood. It’s too bad some scumbag deprived at least 11 of my neighbors from living out their lives. I don’t understand why anyone would do this.
The latest updates can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_synagogue_shooting
3 people arrested in firebomb attack on Swedish synagogue
3 people arrested in firebomb attack on Swedish synagogue
December 10, 2017
HELSINKI — Three people have been arrested for allegedly throwing firebombs at a synagogue in the Swedish city of Goteborg, the second anti-Jewish attack in the Nordic nation in two days. Jewish groups condemned the attacks as “unconscionable” and demanded that authorities take action.
No one was injured in the attack late Saturday during a youth event at the synagogue and the adjacent Jewish center in Sweden’s second-largest city. Goteborg police spokesman Peter Nordengard said Sunday it is being investigated as an attempted arson.
The attack took place after some 200 people rallied late Friday in the southern city of Malmo, yelling anti-Jewish slogans and waving Palestinian flags to protest U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Witness Allan Stutzinsky told the TT news agency he saw a dozen masked youths who threw what appeared to be firebombs into the garden surrounding the synagogue in Goteborg, but they failed to damage the building.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and other top politicians condemned the incidents and authorities increased security around the synagogue and at Jewish centers in Stockholm and Malmo.
“I’m terribly upset over the attack on a synagogue in Goteborg yesterday and calls for violence against Jews at a demonstration in Malmo,” Lofven said Sunday. “There is no place for anti-Semitism in our Swedish society. The perpetrators will be held accountable.”
He urged “all democratic forces” in Sweden to work together to create “a tolerant and open society where everyone feels safe.”
On Saturday, Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom tweeted that those who called for Jews to be killed did something “totally unacceptable.”
The European Jewish Congress said Sunday it was “unconscionable that Jews are under attack on the streets of Europe” and urged Swedish and other European governments to take “strong punitive action” against perpetrators.
In Nordic neighbor Finland, national broadcaster YLE said police would raise security measures around the Helsinki synagogue.
The American Jewish Committee, meanwhile, condemned a separate protest Friday in Berlin, during which American and Israeli flags were burned in front of the U.S. embassy.
The director of the AJC’s Ramer Institute in Berlin, Deirdre Berger, called Sunday for an “unequivocal response” from German politicians, saying “the protests have to be condemned.”
Berlin police said 10 people were detained and 12 criminal complaints were filed over the protest of Trump’s decision to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Australian town caves in to Islamic terrorism by banning construction of synagogue
Bondi synagogue ban over terrorism risk leaves Jewish community shocked and furious
August 3, 2017
A local council has banned the construction of a synagogue in Bondi because it could be a terrorist target, in a shock move that religious leaders say has caved in to Islamic extremism and created a dangerous precedent.
The decision, which has rocked the longstanding Jewish community in the iconic suburb, was upheld in court this week as the nation reeled from the alleged airline terror threat and debate raged over increased security measures at airports and other public places.
German court says people named “Mohammad” were “justified” in setting fire to a synagogue, and gives them zero jail time
German court calls synagogue torching an act to ‘criticize Israel’
January 13, 2017
A German regional court in the city of Wuppertal affirmed a lower court decision last Friday stating that a violent attempt to burn the city’s synagogue by three men in 2014 was a justified expression of criticism of Israel’s policies.
Johannes Pinnel, a spokesman for the regional court in Wuppertal, outlined the court’s decision in a statement.
Three German Palestinians sought to torch the Wuppertal synagogue with Molotov cocktails in July, 2014. The local Wuppertal court panel said in its 2015 decision that the three men wanted to draw “attention to the Gaza conflict” with Israel. The court deemed the attack not to be motivated by antisemitism.
Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014 to stop Hamas rocket attacks into Israeli territory.
The court sentenced the three men – the 31-year-old Mohamad E., the 26 year-old Ismail A. and the 20-year-old Mohammad A.—to suspended sentences. The men tossed self-made Molotov cocktails at the synagogue. German courts frequently decline to release the last names of criminals to protect privacy.
The attack caused €800 damage to the synagogue. The original synagogue in Wuppertal was burned by Germans during the Kristallnacht pogroms in 1938. Wuppertal has a population of nearly 344,000 and is located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The court said the men had consumed alcohol and there were no injuries to members of the synagogue.
A 13-year-old who lived near the synagogue and noticed the flames informed the police. Several days before the fire, a person sprayed “Free Palestine” on a wall of the synagogue.
