November 19, 2017

Laurence Tribe calls Trump's misspelling of "Frankenstein" "at least subconsciously antisemitic."

Trump tweeted:

Lawprof Laurence Tribe tweeted:

All right, this has us rereading and highlighting the hilarious, mean, and thought-provoking things Trump crammed into his little tweet. He's got the memorable, powerful nickname for Al Franken, connecting him to the famous monster. Yeah, it's obvious and Franken himself has done it...
... but it's lodged in our head now. And Trump successfully raised an issue that I hadn't thought of, that the photographer would have taken bursts of images and the one we are seeing is the one Franken himself chose to give to Leeann Tweeden to inform her of the prank, so he must have thought he looked rather impishly cute. What about the other pictures?

But let's concentrate on the misspelling. Why would Trump do that? Laurence Tribe is presumably serious when he says he wants us to believe that he thinks Trump thought the "Frankenstien" spelling would convey anti-Semitism. What other reason is there to spell the word wrong? Well, first, there's a simple mistake, perhaps influenced by the "i before e" rule.

Tribe — who must know about Occam's Razor — tries to exclude the simple mistake by stating that "Trump had to override autocorrect," but I opened a compose window in Twitter and typed "Frankenstien" and it did not autocorrect. I tried another "i before e" mistake and wrote "recieve" and it autocorrected, so I know how Twitter autocorrect works, and it doesn't reject "Frankenstien."

So Tribe just sounds ridiculously conspiracy-theory-oriented. Why didn't he test autocorrect before making that assertion? I'm so careful about things like that that I feel the need to say right now that maybe Tribe's Twitter experience, perhaps in a different browser, works differently from mine. And I'm not spreading scurrilous hate by calling somebody anti-Semitic.

I'm so embarrassed for Tribe, dipping into this kind of crap. I wonder where his hands go when he's typing out tweets that he chooses not to publish to the world? This is what he thinks is impishly cute or brilliantly smart or importantly alarming??

And the dumbest part of it is, who thinks of "Frankenstien" as "distinctively Jewish" in a way that "Frankenstein" is not? There are many Jewish names that end in "-stein." If anything, the "-stein" ending might cause me to think Jewish. But of all the names that end in "-stein," the last one I'd think of as Jewish is "Frankenstein." Who thinks of the Frankenstein monster as Jewish? Here's the full text of Mary Shelley's novel, and there isn't one reference to Jews or Jewishiness or Judaism.

But if the subject is on your mind, perhaps you'd get the idea that misspelling the familiar name would be a way to make it seem Jewish, but who thinks about "-stien" as being Jewish? I've never even noticed that name before and have no association with it. I don't think it's familiar enough for Trump to have thought the old e-i switcheroo would trigger something anti-Semitic in his readers. I had to look up the name, and I'm still not seeing it as Jewish. Ancestry.com calls it a "Norwegian: habitational name from any of numerous farmsteads." I looked up my own last name on the same website and got "Americanized form of German and Jewish Althaus," which surprised me, as that was the first time in my life I'd seen the name called Jewish. But that shows that Ancestry.com doesn't hold back from calling a name Jewish.

I can't believe the badness of that Laurence Tribe tweet. Maybe the idea is something like: Trump's bad tweets work for him. Bad is good. You've got to tweet badly.



You're putting me on.

ADDED: If anything here seems anti-Semitic it's jumping to call something "distinctively Jewish."

306 comments:

1 – 200 of 306   Newer›   Newest»
buwaya said...

Monkeys flinging poo, whatever comes to hand.
Trump is much better at it than Tribe.

glenn said...

So this means Lawrence Tribe is a proven liar and everything he says henceforth can be ignored. Right?

Fernandinande said...

I never realized that just about everyone had been misspelling Frankenstien all this time. Thanks, Don!

rhhardin said...

Even calm old Richard Epstein is deranged by Trump.

I think, in the law prof case, it's Trump not asking their advice.

Mike Sylwester said...

Liberals spend much of their mental energy trying to think up ways to make racism accusations against other people.

rhhardin said...

"Everybody but Trump thinks I'm brilliant."

Diogenes of Sinope said...

“It’s pronounced ‘Fronkensteen.’ ” — Dr. Frankenstein

campy said...

Liberals spend much of their mental energy trying to think up ways to make racism accusations against other people.

Considering what else their tiny stores of mental energy come up with, I'd rather they use it all on racism accusations.

Big Mike said...

Has Larry Tribe ever apologized for giving us Barack Obama?

Wince said...

Althouse: I can't believe the badness of that Laurence Tribe tweet. Maybe the idea is something like: Trump's bad tweets work for him. Bad is good. You've got to tweet badly.

"...there's a lot of, uh, well, badness in the world today. I see it in court today. I've sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn't wanna do it, but felt I owed it to them."

Larry Tribe, as Judge Smails, "Shooting an Elephant"?

And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly.

Derek Kite said...

An accusation of racism to cover over something a Democrat senator did to a woman.

Brilliant, Lawrence Tribe. You blithering jackass.

Bilwick said...

In the Mary Shelley novel, we learn that the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, had earlier changed his name "for business purposes." Originally his name was "Scott Carter."*

*Based on a joke by the late great Stanley Myron Handelman

john said...

Shelley is a derivative of Shelly. Shelly is an alternate form of Rachel (Hebrew). Biblical: Jacob's wife.

You did not look deep enough.

MD Greene said...

I believe the general rule is this: If Trump does or says something, that something is bad.

Finding a way to explain why that something is bad may involve rhetorical rigmarole, twisted logic or linguistic dishonesty. But it must be done.

Once you accept the general rule, it all makes sense.

tcrosse said...

While we're on the subject, we pronounce Anthony Weiner's surname as if it were spelled Wiener. Of course, there are good reasons for this, but still.

cronus titan said...

It is a biting indictment of our elites that a person with Tribe's experience and credentials is incapable of clear and cogent thinking. Regarding Trump, he goes right for the lowest common denominator and whether it is baseless is irrelevant. He just accuses.

Have the elites figured out yet that the more they fling this stupidity at Trump the stronger he gets?

Robert Cook said...

I don't think I've ever seen "stein" spelled "stien." This doesn't mean this spelling doesn't exist, but it it were reasonably common, I'm sure I would have seen it. So, "distinctly Jewish" spelling? Not in the least. As Prof. Althouse says.

Trump is plenty deplorable without having to reach for or invent reasons.

gspencer said...

"I'm so embarrassed for Tribe"

He's called "Lost Tribe" for a reason.

And he was just a smidgen away from USSC nomination. In his office Tribe has a voodoo doll of Breyer.

ga6 said...

Wait until Tribe finds out about The Producers...

traditionalguy said...

He attacked the Franks. Trump must be jealous of Charlemagne.

tim in vermont said...

Frankenwienstien would have been better.

Anonymous said...

A simple typo from Donald "covfefe" Trump? Inconcievable!

Yancey Ward said...

Cronus Titan has the same thought I had- if this is the level at which someone of Tribe's stature thinks and writes, it is a searing indictment of the intellectual class in which Tribe resides.

