https://theintercept.com/2021/06/11/political-system-unites-to-condemn-ilhan-omar-for-telling-the-truth/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter
Marching together not just on economics.
That Ilhan Omar lynching is one of the events along the way that defined what has become my political position in the past two years.
1. It got me completely off the "moderate conservatives pundits" audience. I used to watch a select few, like Ben Shapiro, to understand what was going on the right. That's because I knew the reporting is thoroughly skewed, so I said,
"If you want t know about conservatives, listen to conservatives; if you want to know about liberals, listen to liberals: Don't go with their smears of each other." I believed until Ilhan Omar's lynching that these "free speech" conservatives were just traditional-minded people of good faith. When they complained about the cancel mobs in colleges and Twitter, I could totally understand. When they said, "Don't presume racism based on vague imaginary 'dog-whistle' claims" and demanded explicit evidence for claims of bigotry, I didn't agree but I
at least believed
they believed what they were saying, i.e., were arguing in good faith. I just thought their privilege blinded them from seeing all the hurdles blacker folk have to go through to get much of the same stuff they took for granted. The champion of this brigade was Shapiro.
Then . . . Shapiro literally ignited a mob and set it upon Ilhan Omar with MADE-UP antisemitism. He literally pretended she criticized JEWS when every single one of her "problematic" tweets carried only direct criticisms of the Israel state, its govt, its lobbies in the US, and the U.S. law-makers trying to establish Israeli support as some kind of legally mandated position for all Americans through the anti-BDS law. Those standards about not presuming bigotry through 'dog whistle' claims? Vanished.
The underbelly of hate that came to the fore on the right!!! My goodness. I think calling it hate understates that ugly that came to the fore. Ilhan literally exposed the sheer visceral hatred that exists huko chini among these, so-called, good-faith actors. After that, I engaged these free-speech advocates on this Ilhan issue, and not ONE of them ever conceded that whole reaction was at least shocking. So much for their complaint about cancel culture:
They just don't like it when it targets them, but they are happy to do it to their version of "deplorables" (She was Black, African, Muslim, and hijab-wearing, and that made her criticism of American or Israeli policies unbearable, apparently). They even pretended she was ugly
As if . . . (Add to this them losing their minds over Colin Kaepernick's very simple, SILENT, short protest/demonstration re police brutality). They just have different standards for CANCELLING, because they have different sacred cows (Israel and the Military being the most prominent) but they are not in any way averse to cancelling.
2. It also added more to my suspicions (by then they were just suspicions) that the DNC serves the same master as the RNC. They literally went along with this Right-Wing lynching, all pretending that Ilhan had smeared Jews, when each one knew she had only criticized ISRAEL, AIPAC, and the Anti-BDS bill. Pelosi and crowd sanctioned her and essentially forced her to issue an unwarranted apology. I believe ONLY Bernie Sanders, a JEW, stood up for her and called out the hate and bigotry being directed at her by right-wingers. I realized these guys are not ant-right-wing in the true sense of the term right-wing. I mean, everyone who could read would've seen there was ZERO antisemitism in Ilhan's posts. In addition, she called for a boycott against Saudi Arabia urging Muslims to boycott the Hajj (for their genocidal rampage in Yemen among other atrocities) in the same terms as she was calling out Israel. They all ignored all that and allowed talking heads everywhere from the view to more serious platforms to pretend she had attacked Jews. I felt gaslit! The whole thing was beyond bizarre.