After the local Wuppertal court decision in 2015, Volker Beck, a leading Green Party MP, said the “attack on the synagogue was motivated by antisemitism” and blasted the court for issuing a decision stating that the goal of the attack was to highlight the war in Gaza.
“This is a mistaken decision as far as the motives of the perpetrators are concerned,” he said, adding that the burning of a synagogue in Germany because of the Middle East conflict can be attributed only to antisemitism.
“What do Jews in Germany have to do with the Middle East conflict? Every bit as much as Christians, non-religious people or Muslims in Germany, namely, absolutely nothing. The ignorance of the judiciary toward anti-Semitism is for many Jews in Germany especially alarming, ” said Beck.
For white nationalists, Trump win a dream come true, says alt-right leader from Dallas
For white nationalists, Trump win a dream come true, says alt-right leader from Dallas
November 16, 2016
Richard Spencer was euphoric the night Donald Trump was elected president.
“When it happened, I thought I might have been dreaming,” he said.
Spencer, a 38-year-old Dallas native and graduate of St. Mark’s School of Texas prep school, is a key intellectual leader of the alternative right, a label he coined in 2008 to describe the radical conservative movement defined by white nationalism and a fervent resistance to multiculturalism and globalism.
In his mind, Trump “is the first step, the first stage towards identity politics for white people.”
“That is something major,” Spencer said Tuesday night. “He’s not your father’s conservative. He’s not in this to promote free markets or neoconservative foreign politics or to protect Israel, for that matter. He’s in this to protect his people. He’s in this to protect the historic American nation.”
During the interview or shortly after it, Spencer’s Twitter account was suspended, along with those of several other prominent alt-right figures. He called the suspensions an act of “corporate Stalinism” carried out to mollify accusations that social media was responsible for Trump’s election — an analysis with which he agrees.
“This is just a sign that we have power,” he says in a video titled “The Knight of the Long Knives,” posted shortly after the “purge.”
Over the course of Trump’s presidential campaign, Spencer and others who championed the president-elect as an “alt-right hero” have blitzed out of the dark corners of the internet and into the national spotlight.
They have attracted thousands of new followers through their use of social media, memes and the internet more broadly. They have been labeled as racists, anti-Semites, xenophobes and bigots. They’re self-identified “deplorables” who claim they’ve been silenced by mainstream conservatism for far too long.
And if you ask them, Trump’s election on Nov. 9 made them the “vanguards” of American conservatism. In short, they believe they just hijacked the GOP.
“They are a conscious repudiation of the American conservative movement,” said Dan Morenoff, a 42-year-old lawyer from North Dallas and former head of the Republican Jewish Coalition chapter in North Texas. “They affirmatively reject the American ideals that conservatives have tried to conserve over the last 50 years. But I think a better description for them is barbarians. They are barbarians who would replace American culture with an ethno-national state.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center labeled Spencer an “academic racist” who takes a “quasi-intellectual approach to white separatism.”
Spencer prefers to call himself an “identitarian” but will accept white nationalist. He is adamant that he’s not a white supremacist, which implies a desire for whites to rule over nonwhites. Such a hierarchy would be “disastrous,” he said.
He’s the editor of Radix Journal, an online magazine focused on alt-right theory, and he serves as director and president of the National Policy Institute, an alt-right think tank he plans to use as a vessel to push Trump further in the direction of anti-war, anti-immigration and, most importantly, pro-white policies.
He envisions a white ethno-state utopia, devoid of black people, Muslims, Jews, Asians or anyone else without a common European heritage and culture. He believes white people in America have become rootless wanderers, displaced by immigrants who are now waging a kind of proxy war against the European cultural foundation upon which the U.S. was built.
“Look, I care about my people more than I care about others,” Spencer said. “It’s very simple. What form that takes, I don’t know. But I don’t believe in equality. I don’t care about everyone. I don’t care about the world. I want to fight for my people first.”
He says he holds no animosity for people of color and other minorities. In fact, he said he sympathizes with their plight in America and understands “why they never felt part of this country.”
But his sympathies don’t override what he believes is the inherent, genetically motivated animosity different races hold toward each other. Because of this natural hate, he believes walls will ultimately be more successful in promoting peace than bridges will be.
These views have some local Jewish community members “horrified,” but Morenoff said no one has any reason to be afraid. The alt-right may support Trump, but the general sentiment in the American community is far from the hate he says they espouse. He is however “preaching constant vigilance to people — wherever they are on the political spectrum.”
Other critics, like Denton activist Deborah Armintor, consider the movement a fantasy that is no less frightening for its flawed philosophy.
“They call themselves the alt-right, but I see that as a code word for white supremacism,” said Armintor.