I strongly suspect that the mistake is a simple typo, but could have been influenced by the i before e rule. Having never once typed in a Twitter box, I would have no idea if autocorrect changes what you type- I thought this was a feature of cell phones, and maybe tablets, but not work stations or laptops.

David Begley said...

Turns out the great Harvard Law con law professor Larry Tribe isn’t very smart or, at the least, is a political hack with TDS.

Tribe obviously hasn’t read “Thinking Bigly” and he doesn’t even realize he’s been played by Trump.

Tribe is part of the liberal tribe and everything Trump does or said is not only wrong, but morally evil and discriminatory. What an idiot.

Next up Larry will write a law review article on Articles of Impeachment against Trump. Tom Steyer will pay him $200k for the effort of Tribe’s students. That’s how Libs work.

Michael K said...

The left gets progressively more insane.

We attended a dinner last night with Steve Bannon as speaker. We passed by the usual crazies with their "Nazi" and "White Supremacy" signs but the security was really heavy around Bannon.

I think there are a lot of people who expect this will end in violence. Law professors like Tribe should know better but, I guess, they just can't help themselves.

Anonymous said...

Lefcourt the lawyer jumps up: "Mr. Bernsteen--"

"STEIN!" roars Lenny. -- Tom Wolfe, 'Radical Chic'

David Begley said...

And Linda Greenhouse, We know you still lurk here.

Am I right or what?

traditionalguy said...

Hezbollah in Lebanon is the enemy of the Jews. Not Donald Trump. Watch for who gets attacked.

Jason said...

Liberals have a knack for consistently identifying 959,828 out of every five actual bigots.

chuck said...

> Law professors like Tribe should know better

Tribe is a babbling, anti-Trump loon. I know many otherwise intelligent people who have gone completely nuts in that way. The idea that there is any connection between intelligence and rationality has been decisively disproved in the last year.

David Begley said...

In basketball terms, Wisconsin’s Ann Althouse has just posterized Harvard’s Larry Tribe.

Bad Lieutenant said...

but who thinks about "-stien" as being Jewish? I've never even noticed that name before and have no association with it.

I'm not as old as Laurence Tribe, assuming he is Jewish, but in all my days I have never met or heard of anyone, Jewish or Gentile, spelling it "stien." Certainly no clear trend for him to decry. Tribe has lowered himself.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

I love Young Frankenstein so much, I almost have it memorized, and that can make it difficult to re-watch. My son was home with his girlfriend. I had a bit of a bad back, so I struggled to get out of a chair, and moved awkwardly. My son said: "Walk this way."

rehajm said...

They must still be doing this because it's therapeutic. They can't blinded by how stupid this is, can they?

RigelDog said...

The FIRST thing I thought was that, according to the rules of German pronunciation, spelling it Frankenstien means that it's pronounced FrankenSTEEN---just like the movie.

Francisco D said...

Larry continues to be butt hurt that he is not on the SCOTUS. IN his mind, he is the liberal Robert Bork, the most brilliant legal mind of his time.

It's not really about Trump. It's about Larry being relevant as he fades into irrelevancy.

Fernandinande said...

doesn't reject "Frankenstien.

I fired up my old tweeters, and it didn't like
Franken
Frankenstien
frankenstien
frankenstein
but it did like
Frankenstein.

It didn't try to auto-correct anything; just the squiggly underline.

I wonder if tweeter updated their spell-checker since Trump posted the corrected spelling?

Bay Area Guy said...

In Young Frankenstein, the great Mel Brooks flick, Gene Wilder insisted the name was pronounced, "Frankensteen"

David Begley said...

Tribe’s law review article, “The New Paradigm for Impeachment: The Legal Case for Removing Trump. Because!”

jimbino said...

It's long been a mystery to me that German-Jewish names often seem mispronounced as in Leonard BernSTEEN, Harvey WeinSTEEN, and Anthony WEENER. They are logically pronounced BernSTINE, WeinSTINE and WINER in English.

While "stein" has to be one of the commonest German words, "stien" is just a typo.

And another mystery is why everybody, including Juan Williams himself, pronounces his name WAHN WILLIAMS; why San Juan, Puerto Rico is pronounced SAHN WAHN, PORTORICO; and Las Vegas LOSS VEGAS.

buwaya said...

A counter-claim of sacrilege, concerning an element of civic religion, concerning a case of sacrilege about another element of civic religion.

As FIDO commented below, part of the US problem is there no longer is agreement on what constitutes the civic religion.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

This is simply ... bizarre. As Ann mildly says, the -stein ending is the stereotypically Jewish one, not the -stien ending (which I have never actually seen, except in other attested typos). I remember that old speech by Louis Farrakhan's left-hand-man, Khalid whatshisname, about "Mr. Goldstein, Mr. Silberstein, Mr. Rubenstein -- 'cause they been stealin' gold and silver and rubies all over the earth." The "stein" was stressed, and not mispronounced as Harvey Weinstein (for example) does.

Gahrie said...

It is a biting indictment of our elites that a person with Tribe's experience and credentials is incapable of clear and cogent thinking. Regarding Trump, he goes right for the lowest common denominator and whether it is baseless is irrelevant. He just accuses.

Exactly. The man with a Jewish daughter and Jewish grandchildren is anti-semitic. The man who came out in favor of gay marriage before anyone else is homophobic, etc.......

Fernandinande said...

Hmmm...I think I'm seeing the firefox spell-checker on the tweeter. Never really made any tweeters, so dunno.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Tribe should not try to compete with Trump for dumb tweets, or at least have a strong cup of covfefe before touching that keyboard.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Lloyd W. Robertson,

I'm with you. "Put ... The ... Candle ... Back!"

Barry Dauphin said...

How do you spell Schadenfranken?

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim in vermont said...

Tribe should not try to compete with Trump for dumb tweets, or at least have a strong cup of covfefe before touching that keyboard.

And yet Trump is president.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Laurence" or from Latin "man who wears a laurel wreath"

"The expression "resting on one's laurels" refers to someone relying entirely on long-past successes for continued fame or recognition." - Wiktionary

When Tribe goes Tribal... Stick to law, as politics was the Hardy role of Laurel and Hardy. Who wants to be a fat joker with a Hitler mustache?”

Isn’t Meade’s first name Laurence? Sheesh no need to make fun of the Laurence’s of the world.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Gahrie,

Thank you, thank you, for getting that right. I read over and over again that Trump has a Jewish son-in-law, or Jewish grandchildren. No, he has a Jewish daughter, which is why he has Jewish grandchildren. They wouldn't be Jews were his daughter not a Jew, even if his son-in-law was. Conversion to Judaism is extremely exacting, so Ivanka was obviously determined on it.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“And yet Trump is president.”

I’m glad that gives you comfort.

mccullough said...

Another fool self identifies.

J. Farmer said...

Wow. And I thought the six-pointed star tweet was a laughably lame attempt to smear Trump as an anti-Semite. This really dials it up to an 11.

robother said...

Oh, no! My autocorrect is as anti-semitic as Althouse's. How do I turn off the anti-semitic setting for autocorrect? There must be an app for that.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Wonder what Tribe would think of all those old George Clinton records about Dr. Funkenstein?

buwaya said...

It properly sounds more like PWERTO RICO, HWAN.

