Media Matters for America’s Senior Fellow MJ Rosenberg has become infamous for accusing any American Jews who support Israel of dual loyalty (he calls them Israel-firsters). He also has claimed the evil Israel lobby” controls both the media and the U.S. foreign policy. He also uses the term “neo-con” as a slang pejorative term for Jews who are politically conservative.  Rosenberg is not the only Jew-Basher at Media Matters, just the most vocal.

Rosenberg and his fellow progressives at MMFA and Center for American Progress have finally picked on the wrong Jews: The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC). Formed by the famous Nazi-hunter, the SWC’s only purpose is to preach tolerance. Unlike groups such as the ADL and the AJC, which often lean left, the Wiesenthal Center is non-political. Also unlike those groups, the Center will criticize and/or praise people on either side of the political aisle.

Last week, Politico published a piece about how the Progressive MMFA and CAP were fighting with the more mainstream Democrats about Israel.  They want to change the party to the Anti-Israel Party.  The article reported that the battle was being led by several bloggers at Media Matters and the Center for American Progress’s Think Progress blog.

The piece highlighted several controversial comments that were made on Twitter by MJ Rosenberg and other MMFA and ThinkProgress bloggers calling groups that did not share their anti-Israel positions “Israel firsters” essentially repeating the antisemitic meme of dual loyalty.

In response to the progressive attacks sent to the Wapo’s Jennifer Rubin, Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center attacked “progressive” antisemitism:

“Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly difficult in this country to take a position sympathetic to the Jewish state and in favor of the continuation of America’s historic strong alliance with Israel without being called “an Israel Firster” and charged with “dual loyalties.” (more…)

I loathe when American conservatives define themselves as “right wing” anything, even in jest — just as I loathe when the liberal press uses it as identification for American conservatives — because it is an inaccurate use of the term.

Via Wikipedia:

The terms Right and Left were coined during the French Revolution, referring to seating arrangements in parliament; those who sat on the right supported preserving the institutions of the Ancien Régime (the monarchy, the aristocracy and the established church). Use of the term “Right” became more prominent after the second restoration of the French monarchy in 1815 with the Ultra-royalists.

[...]

In the successive legislative assemblies, monarchists who supported the Ancien Régime were commonly referred to as rightists because they sat on the right side.

Ancien Régime is an ideology diametrically opposed to that of American conservatism, which advocates for the bare minimum of authority. The terms are also used to describe a split in modern-day leftist (by the correct definition, “far right”) ideologies in WWI Italy.

A key element in the creation of fascism was the fusion of agendas of nationalists on the political right with Sorelian syndicalists on the left, around the outbreak of World War I.[19]

[...]

Nationalist and militarist influences that had begun to combine with syndicalism since 1907 created a split in the political left.[19] This split was strong in Italy, where nationalists and syndicalists increasingly influenced each other.[19] Maurassian nationalism, close to Sorelism, influenced radical Italian nationalist Enrico Corradini.[56] Corradini spoke of the need for a nationalist-syndicalist movement, led by elitist aristocrats and anti-democrats who shared a revolutionary syndicalist commitment to direct action and a willingness to fight.[56] Corradini spoke of Italy as being a “proletarian nation” that needed to pursue imperialism in order to challenge the “plutocratic” French and British.[57] Corradini’s views were part of a wider set of perceptions within the right-wing Italian Nationalist Association (ANI), which claimed that Italy’s economic backwardness was caused by corruption within its political class, liberalism, and division caused by “ignoble socialism”.

The Italian Nationalist Association?

Corradini occasionally used the term “national socialism” to define the ideology which he endorsed. Though this is the same term used by the movement of National Socialism in Germany (a.k.a.Nazism) no evidence exists to indicate that Corradini’s use of the term had any influence.[4]

In 1914, the ANI began to tilt towards authoritarian nationalism with its endorsement of the creation of an authoritarian corporate state, a radical idea created by Italian law professor, Alfredo Rocco.[3] Such a corporate state led by a corporate assembly rather than a parliament, which would be composed of unions, business organizations and other economic organizations that would work within a powerful state government to regulate business-labour relations, organize the economy, end class conflict, and make Italy an industrial state which could compete with imperial powers and establish its own empire.[3]

In this instance, “left wing” and “right wing” was used to describe a fracture on one side only. No where in political history is “right wing” used to describe the ideology of limited government except during recent times by the left to discredit American conservatism — and many American conservatives allow such an uneducated misuse.

