Publishing two very different responses, first from TPM Reader JS …
I bet you’re not surprised that I disagree about this. The #1 threat faced by Jews right now in the US is stochastic terrorism from both the left and right and Islamic terrorists, whether it’s more like the Tree of Life shooting (right wing), the attack on the Boulder group (left wing) or the very recent shooting in Manchester (Islamic), or, in my community an actual bomb attempt on local synagogues (right wing). This is the heart attack; fascism—or whatever you want to call what Trump is doing—is like cancer. At this point, just living until the cancer kills you is lucky. It doesn’t mean you don’t try to cure the cancer, but first things first.
If you don’t think spreading the genocide libel and talking about how Israel is the cause of all the world’s woes as Mamdani has obsessively done throught his entire life is the cause of this stochastic violence, then I guess we just fundamentally disagree. But I think you understand this because you’ve written about it in other contexts, such as political violence being fomented by the things Trump, for example says.
Finally, Mamdani isn’t “antisemitic.” OK, great. He has Jewish friends and campaign beards. So by the standard no one accepts with respect to any other group he’s not antisemitic. But the genocide libel is based on a series of inferences that depend on antisemitic premises. If we are going to pretend to be so subtle as to fish out the difference between what is and what is not antisemitic, we can be subtle enough to examine how this accusation is based on a bunch of out of context quotes from Israeli leaers and only if you believe in sinsister conspiracy theories about the Jews does any of this even make sense. Remember, these accuations started before any Israeli retaliation, and, indeed have been ongoing since before October 7th.
So I dunno man, if you need to harbor a bunch of nasty beliefs about Jews (the non-“good ones”) to form your conclusions that lead you to go out in the world and talk about it for years on end, I have a hard time thinking that’s not a Jew hater and it’s still a threat to Jews just as Trump telling Proud Boys to stand by is. And all of this is absolutely relevant to a city with a huge Jewish population.
The antisemitism is also present in the second-order look at this. No other group would have to explain any of this. If Mamdani had a problem with Puerto Ricans and said Puerto Rico is a colonial enterprise that should be given back to the Native Americans, I don’t believe for a minute that the Latino community in New York would have to explain to liberals why this was not something they needed to hear in a time of escalating anti-Latino violence.
Mamdani is exactly the kind of person Democrats want these days. And they’re going to get him. Good and hard. Then I guess we can worry about the incipient fascism of the Rubio or Vance regime.