And LAS VEGAS, with "a" more like "lasso" and "e" as in "beg". Its a short "a" and a short "e".

Its always sounded weird to me, the American LOS VAYGUS.

And Los Angeles is more like LOS ANGHELES. Soft G.

Inga...Allie Oop said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
retail lawyer said...

I'll give Tribe credit for trying to keep sensitivity to antisemitism alive. The notion seems king of retro in light of some ascending identity groups. If not now, soon.

jwl said...

Lloyd W. Robertson/ Michelle Dulak Thomson -

Considering Franken photo this week, I thought for sure Althouse was going to use 'what knockers'! clip

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Jewish”names are German names. We don’t drink steens of beer, we drink steins. Nein? Think of that 999 thing, before you’re tempted to say “steen”. That grates on the ears of any German speaker.

Quaestor said...

Names that end in stein are not "distinctly" Jewish unless one takes a very shortsighted view of history, that is before the middle of the 18th century when Jews began to acquire surnames in the European tradition. Before that, there were steins all over Central Europe and they were mostly fiercely Catholic nobility.

Tribe is law professor who is much more quoted than quotable.

Bill Peschel said...

Of course they'll smear Trump as anti-Semitic. He gave Iran the green light to produce nuclear missiles and even paid some of it in cash. Not to mention interfering with Netanyahu's election campaign.

Oh, wait ...

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Maybe Trump isn’t an antisemite but some of his supporters certainly are.

“Jew will not replace us!” Where did we hear that lately?

Trump said there were some “very good people” among that group.

Hagar said...

Althaus is at most a 50-50 proposition as a "Jewish" name.

The New York pronounciation of -stein as -stien, or -steen always has bothered me.
Then the English rule of i before e, etc. cuts in and causes confusion.

Anthony Weiner's name should properly be spelled Wiener. Some ancestor of his came from the city of Wien, Vienna in English, and was called the Wiener, or Viennaer in English.

Stein means stone in German and Norwegian, and also Swedish, I think, and also rock or cliff, especially in German.

Trumpit said...

I find the misspelling of Frankenstein strange, perhaps intentionally misspelt. I wouldn't say it's anti-Semitic.

However, here's a Trump tweet about Harvey Weinstein being a hypocrite on gun control from 2014.
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/425290735273795584?lang=en

Trump gets the spelling of Weinstein's last name right.
[Weinstein is a German-language surname meaning wine stone, referring to the crystals of potassium bitartrate resulting from the process of fermenting grape juice.]

Intentionally misspelling Frankenstein's name as a double joke on the name "Franken" perhaps, if that's what he did, is still a far cry from his making an anti-Semitic slur. Of course, Trump is a hypocrite by ridiculing the 10 y.o. photo of Franken appearing to cup the breasts of a sleeping woman dressed in a helmet and fatigues. Trump's degradation, and predatory behavior of women is well known by now. He makes Franken look like a piker by comparison.

One could write an entire book about Trump's hypocrisies.

J. Farmer said...

No, he has a Jewish daughter...

Well...yes and no. "Jewish" is as much a statement of ethnic identity as it is religious belief. The couple split in 2008 due to Kushner's parents objections to him being with a gentile. It was then that Ivanka studied at a Modern Orthodox school in Manhattan in July 2009, and the couple were married in October of that year. It looks like a pretty standard conversion for the sake of the in-laws kind of thing. I doubt (though of course who knows) that Ivanka, raised Presbyterian, made her decision due to any true changes in her belief about who exactly Jesus Christ was and what his life meant. Also, I think people underestimate how much Kushner is loathed in the Jewish press. He has been referred to as a "Trump's pet Jew" and as a "kapo."

J. Farmer said...

@Unknown:

Maybe Trump isn’t an antisemite but some of his supporters certainly are.

So what?

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“So what?”

That’s your problem, right there in black and white.

Dr Weevil said...

Unknown (11:06am):
"Maybe Trump isn’t an antisemite but some of his supporters certainly are."

And some of Obama's supporters in 2008 were white supremacists, extreme antisemites, and out-and-out Nazis. I've linked this Esquire article more than once in the comments here. Maybe it's time Unknown actually followed the link, read it, applied a little basic logic, and admitted that the beliefs of a small subset of a politician's supporters prove nothing whatsoever about his own beliefs.

buwaya said...

What the world needs (one of them) is a revival of that "fiercely Catholic nobility". And thats from me, a fiercely Catholic peasant.

Charlie Eklund said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim in vermont said...

This is the same "Unknown" that a week ago was brushing off criticism of Bill Clinton on the Lewinsky issue by saying that she still loved him, then a couple days later, it was "now that we don't need him anymore, Bill should have resigned years ago!"

Watching these guys twist and turn with the changes in the news is very entertaining, especially when they call us us hypocrites.

Luke Lea said...

There is such a thing as Anti-Gentilism too, which we've been seeing a lot of lately, mostly (entirely?) by elite journalists and academics of European ancestry (Ashkenazi-Americans) applied to non-Jews of European ancestry (aka "whites').

An interesting question that needs to be addressed is "Is it good for the Jews?" I don't think so. No one likes to be falsely accused of anti-Semitism, and it is particularly offensive when applied to what surely must be the least anti-Semitic people in history, whose popular support for the state of Israel is crucial for America's military support of that nation.

Meanwhile these same elites overwhelmingly support mass immigration of other peoples from other parts of the world (Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia) whose support for the state of Israel is not rooted in Christian culture and civilization, and for that very reason should not be taken for granted.

Whenever I encounter remarks like Tribe's I think of Irving Kristol's essay, "On the Political Stupidity of the Jews." It's available online: https://goo.gl/Lr9D5f

Charlie Eklund said...

Trump's an anti-Semite? I hope nobody tells his Jewish daughter or his three Jewish grandchildren. They'd not only be disappointed, I imagine they'd also be very surprised.

Why does Tribe or anyone else with two brain cells to rub together think this is even remotely possible, that a mis-spelling is more revealing of Trump's thoughts about Jews than the way the president treats his own family. Madness.

madAsHell said...

What's the difference between a liberal Jew, and Donald Trump?

Trump has Jewish grandkids!!

J. Farmer said...

@Unknown:

That’s your problem, right there in black and white.

Okay, so care to answer your question. Let me put it another way. If an anti-semite supported you, what does that have to do with you?

tim in vermont said...

He makes Franken look like a piker by comparison.

Umm, no he doesn't, that's just your motivated reasoning at work. I would say that they are pretty equivalent.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“This is the same "Unknown" that a week ago was brushing off criticism of Bill Clinton on the Lewinsky issue by saying that she still loved him, then a couple days later, it was "now that we don't need him anymore, Bill should have resigned years ago!"”

Either you are outright lying or you have problems with recollection. Or you are nuts.

buwaya said...

American Jews (the powerful ones) are at war with Jews in the rest of the world. The divestment from Israel movement is largely Jewish, and would have no purchase at all without American Jewish support.

A very peculiar lot, these American Jews. They seem to be their own thing.

tim in vermont said...

I’m glad that gives you comfort.

The fact that Hillary is not president brightens my day every time I think about it.

Quaestor said...

