Dana Milbank: Beck is "Leading Purveyor of Anti-Semitic Memes in Mass Media"

Dana Milbank: Beck is "Leading Purveyor of Anti-Semitic Memes in Mass Media"

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/6/20/104258/051/Front_Page/Dana_Milbank_Beck_is_quot_Leading_Purveyor_of_Anti_Semitic_Memes_in_Mass_Media_quot_

Rachel Tabachnick
Mon Jun 20, 2011 at 10:42:58 AM EST

Dan Milbank wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post pleading with Senator Joe Lieberman to skip Glenn Beck's August 24 "Restoring Courage" rally in Jerusalem. Milbank warned that if Lieberman "shares a stage with this creature, he will surrender the decency that defined his public life" and described Beck as the "leading purveyor of anti-Semitic memes in mass media." Personally, I would reserve that title for Pastor John Hagee, but Hagee's anti-Semitic memes are couched in religious narratives and jargon that have remained indecipherable to the mainstream press. Not surprisingly, David Brog, a director of Hagee's Christians United for Israel (CUFI), has already fired back at Dana Milbank and defended Beck.

The first article claiming to unveil Beck's upcoming event in Jerusalem was posted at Ynetnews.com on June 16, and erroneously claimed that Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich were all planning to attend. In subsequent articles, the only well known American politicians on the guest list are Joe Lieberman and Herman Cain.

be outraged by her exploitation when she was in New York. Lord how I detest that woman.

I worry that the term anti-semitism has been so degraded by being applied to any suggestion that Israel is screwing over the Palestinians that it's become impossible for people to recognize the real thing when they see it -- and that meanwhile Beck's style of anti-semitism, which is superficially pro-Israel, is able to fly under the radar.

I worry that the rising resentment of bankers is making all the hundred-year old rants about the Federal Reserve, with their not-so-thinly-disguised anti-semitic subtext, seem plausible again.

I worry that the attempts of the right to destroy liberals or drive them out of Congress are disproportionately aimed at specifically Jewish liberals -- Russ Feingold, Alan Grayson, Anthony Weiner, and maybe Al Franken or Bernie Sanders next.

I worry about all the "this is a Christian nation" crap over on the right.

My parents grew up in the 20s and 30s when the anti-semitism was open and explicit. They told me about people like Father Coughlin, and they told me that a lot of it hadn't gone away but was still there under the surface. But though I could acknowledge that some of the residual anti-semitism they saw was probably really there -- like the right-wing demonization of Barbra Streisand -- I figured that it would continue to fade away because the world simply wasn't like that any more.

But now I'm not so sure. And it worries me.