You have to hand it to Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of the Washington Times and former press secretary to Newt Gingrich, for pasting together a rant which manages to weave together both accusations of anti-Semitism and most of the key anti-Semitic slurs and motifs. A low point for public morality, I grant you. But credit where credit is due on rhetorical handywork!
Courtesy of Media Matters, some passages from Blankley’s recent comments about George Soros on Hannity & Colmes.
BLANKLEY: This is a man who has blamed the Jews for anti-Semitism … This is a man who, when he was plundering the world’s currencies, in England in ’92, he caused the Southeast Asian financial crisis in ’97 … He said that he has no moral responsibility for the consequences of his financial actions. He is a self-admitted atheist, he was a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust.
…
When a man is worth this kind of money, and he’s spending it on trying to influence the American public in an election, trying to buy the election, he’s not going to, we have a right to know what kind of an unscrupulous man he is … He’s buying influence all over the world. He’s a robber baron, he’s a pirate capitalist, and he’s a reckless man … He supported abortion in Eastern Europe, in a country that’s losing population, he’s a self-admitted atheist, I think he’s a very bad influence in the world. He’s entitled to spend his money, and the public is entitled to know what kind of a man he is.
A “a self-admitted atheist” and “a Jew who <$Ad$>figured out a way to survive the Holocaust”, has the man no shame?
And what’s the point of that last line, exactly? A Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust? Tell me the subtext of that remark. It is rather telling how quickly those who used the charge of anti-Semitism as a political tool during the debate over the war now slide their hand back into the glove.
Given Blankley’s professional background I guess we shouldn’t be overly surprised that this sort of rhetorical dexterity is the handmaiden of verbal butchery or that the anti-Semitic playbook is so tempting, so … well, so difficult to resist and so natural as it glides off the tongue.
In any case, Soros does deserve scrutiny, as anyone who puts such large sums of money into the political process does, just as Richard Scaife deserves the scrutiny which he has gotten. But it is no less important to call right-wing publications like these on their lies about Soros, and even more when outlets like CNN pick those lies up and run with them. And, of course, it’s so important to make sure everyone takes note when someone like Blankley gets sloppy and lets his sanguinary hoofs and fangs show.
So, so important.