Maybe Trump isn’t an antisemite but some of his supporters certainly are.

As are a number of prominent rabidly anti-Trump Democrats. Remember the notorious Women's March and its keynote speaker, Linda Sarsour? You should (but won't) read up on her.

Please reform, Inga. As things are going now your brain will be too deformed for my collection.

Laslo Spatula said...

Has there yet been an intellectual who, upon engaging Trump in a Twitter duel, has come out looking better than they did previously?

Usually they need hundreds upon hundreds of words to obfuscate their meaning under the patina of learned men.

Twitter boils them down to their essence.

And that essence usually seems gelatinous.

I am Laslo.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

The party that eagerly enables rapists and fundamentalist Islam is worried about anti-Semitism? Seems improbable in the extreme.

Quaestor said...

He has been referred to as a "Trump's pet Jew" and as a "kapo."

By people funded by George Soros, an actual kapo.

Hagar said...

"Wherever three Jews are gathered, at least four political views will be vigorously argued."

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"Please reform, Inga. As things are going now your brain will be too deformed for my collection."

Even I thought that was funny.

Quaestor said...

A very peculiar lot, these American Jews. They seem to be their own thing.

The self-loathing Jew is an American phenomenon.

Original Mike said...

"Was it an accident that Trump had to override autocorrect to come up with the one distinctively Jewish spelling?"

Can you turn autocorrect off on Twitter? (I don't do Twitter, so I don't know.). I have turned autocorrect off on my iPad because it makes more mistakes (i.e. changes words incorrectly) than I do.

tcrosse said...

How many Unknowns are there ? Anyone can comment on this platform as Unknown and with an empty profile.

Richard said...

Laurence Tribe jumps the orca.

Bill said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Clyde said...

I think the DPRK News parody site referred to him as Al Frankenstein before Trump did.

Bad Lieutenant said...


buwaya said...
What the world needs (one of them) is a revival of that "fiercely Catholic nobility". And thats from me, a fiercely Catholic peasant.
11/19/17, 11:15 AM


In Russia they say, the moujiks crave the knout.

Hagar said...


What the world needs (one of them) is a revival of that "fiercely Catholic nobility"


Hey, hey, hey, buwaya! Let's not start that up again!

Original Mike said...

Althouse said..."Tribe — who must know about Occam's Razor — tries to exclude the simple mistake by stating that "Trump had to override autocorrect," but I opened a compose window in Twitter and typed "Frankenstien" and it did not autocorrect. I tried another "i before e" mistake and wrote "recieve" and it autocorrected, so I know how Twitter autocorrect works, and it doesn't reject "Frankenstien.""

So, Occam's Razor also leads us to the likelihood that Laurence Tribe is a dishonest partisan.

Charlie Eklund said...

t’s Frankenberry, OK? Not Frankenstien or Frankenstein or Frankenstone. Frankenberry.

Got it?

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

tim in vermont said...
"He makes Franken look like a piker by comparison. "

I would say that they are pretty equivalent.


Not numerically. Numerically Trump has an unassailable lead.

J. Farmer said...

@Quaestor:

The self-loathing Jew is an American phenomenon.

I would certainly argue that. The modern concept really begins in mid-19th century Germany in clashes between Orthodox and Reform Jews and between German Jews and Eastern European Jews. Theodor Lessing's book "Jewish Self-Hatred" was published in 1930. And earlier in the 1920s, Anton Kuh, an Austrian Jew, suggested replacing the concept of "anti-Semitic Jew" with "self-hating Jew."

Achilles said...

Unknown said...
Maybe Trump isn’t an antisemite but some of his supporters certainly are.

A truly disgusting human being.

Michael K said...

"Also, I think people underestimate how much Kushner is loathed in the Jewish press. He has been referred to as a "Trump's pet Jew" and as a "kapo."

Commentary has gone completely nuts with TDS, I'm not sure why. Is the Reform vs Orthodox ?

I can't figure it out. The Orthodox sites I know of are all pro-Trump.

tim in vermont said...

Either you are outright lying or you have problems with recollection. Or you are nuts. - Unknown

Blogger Unknown said...
Was Monica coerced? He was powerful, but she said yes and meant it, it seems from her memoirs. Not so in the case of Weinstein and Louis CK. Having said that I think Bill Clinton was a repulsive jerk.


Followed up by:

Blogger Unknown said...
“At the age of 22”, I fell in love with my boss.”

Monica Lewinski

She said yes. He was a jerk and a creep for taking advantage of her infatuation. I never considered him a gentlman, or some prize and I think Hillary was a fool for staying with him.


Maybe you can explain why you wrote those comments? Were they just random thoughts and not intended to minimize what happened with Lewinsky in any way? If that was the purpose, why write them here where sexual harassment was the context?

That's the problem with your technique of throwing crap against the wall to see what sticks.

Tank said...

It's a mental illness.


J. Farmer said...

@Quaestor:

By people funded by George Soros, an actual kapo.

Plenty of reasons to dislike Soros, but he was never a "kapo." For one, he was never in a concentration camp. Also, he would have been an early teen or younger during Nazi occupation of Hungary.

Michael K said...

"
Unknown said...
Maybe Trump isn’t an antisemite but some of his supporters certainly are."

A lot of Roosevelt's supporters were. I guess that puts him out of the tent, eh?

Robert Cook said...

"The fact that Hillary is not president brightens my day every time I think about it."

That's like saying it brightens your day every time you think about your not having lung cancer, though you discovered you have pancreatic cancer. Or vice versa.

Michael K said...

" For one, he was never in a concentration camp. Also, he would have been an early teen or younger during Nazi occupation of Hungary."

He was a "Sonderkommando" who helped load boxcars.

Achilles said...

Unknown said...
The party that eagerly enables rapists and fundamentalist Islam is worried about anti-Semitism? Seems improbable in the extreme.

Democrats only care about tribal politics because a divided electorate is easier for them to control.

They hate Israel because it is a free country. They hate that Trump who supports Israel. They hate Trump's Jewish son, daughter, and grand kids.

They support muslims because everywhere muslims go they seek to destroy the society they invade. Just like democrats/progressives.

J. Farmer said...

@Michael K:

I can't figure it out. The Orthodox sites I know of are all pro-Trump.

A minority of Jews are Orthodox.

William said...

Perhaps those Jews with the most paranoia were the ones most likely to survive. German Jews had a high rate of intermarriage and conversion. The assimilationists had the respectable and sane position among Germany's Jews. The Zionists were looked upon as extreme.......It's said that even paranoiacs have enemies. True, but paranoiacs are especially prone to making enemies.

Tank said...

Robert Cook said...

"The fact that Hillary is not president brightens my day every time I think about it."

That's like saying it brightens your day every time you think about your not having lung cancer, though you discovered you have pancreatic cancer. Or vice versa.


Well no, many of us are (1) happy that Clinton is not president (while frustrated as to "why isn't she in jail?") and (2) affirmatively happy that President Trump is in charge. He FIGHTS the good fight and has, mostly, been right on the issues. He's not perfect, but which candidate was? We never got to vote on Trump vs. utopia.

MacMacConnell said...

