HAYWORTH: ...I'll tell you what was bad: the sneak attack on our economy, the dress rehearsal that was the debacle of IndyBank, when Chuck Schumer helped get that started, and the guy in the background, George Soros, manipulating all the currency....
Oh, those sneaky manipulative Jews -- lurking in the background, pulling the strings of the financial market.
Okay, maybe it was just a poor choice of words. Sure, casting two Jews as currency manipulators launching a "sneak attack" on the financial market is pretty classic anti-Semitic imagery. But maybe Hayworth didn't know that. Maybe this was just an isolated event.
Or maybe not. In 2006 Hayworth came under fire for proudly quoting Henry Ford's ideals of "Americanization" -- which, as we all know, was cast as being intrinsically opposite to being Jewish. Needless to say, the Jewish community was unhappy. Hayworth refused to back down, but he did send some of his staffers to meet with a local synagogue congregation. Where the folloiwing ensued:
Unable to defend his repeated praise of Henry Ford's anti-Semitic "Americanization" program, U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth bailed on a scheduled campaign appearance Tuesday evening only to send in his place surrogates who repeatedly lectured the audience at Temple Beth Israel in Scottsdale and proclaimed that Hayworth "is a more observant Jew" than those present. [Source: Arizona Republic, Oct. 17, 2006]
The comment by Jonathan Tratt, a spokesman for the Hayworth campaign, drew loud and angry boos and caused nearly three-quarters of the crowd of more than 200 to walk out in disgust. After the walkout, another Hayworth surrogate, Irit Tratt, stood on the Temple's bimah as she told members of the audience who gathered to ask questions, "No wonder there are anti-Semites."
Yes, no wonder.
Oh, and Hayworth, the "more observant Jew", is a Baptist. Which, as any good Christian can tell you, has nailed down the Jewish thing far better than the Jews ever did.
But David,
ReplyDelete'anti-Semitism on the right is out of the mainstream. Anti-Semitism on the left is coming into the mainstream, however much you may not like it. ... it has become "structural" or "institutionalized" by political organizations and law enforcement of various countries, countries that have prided themselves as "progressive."'
Which means that if this is coming from a recent multi-term Arizona Republican Congressman (not much more institutionalized and on the right than that) and his staff (none of whom appear to have been reprimanded for their behavior), it wasn't actually anti-Semitism.
In 5... 4... 3...