Armintor, a faculty member in the English department and the Jewish and Israel Studies program at the University of North Texas, ran for an at-large seat on the Denton City Council this year but lost.
She says she was “paralyzed” for two days after Trump’s election but has since “snapped back into action” and will resist the “new vision for America” represented by the alt-right, which she says the president-elect “glommed on to.”
Armintor said the entire foundation of the white nationalist philosophy is flawed and a “complete fantasy.” North America was originally settled by Native Americans, and it was only after Europeans forcibly removed them from the land, and introduced slavery to the new continent, that European culture flourished.
In her mind, America has always been and will be a multicultural nation, albeit one with a complicated and painful history.
“I don’t have to make a case or plea for my existence or any of my friends’ existences. We’re here,” she said. “It’s the white supremacist, it’s those people who have to explain their position. They’re the ones who have to explain how they can dare to say these things in America after the Holocaust and genocides all over the world because of precisely these attitudes.”
Spencer currently resides in the resort town of Whitefish, Montana, in what was described as a “Bavarian-style mansion” in a profile in Mother Jones. He was born in Massachusetts but moved to the Preston Hollow neighborhood of Dallas when he was about 2 years old.
“It was a fairly idyllic, suburban childhood,” Spencer said with a laugh. “I remember riding bikes around the neighborhood, and so on. I guess you could say I lived in a bubble to a certain extent, like a lot of the kids in that area. But it was very nice.”
He attended St. Mark’s School of Texas, one of the most prestigious all-boys prep schools in the Southwest. He described himself as an average student who didn’t stand out among the bright minds surrounding him. He played varsity football and baseball. He directed a minimalist stage play titled K2 about two men stuck on a mountain 27,000 feet above sea level.
“You would’ve never guessed that I would become a political radical,” he said. “When I was a kid in Dallas — even a young man in Dallas — I was not a political radical. I don’t think there was anything in my childhood that inspired me to go down this path. If anything, I went down this path in spite of my background.”
Spencer said his father, a Dallas-based ophthalmologist, and mother are registered Republicans who aren’t passionate about politics and have “mainstream” conservative opinions and morals. He described them as “standard Episcopalian Dallasites.”
“Their political beliefs are not mine,” Spencer said. “I’m a bit of a black sheep.”
According to Mother Jones, Spencer was friends with the only black student in his class at St. Mark’s, John Lewis. Lewis said he never thought Spencer was a racist, but another student told Mother Jones they remembered Spencer making “conservative, racially laced comments.”
Spencer dismissed the claim, saying he didn’t come to hold his radical views until college. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia, where he double-majored in English and music.
During this period, he was influenced by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jared Taylor, a founding figure in the American white nationalist movement and editor of American Renaissance.
“I think my personality was open to these ideas,” he said. “I think it was a combination of nature and nurture. I was who I was, even as a child.”
He later studied humanities at the University of Chicago and then pursued a doctoral degree at Duke University for two years before he was offered at job at The American Conservative magazine and dropped out.
He was eventually fired because of his radical views, and in December 2009, he started AlternativeRight.com, which eventually became Radix Journal. In 2011 he became president of the National Policy Institute and has used it as a platform to promote his white nationalist ideas ever since.
The day after Trump was elected president, Spencer streamed a video on Periscope of himself describing his feelings about the results and what they represented. Viewers thanked him for laying the groundwork for Trump’s election. But he humbly deflected the congratulatory remarks.
“This really was one of the greatest moments of my life,” he said. “It’s hard to explain how enthusiastic I was last night. This is what I’ve been living for.”
Days after Trump was elected, he appointed Steve Bannon, the former executive of Brietbart News who is credited with guiding Trump’s campaign to victory, as his chief strategist.
The appointment drew heavy criticism because Breitbart has often been deemed a mouthpiece for the alt-right movement and white nationalist writers. Many Democratic legislators called for Trump to rescind the offer.
Spencer, on the other hand, welcomed the appointment and said it was the “best possible position” for Bannon in the Trump White House.
“Bannon will answer directly to Trump and focus on the big picture, and not get lost in the weeds,” he tweeted. “Bannon is not a ‘chief of staff,’ which requires a ‘golden retriever’ personality. He’ll be freed up to chart Trump’s macro trajectory.”
Armintor and Morenoff, two 42-year-old professionals from the Dallas area, are on opposite ends of the political spectrum but have both met Trump’s election with far more reserve. And they both stand in direct, aggressive opposition to the alt-right and white nationalism.