First off, everybody knows Franken is Jewish. Everybody knows Tribe is Jewish. Everybody knows their both douches, that has nothing to do with being Jewish.

The great intellectual Lawrence Tribe becomes Alvy Singer from "Annie Hall" on Tweeter.


"Alvy Singer tells his best friend Rob as they walk on the street,“I distinctly heard it. He murdered under his breath, 'Jew.' Rob tells him he's crazy, but he continues: “Well, I pick up on those kind o' things. You know, I was having lunch with some guys from NBC, so I said...uh, `Did you eat yet or what?' and Tom Christie said `No, didchoo?' Not, did you, didchoo eat? No, not did you eat, but jew eat? Jew. You get it? Jew eat?'"

rhhardin said...

If anything here seems anti-Semitic it's jumping to call something "distinctively Jewish."

The remark seems like sensitivity virtue-signalling. Making no sense shows the sensitivity.

Sebastian said...

"who thinks of "Frankenstien" as "distinctively Jewish" in a way that "Frankenstein" is not?" Prog eager to smear.

"I can't believe the badness of that Laurence Tribe tweet." Oh, no! You'd been doing great without the I-can't-believe-shtick! Anyway, we can all believe it. For progs, any smear goes.

Quaestor said...

Here's the full text of Mary Shelley's novel, and there isn't one reference to Jews or Jewishiness or Judaism.

Mary Shelley invented the character in 1814 while on a tour of Germany and Switzerland with her husband, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori. She acquired the name from a 13th-century castle in Oldenwald she may have visited called Schloss Frankenstein. The castle name became a surname as "von und zu Frankenstein" which was later shortened to just "von Frankenstein". It's probable that Shelley intended to imply her misguided scientist was a nobleman of that lineage, related perhaps to an alchemist who kept a laboratory in the real Castle Frankenstein in the 17th century.

It was not uncommon for nobles of that era to employ or personally engage in alchemy. They were hoping to transmute lead into gold, but evidently, none of them paused to contemplate the consequence of success. Nevertheless, some of them blundered into important discoveries. For example, one of the alchemists employed by Augustus II, Elector of Saxony, discovered how to make porcelain. Before that, the only source of that ceramic had been China.

buwaya said...

The moujiks were a peculiar lot themselves. Not quite in the mold of the Western European peasantry.

Ref. Orlando Figes "A Peoples Tragedy", worth reading for many reasons.

MacMacConnell said...

Presidents Truman and Wilson were members of the Klan, at least one member of SCOTUS. All Democrats.

J. Farmer said...

@Michael K:

He was a "Sonderkommando" who helped load boxcars.

That is not true either. The two most indicting things that can be said about Soros during the Nazi occupation were that he once helped hand out deportation notices from the Jewish Council and that he once accompanied an official in the Agriculture Ministry, who was posing as Soros' godfather, as the official inventoried property the Nazis had confiscated from wealthy Jewish families. Again, none of this is in defense of Soros' politics, which embody the kind of globalizing anti-nationalism I loathe, but such arguments are easily refuting. Inventing grotesque falsehoods about a person is unnecessary.

Unknown said...

Tribe is being serious, but that doesn't mean he believes what he's suggesting.

Robert Cook said...

"The self-loathing Jew is an American phenomenon."

The "self-loathing Jew" is a rhetorical invention, an insult hurled at Jews who do not fall in line with the group orthodoxy of the day. Rather than point out faults in their opposing viewpoints, those who use the insult brand their opponents as emotionally deficient, as neurotics unable to agree with or abide by"correct" thinking or behavior because they hate themselves. So branded, their arguments don't have to be dealt with, as, by definition, they are "crazy."

Michael K said...

"Inventing grotesque falsehoods about a person is unnecessary."

He has acknowledged most of it. You are trying too hard.

buwaya said...

The large majority of German and Austrian Jews escaped, about 75%. They got out in time, having plenty of warning, and moreover they tended to have the resources to do so.

Eastern European Jews, and some smaller communities also, were caught in an unanticipated situation, being instantly (it seemed) overrun by their enemies and unable to flee. Their survival rate was low. Under 10% of Polish Jews survived.

Robert Cook said...

"Well no, many of us are...affirmatively happy that President Trump is in charge."

You're all in denial about the illness afflicting you. It can only be because you're self-hating Americans.

J. Farmer said...

@Robert Cook:

The "self-loathing Jew" is a rhetorical invention, an insult hurled at Jews who do not fall in line with the group orthodoxy of the day.

I think this is more true today than in the past. In modern American political parlance, a "self-loathing Jew" seems to be any Jewish person to the left of the Likkud Party. But then again, the notion of being a "self-loathing human" is a popular Jewish stereotype. Curb Your Enthusiasm played with this notion when a bystander calls out Larry David for whistling Wagner and then accuses him of being a "self-loathing Jew," to which Larry replied, "Let me tell you something; I do hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish." In the past, though, Jews accused of being "self-loathing" were often seen as too assimilationist (e.g. too German and not Jewish enough).

Michael K said...

German Jews had a high rate of intermarriage and conversion. The assimilationists had the respectable and sane position among Germany's Jews. The Zionists were looked upon as extreme.

Exactly and I wonder at the anti-Israel positions of the Reform wing. Is this another example of "assimilation?"

buwaya said...

But what Soros did do was nevertheless in aid of the holocaust. A collaborator in the project. One could say he did this out of the need for self-preservation. But that too is dishonorable.

Michael K said...

" It can only be because you're self-hating Americans."

Hilarious. The American Socialist who hates this country accuses others of being "self hating."

robother said...

Now, my new anti-anti-Semitic autocorrect won't let me type in Laurence's last name.

Henceforth, all law review footnote references shall be to "The Laurence Who Dare not Speak His Surname."

tim in vermont said...

You're all in denial about the illness afflicting you.

Yes, we know, we are all suffering a false consciousness, and only the left knows the real truth of the human condition.

J. Farmer said...

@Michael K:

He has acknowledged most of it. You are trying too hard.

First, whether I am "trying too hard" is irrelevant to the topic under discussion.

Second, Soros has never "acknowledged" being "sonderkommando." And if you claim he has, please provide the source. What a summarized about Soros' time in Nazi occupied Hungary can be found in the Kaufman biography Soros and in Soros' father, Tivadar's autobiography published in the mid-1960s.

Ken B said...

You couldn't be more wrong. It's "Al" which is distinctively Jewish.

buwaya said...

There are quite a lot of self-hating Americans.
Its been very popular since the 1960s. It the flip side of American exceptionalism, that constant, unrelieved battering of American identity. America is uniquely evil in every way, as per the official line.

It is stressed to an overwhelming degree in the official curricula of the public schools and the materials used for teacher training. To teach one is required to perform rituals of hatred directed at the country and its people.

J. Farmer said...

@Michael K:

Hilarious. The American Socialist who hates this country accuses others of being "self hating."

Pretty sure Cook was being ironic.

Robert Cook said...

In the past, though, Jews accused of being "self-loathing" were often seen as too assimilationist (e.g. too German and not Jewish enough).

How is that not simply an insult? How can it be inferred the "too assimilationist" Jews were "self-hating?" Again, it is a bullying tactic by those who won't abide those who don't agree with or abide by prevailing orthodox ideas or behavior.