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This week, two weeks after the AZ massacre and one week after President Obama’s call for “civility,” the MSM has proved once again that it is fair, unprejudiced, professional, and full to the brim with the best of intentions.

As a conservative, I honor the admirable achievements of the professional journalists at MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. My head hangs in humbled deference at the hate-filled remarks of Obama pals, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and Rep. Steven Cohen. Behold their collective greatness in attempting to cover-up their gaffes, lies, and hypocrisies again this week: MSM made small mention of liberal activist James Eric Fuller, who was shot in the knee at the AZ shooting and his death threat against Tucson Tea Party leader Trent Humphries. Fuller told the Post Friday:

There would be torture and then an ear necklace, with [Minnesota US Rep.] Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin’s ears toward the end, because they’re small, female ears, and then Limbaugh, Hannity and the biggest ears of all, Cheney’s, in the center.

An “ear necklace” is a reference to necklaces made from the cut-off ears of enemies in the Vietnam War era and, thus, fails Obama’s civility test.

Unlike Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Movement, the MSM did not attempt to link the incendiary statements of U.S. Senator Dick Durbin or even President Obama to Fuller’s violent actions. Durbin has called Tea Partiers “extremists” and President Obama has called on supporters to “punish our enemies.” To date, no other Fuller linkages have been made to journalists who have called Tea Partiers “terrorists,” “thugs,” “brown shirts,” and “dangerous.”

Want more?

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MSNBC seems more interested in showing concern for Jerry Brown’s pseudo-agony of being on “message discipline” rather than in doing journalism (surprise, surprise). We saw them skim over Brown comparing the Meg Whitman campaign to Nazi propoganda, and we saw them do their best to signal Jerry Brown that they were on his side by declaring to Meg Whitman (referring to the housekeeper story) “Nobody believes you.” MSNBC just can’t do enough to promote Jerry Brown.

When MSNBC asked Brown about his whore comment he replied that the topic was “boring.” Poor Jerry Brown, getting tired of hearing about his sexist comment. The reporter seems to agree and appears to chalk up the remark as “off the cuff” and “unscripted.” As the MSNBC reporter demotes the overtly sexist remark as “unscripted,” she asks Brown if his handlers were worried about his “off the cuff” behavior. Brown responds by saying he’s on “message discipline” and the MSNBC reporter asks sympathetically, “Is that hard for you?”

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“Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel said: On three things does the world endure: justice, truth and peace, as the verse states, ‘Truth and peace judge in your gates’” (Zechariah 8:16).

People should be very careful using the term anti-Semite, because if used too much (and for the wrong reason) the words lose their meaning. Same thing with the words racist, Nazi, Holocaust and apartheid. All are horrible words and each time they’re used they become a little less horrible. As a Jew I feel that one thing that Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel meant is that it’s my job to defend a non-Jew when he’s falsely accused of anti-Semitism.

Drifting through Media Matters the other day (it’s important to see what the other side is saying), I spotted a most disgusting headline.

Beck revives anti-Semitic Soros conspiracy theory

Furthering his long history of smearing George Soros, Glenn Beck advanced former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s anti-Semitic claim that Soros was “helped trigger the economic meltdown” of Southeast Asian currencies in 1997, which Mahathir had reportedly suggested was part of a Jewish “agenda.” In fact, Soros and other hedge funds were found not to be primarily responsible for the currency crisis, and Mahathir later retracted the claim…’

Mahathira did make that claim. In an interview with the BBC in October 1997 he said: (more…)

Chuck Johnson is at it again. He must be out on a weekend pass. I feel compelled to answer the Little Green Monster after I saw him go after James O’Keefe with that same tired wet noodle of a charge he has leveled at so many, calling him a white nationalist. Johnson claimed in an LGF post that “ACORN sting filmmaker James O’Keefe was photographed attending a 2006 white nationalist conference titled ‘Race and Conservatism.’”

Sounds terrible, right? Sure, until you get the facts that Johnson doesn’t tell you. When it became clear that it wasn’t a “white nationalist conference,” Johnson tried to slither out of responsibility for his words by saying in a new post: “It’s very clear that I attributed the ‘white nationalist conference’ claim to One People’s Project; that’s what the words ‘according to’ mean.”

Busted! As if it weren’t obvious that in his original post, he was approving of and endorsing what One People’s Project said. But this is typical of Johnson’s weaselly hit-and-run smear tactics.

Meanwhile, Larry O’Connor at Big Journalism uncovered the truth about O’Keefe’s supposed participation in this conference: (more…)