Armintor said she remains horrified but motivated to work at a local level to promote civic engagement and unity.
Morenoff said the alt-right’s rise is “deeply troubling,” but he will continue to scrutinize the executive branch.
“The alt-right is very happy about the election of Donald Trump,” he said. “They have adopted him as a mascot, but that doesn’t mean their feelings are mutual.”
While he doesn’t know if alt-right figures will be satisfied or disappointed by a Trump presidency, he recognizes this moment in American history as an opportunity to think critically about limited government.
“If the election of one political figure has the power to scare you this much, you should join with conservative groups to make sure the powers of the executive branch are not so strong that they make you feel afraid,” he said.
Robert Spencer: Do the Democrats Really Care About Anti-Semitism?
Do the Democrats Really Care About Anti-Semitism?
By Robert Spencer
November 15, 2016
When is anti-Semitism not anti-Semitism? When it comes from the Left, of course.
President-elect Trump has enraged the establishment media by choosing Steven K. Bannon as his chief strategist, because Bannon, they claim on the flimsiest of evidence, is a white supremacist and an anti-Semite. Meanwhile, that same media is hailing Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) for announcing his candidacy for Chairman of the Democratic National Committee – despite Ellison’s very real links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, two groups that are outdone by no one in anti-Semitism.
“A chorus of critics took to Twitter,” said the New York Times, “to lament what they said was a frightening normalization of the fringe views that Mr. Bannon promoted as the chairman of Breitbart News. The site has for years given voice to anti-Semitic, racist and white nationalist ideology.”
The evidence? Slim to none. As David Horowitz pointed out Monday, the source for the claim that Bannon is anti-Semitic is “a one sentence claim from an angry ex-wife in divorce court no less, that Bannon didn’t want their kids to go to school with Jews.” Horowitz noted in response that Bannon had wanted to produce a Horowitz biopic: “I find that particularly amusing since Bannon wanted to make a film to celebrate this Jew’s life.”
Horowitz also noted that CNN hit Bannon over “a headline at Breitbart.com calling Bill Kristol a ‘renegade Jew.’” Surely that proves Bannon’s anti-Semitism, right? Wrong. Said Horowitz: “In fact, neither Breitbart nor Bannon is responsible for that statement. A Jew is. I wrote the article, which was neither requested nor commissioned by Breitbart. And I wrote the headline: ‘Bill Kristol, Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew,’” because “Kristol and his friends betrayed the Republican Party, betrayed the American people, and betrayed the Jews when he set out to undermine Trump and elect the criminal Hillary Clinton. Obama and Hillary are supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that launched the Arab drive to destroy Israel and push its Jews into the sea (that was their slogan).”
Joel B. Pollak, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart News and an Orthodox Jew, declared: “I have worked with Stephen K. Bannon, President-elect Donald Trump’s new chief strategist and senior counselor, for nearly six years at Breitbart News. I can say, without hesitation, that Steve is a friend of the Jewish people and a defender of Israel, as well as being a passionate American patriot and a great leader.”
Meanwhile, the same Democrats who are howling about Bannon are applauding Ellison’s announcement that he is running for DNC Chair, despite the abundant evidence of Ellison’s links to anti-Semitic groups. Ellison has spoken at a convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Yet ISNA has actually admitted its ties to Hamas, which styles itself the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Justice Department actually classified ISNA among entities “who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood.”
It gets worse. In 2008, Ellison accepted $13,350 from the Muslim American Society (MAS) to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The Muslim American Society is a Muslim Brotherhood organization: “In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation’s major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members.” That’s from the Chicago Tribune in 2004, in an article that is now carried on the Muslim Brotherhood’s English-language website, Ikhwanweb.
Also, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) raised large amounts of for Ellison’s first campaign, and he has spoken at numerous CAIR events. Yet CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.
Hamas has declared: “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah.” Ellison has spoken before several groups that have ties to Hamas, and has accepted money from a Muslim Brotherhood group; Hamas styles itself the Muslim Brotherhood for Palestine. Does Keith Ellison also, then, think that “killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah”? No establishment media “journalist” would ever dream of asking him that question, but it’s a fair one: Hamas repeatedly demonstrates genuine and murderous anti-Semitism, and Ellison has repeatedly shown himself willing and even eager to associate himself with Hamas-linked groups.
That’s the real story of anti-Semitism in American politics this week. But the media propagandists are most certainly not going to pause in their hysteria over Trump and Bannon to take any notice of it. Their hypocrisy is obvious, their dishonesty unrelenting, and their moral authority absolutely nil.
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 