My favorite homily of the Church of the Sub-Genius is: "Orthodoxy is the only Heresy!" It's witty and wise.

buwaya said...

That business of American self-hatred, the inverse of "exceptionalism", is yet another of those Soviet communist propaganda memes. Another zombie weapon of the Cold War, still stalking the land and finding victims, long after the extinction of its masters.

Achilles said...

Robert Cook said...
"Well no, many of us are...affirmatively happy that President Trump is in charge."

You're all in denial about the illness afflicting you. It can only be because you're self-hating Americans.

That illness is freedom.

Leftists have always been and will always be enemies of freedom.

J. Farmer said...

@buwaya:

But what Soros did do was nevertheless in aid of the holocaust. A collaborator in the project. One could say he did this out of the need for self-preservation. But that too is dishonorable.

That is not true, either. The closest thing Soros did that could be described that way was handing out reporting notices given to him by the Jewish Council, which required Jewish children to run errands for them. The list of names were Jewish lawyers, and Soros' father, who was also a lawyer, had his son inform the people that if they reported they would be deported. Also, Tivadar Soros worked effectively to protect Hungarian Jews from deportation and aided them in obtaining fraudulent documentation to prevent such deportations.

Robert Cook said...

"Hilarious. The American Socialist who hates this country accuses others of being "
'self hating.'"


I don't hate America. I hate its bad behavior, or the bad behavior of those in power. You're one of those primitive folks who believes that those who criticize America's bad behavior as "haters of America." You're like a Jew calling Jews with ideas you don't like "self-hating Jews."

Also, you missed my irony.

Achilles said...

J. Farmer said...

First, whether I am "trying too hard" is irrelevant to the topic under discussion.

Soros helped the Germans find hiding Jews and participated in the confiscation of their wealth.

It doesn't get much more despicable than that. Loading Jews into trains for the death camps would be a detail at that point. After they were found he knew where they were going.

Otto said...

"I'm so embarrassed for Tribe" Why?

Jim at said...

Every day I wake up thinking the left can't get any more stupid.

And every day - thanks to people like Tribe - I find out I'm wrong.

Ray - SoCal said...

http://www.answers.com/Q/What_percentage_of_the_Jews_perished_in_the_various_countries_affected_by_the_Holocaust

About 1/3rd of Jews worldwide killed in WW2.

Amazing the difference between countries. Denmark vs Netherlands surprised me.

In Germany Peter Drucker and the lady he married, Doris, both immigrated to England. She had Jewish grandparents I believe. They met again in England and married. Amazing people. Germany’s loss they had to immigrate.

Robert Cook said...

"It is stressed to an overwhelming degree in the official curricula of the public schools and the materials used for teacher training. To teach one is required to perform rituals of hatred directed at the country and its people."

I don't believe this.

J. Farmer said...

@Robert Cook:

How is that not simply an insult? How can it be inferred the "too assimilationist" Jews were "self-hating?" Again, it is a bullying tactic by those who won't abide those who don't agree with or abide by prevailing orthodox ideas or behavior.

Oh, I largely agree, it's really just another version of the ad hominem. But do you deny that there exists a such thing as an anti-Semitic Jew? I think the work of people like Otto Weininger or Arthur Trebitsch can reliably be described as anti-semitic, and this was the phenomenon that Lessing's book Jewish Self-Hatred was attempting to describe. And I don't think any fair reading would consider it merely a "bullying tactic."

Inga...Allie Oop said...

"It is stressed to an overwhelming degree in the official curricula of the public schools and the materials used for teacher training. To teach one is required to perform rituals of hatred directed at the country and its people."

Propaganda being pushed by rightists. Who would be so silly to believe this?

MacMacConnell said...

Jeanne Kilpatrick,
"When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies. They blame United States policies of one hundred years ago. But then they always blame America first."

"Americans need to face the truth about themselves, no matter how pleasant it is."

The Left has always been okiophobic about American.

Ray - SoCal said...

More on Soros Nazi connection:

https://pjmedia.com/blog/george-soros-nazi-obsessive/2/

buwaya said...

These days, with the collapse of communist ideologies, its interesting to compare the intellectual climate re the US of foreigners vs the American intelligentsia.

Back in the day, with a surfeit of communists and fellow-travellers, the US couldnt catch a break, abroad. It was necessary for an educated person to be anti-American. Soviet-communist propaganda was always superb. The peak seems to have been in the late-70s/early 80s.

Luckily for everyone most of these people were too self-interested to push their opinions too far. But it was a terrible danger anyway, and caused a lot of damage. Its a good thing push never came to shove.

These days this has faded. The US is seen much more objectively, its not the horned devil it used to be.

But in the US itself it seems far more intense now than in the 1980s, and moreover has been driven very deep. You find this in kindergartens now. No joke.

J. Farmer said...

@Achilles:

Soros helped the Germans find hiding Jews and participated in the confiscation of their wealth.

No, he did not. In fact, as I said, Tivadar Soros was working diligently to aid Hungarian Jews during the Nazi occupation. Also, he never "participated in the confiscation of their wealth." What occurred, as I said, was that Soros was masquerading as the godson of a bureaucrat in the Agricultural Ministry and once accompanied him on a trip west of Budapest. that involved the bureaucrat taking an inventory of property of a Jewish aristocrat that had already been confiscated by the Nazis.

Jim at said...

Or you are nuts.

Inga wrote that. Of another poster.
Without even the slightest hint of self-awareness.

Fuggin' psycho.

Again, I simply hope I'm here when she finally goes off the deep end for good.

buwaya said...

Check out your schools, Cook.
Its hard to know what goes on in those things if you have or had no kids in them.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Again, I simply hope I'm here when she finally goes off the deep end for good.”

“Jim” at,

You sound as if you’re going off the deep end on a daily basis. How’s the bra business, fatso?

Big Mike said...

Let me see if I can characterize ARM’s position succinctly. He proposes to swap one ex-president whose wife the Democrats are eager to move offstage for a sitting president and a senator from a safely red state. If we insist on his throwing in a disgusting current senator who is 100% certain to be replaced by another Democrat then there is no deal.

Have I got it right?

Paco Wové said...

The American Socialist who hates this country accuses others of being "self hating."

I see no evidence that Cook is self-hating. Indeed, he seems to have a rather high opinion of himself.

J. Farmer said...

@Ray:

More on Soros Nazi connection:

https://pjmedia.com/blog/george-soros-nazi-obsessive/2/


First, the entire article hinges on a quote from Soros' biography, in which he "described his year of living under Nazi rule as 'the most exciting time of my life.'" I have Soros' biography open in front of me, and the quote occurs on page 48. Here it is in its entirety:

"For me, this was the most exciting time of my life. For an adolescent to be in real danger, having a feeling he is inviolate, having a father whom he adored acting as a hero and having an evil confronting you and getting the better of it, I mean, being in command of the situation, even though you're in danger, but basically maneuvering successfully, what more can you ask for?"

Big Mike said...

@Farmer, I know what Wikipedia had to say about George Soros back when he was just another Democrat donor, and what Wiki has to say now — and you are repeating what they have essentially verbatim. Better research? Or a semi-true whitewash?

buwaya said...

