This Time Weigel Compares Right to Czars Who Butchered Jews
Dave Weigel might have changed jobs, but that's about all. Weigel, the one-time Washington Post blogger assigned to cover conservatives, but who actually bashed them on a regular basis, left the Post only to be hired by another Post-owned publication – Slate.
Now that he's at Slate, he's also up to his old tricks, comparing opponents of the Ground Zero Mosque to the czars who used to murder Jews by the thousands. Oh sure, he doesn't say that, but he does.
First, the pretend conservative complains about the “Greak[sic] Mosque Freak-Out of 2010” and how some Americans think Obama might be a Muslim. He then goes on to bash Powerline blog because they criticized Obama saying “he certainly isn't one of us.” But Powerline was clear, saying that the reason some are befuddled by Obama's religion is those who are confused “interpret his aloof non-Americanism in this way.”
After a brief and strident defense of American Muslims, the real Weigel shows up. Read his full comment from an Aug. 19 post dubbed “The Big Bad Muslim Poll,”
“I'm remembering what Sarah Palin said about the 'mosque' that got liberals so angry: 'peace-seeking Muslims, please understand, ground zero mosque is unnecessary provocation.' Implicit in that statement is the belief that there are 'peace-seeking Muslims.' We're learning about a lot of people who won't go that far. They view Muslims the way that the czars used to view the Jews.”
The way the czars used to “view the Jews?” Well the czars devoted a lot of energy into evicting Jews, killing Jews and more – like Nazis without the scientific process. It's the kind of behavior that appears in the movie “Fiddler on the Roof” where a whole town was ordered out of their homes.
But don't take my word for it. Let's turn to Aish.com – “the world's largest Jewish content website, logging millions of monthly user sessions with 270,000 unique email subscribers.”
The section begins with a headline “Government-organized pogroms against the Jews deflected attention from the corrupt regime.” Aish.com defines pogroms as “mob violence against Jews.” Here are a few highlights:
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“[F]orced conscription of Jewish boys into the Russian Army.” “[B]oys were between the ages of 12 and 18 and were forced to serve for 25 years!”
“[T]he Russian secret police began to circulate a forgery which became the most famous anti-Semitic 'document' in history – The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
In Czarist Russia, there were so many pogroms against the Jews that it is simply impossible to even begin to list them all. (In one four year period there were 284 pogroms, for example.)
So, when Weigel says some on the right view Muslims this way, he's making the case that conservatives want to slaughter Muslims, evict them from their homes and more. That kind of propaganda is more appropriate for czarist
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