Jeremiah Wright
One of my readers, who lives in Germany, has admonished me for my latest postings on the anti-Semitic rants of Reverend Jeremiah Wright and a Muslim woman who crashed a wreath-laying at the site of the murder of Pvt William Long in Arkansas by a Muslim convert. In my friend's view, both Wright and the woman are loons that should be ignored. Why waste time and words on them, she asks. Here is my answer.
In the case of the unidentified Muslim woman, not only was she arrogant to the point of demanding respect for her religion as citizens were trying to lay flowers on the site of Pvt Long's murder, which had occurred only hours earlier, she made anti-Semitic references to "the Jews who run the New York Times and Fox News. They are liars!" she shouted. This woman is not just some isolated loon; she represents a mind-set, one that has no place in civilized society, and one that must be confronted and defeated.
In the case of Wright, yet another regular reader took me to task and asked when I was going to write another piece on William Ayres. I understand the argument, but there is another side to this. Jeremiah Wright's relationship and influence on President Obama should never cease to be a topic for discussion. Now, after the "God Damn America" and "Rich white people" rants, we have this: "Them Jews ain't going to let him (Obama) talk to me". He then launches immediately into a discussion of "Zionist" Israel. In addition to hating his country, he also has little use for Jews. His coupling of American Jews with the alleged "crimes" of Israel is a common canard that shows how specious the claim is that there is no connection between "anti-Zionism" and anti-Semitism. They walk all too often hand in hand.
So the argument goes that Wright is old news. It has all been hashed out and found not to be sufficient for not electing Obama to the presidency. Wright is known to be a flake, and we should ignore him.
Wrong.
Jeremiah Wright still has an audience, and there are many who think like he does. When we ignore or pooh-pooh the anti-Semitic rants of Wright and the woman in Arkansas, we repeat the error that was made in the 1920s and 1930s when Europe and America were ignoring the rants of Adolf Hitler. (No, I am not equating either of these two people to Hitler). As I have said many times before, we are living in a time similar to Europe in the 1930s. Hitler's anti-Semitism (and talk of conquest)was not taken seriously. If we don't take the new anti-Semitism we see today seriously, then we are headed for another catastrophe.
So I respectfully disagree with my readers who say I should "move on" and ignore the above two purveyors of hate. No, they should be exposed for what they are, and their words must be countered. Shame on us as a people if we take a "so what" attitude to figures like Jeremiah Wright and that pathetic, arrogant woman in Arkansas.
4 comments:
Gary,
To your detractors:
It is easy to say "move on" or "ignore" the racism or anti-Semitism when it is not directed at them. The hard part is having the moral conviction to recogniz and stand up to it as you do, Gary.
Silence is complicity.
When you ignore the racism you only make it stronger. You give acceptance to their arguments. The racist must be confronted each and every time. Seen to the world as the fool he or she is.
Otherwise it will grow.
Silence=Acceptance
Those remarks are somewhat ironic coming from you, Findalis, seeing as how you were silent on the Holocaust Museum shooting for nearly a week, and even then only did a meager re-post from another blog.
Like I wrote elsewhere, my internet was down for most of the week, and when I did post, I chose to honor Stephen Jones rather than discuss his murderer. In this case I had hoped to help raise some money for the Memorial Fund for his family. I still stand behind that post.
I have not been silent on other incidences of hatred. Nor will I in the future, but I will not write post just for the value of expressing my outrage. I prefer in these incidents to praise the victim(s) instead.
BTW: I didn't post about the Arkansas shooting either.
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