To give examples (extremely numerous, if you follow this, I speak only about the tip, not even the peak of this iceberg).

Immigrant kids in San Francisco, mainly Asian, get NO pro-US anything. There is no American glory of any sort, they are not taught the Star-Spangled banner, they are not permitted American flags, and the only field-trip with a political-historical context they take is to the old immigration post on Angel Island, for the sake of making it appear to be a US version of a Nazi death camp. Auschwitz west.

There are no pro-American myths, no successes, no "native" heritage (unless it is that of the exterminated Indians). Every American prior resident is a villain, full stop. The 49ers are treated like some vermin horde out of Tolkien. There is no American literature or folklore, no Twain, no Longfellow.

And yet - many of these Chinese kids are patriots, because of their foreign-born parents, uneducated as they usually are. They know the difference between what they left and their current prospects.

If it were up to their teachers though ....

J. Farmer said...

@Big Mike:

@Farmer, I know what Wikipedia had to say about George Soros back when he was just another Democrat donor, and what Wiki has to say now — and you are repeating what they have essentially verbatim. Better research? Or a semi-true whitewash?

I referenced Soros' biography from the late 90s, and his father's autobiography from the mid-1960s. The former has been the source of most of the accusations against Soros. If you have some other source of information to contradict anything I said, please share it with us.

steve uhr said...

the vast majority of tribe's tweets are intelligent and insightful. But let's pick out the one that makes him look like a bozo. The althouae choir eat it up.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Big Mike said...
Have I got it right?


No, because you can only think with partisan blinders on.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Why are rightists so prone to believing conspiracy theories? What makes them so gullible? Desperation to make some fantasy they’ve thought of real, if someone else has the same fantasy? Two gullible people agreeing with each other don’t make these stories true.

buwaya said...

When I first saw this sort of thing in the kids schools, I was taken aback. And it wasnt as bad then as now. I'm not American, and my education had lots of anti-Americanism in it (it was the heyday of anti-colonialism, and we had communusts in the family anyway), but we kids way over across the Pacific had more "America" than those on this side. We had Twain and Lingfellow.

J. Farmer said...

@Big Mike:

For example, Ray linked to an article titled "George Soros, Nazi Obsessive." The author writes:

Why, that was “exciting,” a year of facing “danger, yet “getting the better of it,” of “being in command of the situation,” “maneuvering successfully” and feeling “inviolate.” As George added, “what more could you ask for” at age fourteen?

Now why do you think it is the writer would quote over two dozen words from a single paragraph but completely leave out the middle that says, "having a father whom he adored acting as a hero and having an evil confronting you?"

buwaya said...

Eye-witness, me.

Fernandinande said...

"Correction: An earlier version of this op-ed misspelled the name of former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger. This version has been updated."
By Laurence H. Tribe, Richard Painter and Norman Eisen

Michael K said...

"The althouae choir eat it up."

It's interesting. So, you think Trump is anti-Semitic and his family is some sort of "false front?"

How odd.

>|Why are rightists so prone to believing conspiracy theories?

You mean like Trump and the Russians conspired to steal the election ?

Come on, Inga. Even you can do better than that.


Michael K said...

And yet - many of these Chinese kids are patriots, because of their foreign-born parents, uneducated as they usually are. They know the difference between what they left and their current prospects.

They know the difference between fantasy and reality. That's why 20% of Army recruits in LA are Chinese nationals seeking citizenship and willing to pay three years of their lives to get it.

The left is just drowning in mythology,.

PB said...

Auto-correct is merely a suggestion. If you keep typing the suggestion goes away. Tribe obviously takes what his computer suggests as gospel. He's a perfect servant to his computer Overlord.

Dr Weevil said...

Unknown-0164:
Have you followed the link in my 11:13am comment yet? It's been two hours and you've posted four more comments since then. Care to comment on the U.S. Nazi Party's endorsement of Obama in 2008 and how that affects your 11:06 argument that Trump should be judged by the worst of his supporters? Or would you rather look like a shameless partisan shill and common troll?

rcocean said...

Is Larry Tribe a child molester?

Maybe subconsciously.

YoungHegelian said...

@BP,

When I first saw this sort of thing in the kids schools, I was taken aback.

I don't have kids in DC area schools, so I, too, was hesitant to believe what I was hearing from conservative parents. But, I kept hearing the same things, over & over.

It's certainly not as bad as you're describing. The DC area is just not as lefty-nutjob as is the Bay Area. Not even close. Just like your Asian kids, the Latino immigrants are very well aware of why they're here. The black community has a large fraction of military members & government workers which injects some patriotism into its day to day existence. However, among the liberal-guilt stricken upper middle classes?! Oy!

For good or ill, I'm not sure the kids listen to much of what they're told in any case.

Inga...Allie Oop said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Inga...Allie Oop said...

“You mean like Trump and the Russians conspired to steal the election ?”

Ask Special Counsel Mueller if he’s invesitgating a conspiracy theory. Extreme gullibility coming from those who purportedly are smart enough to become physicians. The brain of these people must go into some override to believe so many conspiracies.

rcocean said...

Criticize a black leftist and you'll be called "racist"
Criticize a Jewish Leftist and you'll be called a Jew hater.
Criticize a Female Leftist and you'll be called a Woman hater.

Rinse and repeat.

And wanking on about how so-and-so isn't a "-ist" because blah,blah, just encourages the Left to lie and smear people.

But some can't resist the boob bait.

Howard said...

This post proves the physics theory that the Universe was created out of nothing.

n.n said...

The self-loathing Jew substitutes faith in mortal gods for God.

The self-loathing Jew substitutes secular religions for God's religious/moral philosophy.

The self-loathing Jew calls herself feminist (i.e. chauvinist), liberal (i.e. divergent), progressive (i.e. monotonic change).

The self-loathing Jew will read the myths (i.e. recorded and spoken history) out of context and feel compelled to apologize.

The self-loathing human will deny individual dignity and embrace diversity.

The self-loathing human will deny lives deemed unworthy, inconvenient, or profitable and adopt the Pro-Choice religion (e.g. political congruence or "=").

Paco Wové said...

"Eye-witness, me."

I expect Cook will no longer deign to notice your existence. At least not for the duration of this topic.

J. Farmer said...

@Unknown:

Ask Special Counsel Mueller if he’s invesitgating a conspiracy theory.

Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet? by Glenn Greenwald, an avowed member of the left who opposes most everything the Trump campaign ran on

Bilwick said...

Although I'm a Gentile, my schlong is distinctively Jewish . . . if you catch my drift.

J. Farmer said...

Thanks, Uncle Miltie.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Have you followed the link in my 11:13am comment yet? It's been two hours and you've posted four more comments since then. Care to comment on the U.S. Nazi Party's endorsement of Obama in 2008 and how that affects your 11:06 argument that Trump should be judged by the worst of his supporters?”

Who said this? Trump or Obama? Who would say there are very fine people among white supremacists? Trump or Obama?

“Excuse me, they didn't put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”

Big Mike said...

@Farmer, why you would accept what was written in a biography and autobiography as anything approaching the truth? Gullible.

