Whether Newt's a Jew-Lover or a Jew-Hater Is In the Eye of the Beholder
Here's an amusing exercise: compare the way Newt Gingrich is viewed by onIslam (i.e., as someone who uttered his statement about the Palestinians being "an invented people" because he's getting big bucks from AIPAC) to this piece, which claims that Gingrich slamming Saul Alinsky, the radical leftist who inspired Barack Obama, is a sign of Newt's "implicit antisemtism." According to Richard Silverstein, that's the, er, implication of these words from Gingrich's South Carolina victory speech:
The centerpiece of this campaign, I believe, is American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky,” Gingrich said, as the crowd chanted, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” “We are going to argue American exceptionalism, the American Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, the American federalist papers; the founding fathers of America are the source from which we draw our understanding of America. He draws his from Saul Alinsky, radical left-wingers and people who don’t like the classical America.”
From the above, one might conclude that the antisemitism is so "implicit" that it's invisible/non-existent, but that's not how Silverstein sees it. Here's what he takes from the statement:
Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is replete with multiple references to the Founding Fathers and American constitution as the embodiments of liberty and democracy. But note how he sets up Alinsky as a radical who is alien to America. The final nail in the coffin is his reference to “classical America.” Who or what is classical America? It is of course white Christian America, everything that Saul Alinsky and many of you out there reading this are not.
This is a classic anti-Semitic diatribe gussied up in Tea Party rhetoric.
Sigh. Isn't there enough real Jew-hate/Zionhass (and a whole lot of it of the leftist/onIslam Islamist variety) in this world? Do we really need to go out and create it when, clearly, it isn't there at all?
Saul Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer, a/k/a Satan.
ReplyDeleteThat makes Alinsky an apostate not only from Judaism, but also from sanity and common sense.
There is nothing anti-Semitic about opposing Saul Alinsky.
I voted for Newt in the SC primary, and I am a Christian who has Jewish relatives.
Newt's not anti-Semitic. He's anti-Satanic.
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