Robert Cook said...

The paraphrased n.n. (@ 1:33 PM):

"The self-loathing Jew/human" doesn't agree with me.

buwaya said...

The attitude difference re US identity keeps popping up.

Its NOT the kids, or the kids parents, its the political people and the "professionals".

Just last year the president of the SF School Board (a political activist and lawyer out of Stanford) proposed nenaming George Washington High, a mainly-Asian school, because GW was "irrelevant" to the students of today, and a slave-owner besides. This is not the first time this has come up. He proposed to name it after Maya Angelou, an alumnus. Perhaps it doesnt help that they are regularly afflicted by her work.

It was the kids and parents that pushed back, most effectively.

Robert Cook said...

"@Farmer, why you would accept what was written in a biography and autobiography as anything approaching the truth? Gullible."

But, aren't you using Soros' same words to condemn him?

n.n said...

Robert Cook:

Where do we disagree?

Inga...Allie Oop said...

No conspiracy theory here.

“The British music publicist who arranged a meeting between Donald Trump's inner circle and a Russian lawyer who claimed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton has insisted he was a merely "useful idiot" who became inadvertently embroiled in the scandal.

Rob Goldstone has agreed to be questioned by Special Counsel Robert Mueller about the meeting, which is at the heart of a probe into alleged collusion between Mr Trump presidential campaign and the Kremlin.

The publicist emailed the US leader's son, Donald Trump Jr, last year offering "official" Russian documents he claimed would "incriminate" Hillary Clinton and "be very useful to your father".

Mr Trump Jr quickly replied: "If it's what you say it is, I love it."”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/british-publicist-arranged-donald-trump-jr-meeting-russian-lawyer-breaks-silence-rob-goldstone-a8063371.html

Dr Weevil said...

So, Unknown, have you followed my link or not?

And why do you lie about what Trump said? He did not say there are very fine people among white supremacists. He obviously meant that there were and are very fine people who are not Nazis, not Klansmen, not white supremacists, but who still support keeping the Confederate statues. The one and only poll I saw at the time had statue supporters outnumbering opponents roughly 2-1. It was something like 8-1 among Republicans, a solid majority among independents, and even Democrats had only a plurality, not a majority, in favor of taking them down (46-42, I think it was). Are you saying that two-thirds of the nation are Nazis, including 42% of Democrats?

Now go read the Esquire article, and modify your 11:06 comment without trying to change the subject.

Fabi said...

"And then there’s the huge market that was created – led by leading Democrats – that blindly ingested every conspiratorial, unhinged claim about Russia churned out by an army of crazed conspiracists such as Louise Mensch and Claude “TrueFactsStated” Taylor?"

-- Glenn Greenwald


Inga hardest hit.

n.n said...

Robert Cook:

Do you deny individual dignity?

Do you deny intrinsic value?

Do you conflate logical domains?

Do you have dual-faiths?

Do you read out of context?

Are you Pro-Choice?

Robert Cook said...

@n.n.

The "me" in my sentence is you.

Inga...Allie Oop said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Big Mike said...

@ARM, Sean Trende already answered you:

“I don't think you can underestimate the degree to which many conservatives have this attitude: (a) we fought a battle over whether character counts, and got our asses handed to us and (b) liberal leaders always circle the wagons around their guys, and ours always cave.”

After all the years of lefties looking me right in the eye and intoning how “The end justifies the means,” I could wish for better means than Donald Trump, but when the ends include a federal judiciary where the judges read the laws and know the caselaw before they issue their rulings, a stronger US economy, secure borders, a strong military (where the Navy is capable of maneuvering a destroyer out of the way of a merchant ship), getting rid of the pain and suffering caused by Obamacare, and improved US standing in the world, then the end justifies the means.

n.n said...

Clinton and the DNC colluded with foreign agents, including the post-coup government in Kiev, British intelligence assets, and the mainstream press, in order to derail democracy and disenfranchise American citizens.

Obama participated in a cover-up, which exploited government services, to spy and stalk American citizens, and deny other civil rights (e.g. due process).

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“And why do you lie about what Trump said? He did not say there are very fine people among white supremacists.”

He was speaking about the sides who were clashing and he most certainly did include the white supremacists in the group he was calling “very fine people”. I provided a direct quote. Don’t wonder why in the future I won’t be responding to you.

J. Farmer said...

@Big Mike:

@Farmer, why you would accept what was written in a biography and autobiography as anything approaching the truth? Gullible.

First, given that Soros' biography is most often the source of the accusations, there is nothing wrong with citing the same source to rebut them. Second, when the accusations involve extremely misleading quotations taken out of context, there is nothing inappropriate about citing the same source and giving the full quote in context. Third, your intimation that it is a "whitewash" because Soros was is a "Democratic donor" would not explain his father's autobiography in the mid-1960s when Soros was an unknown VP at a New York investment bank. Fourth, I noticed you did not address any other commenter demanding their sources or the possible gullibility in believing that Soros was a "kapo," a "Sonderkommando who helped load boxcars," that he "helped the Germans find hiding Jews," or that he was " in aid of the holocaust. A collaborator in the project." I noticed not one of them provided a source for any of their accusations. And the one commenter who did give an outside source, the linked article relied almost entirely on quotes...from Soros' biography.

Now, if you want to make some kind of epistemological point that none of us really "know" what went on with the Soros family in Hungary in the mid-1940s, then it would seem to me that point would apply equally to the people making accusations about Soros' supposed "collaboration" with Nazis.

Fabi said...

@Cookie -- enjoyed your link the other night about your commuter bicycle. Some impressive engineering in that machine.

American Liberal Elite said...

I think we can all just agree that the dotard can't spell; no need to ascribe bigotry.

Dr Weevil said...

Unknown:
You provided a direct quote in which Trump called the white supremacists "very bad people" in the first sentence, and then added two sentences about two completely different groups of "very fine people" who either opposed or supported keeping the statues. He could have expressed himself more clearly, but the "also" near the beginning of the second sentence you quoted demonstrates that he was not talking about Nazis, Klansmen, or white supremacists in the 2nd and 3rd sentences.

Now follow my link and answer the question: did or did not the U.S. Nazi Party and two other equally vile white-supremacist groups endorse Obama in 2008? It's a yes-or-no question that any honest person could easily answer with a single sentence.

tim in vermont said...

“The British music publicist who arranged a meeting between Donald Trump's inner circle and a Russian lawyer who claimed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton has insisted he was a merely "useful idiot" who became inadvertently embroiled in the scandal.

Also worked with Fusion GPS, who were paid ten million dollars by Hillary for dirt on Trump.

And why was the lawyer given such a quick waiver to get into the country by the State Department? Were they trying to help Trump? Or were they trying to set up a meeting with the Trump campaign so that they could use the NSA to spy on them?

The papers were full of stories based on "unmasking" of NSA surveillance during December and January until it became clear, once Trump claimed wiretapping, that such stories were becoming counterproductive to the narrative.

What's funny about that too is that Samantha Powers has apparently testified that she was not behind the huge numbers of unmakskings that were done in her name. Who did? Unknown doesn't care! Who was abusing the Patriot Act? Democrats completely incurious!

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