Blame

A few days ago, I posted the following comments about the spate of anti-Semitic incidents of late:

There has been the clear implication by hamsters in the media that the [anti-Semitic] incidents in the USA were perpetrated by right-wing groups sympathetic to Trump, although there is yet no evidence to support that contention. But no matter, the hamsters suggest that these incidents occurred because—Trump. I haven't heard a single commentator at CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, WaPo, LAT, NBC ... suggest that this accusation is a "slur" and should be abandoned.

Over the past few weeks I wrote two rather uncomplimentary posts (here and here) about Keith Ellison, you know, the guy who garnered 46 percent of the vote for Chair of the DNC and is now co-chair or some such title. According to David Weigel of WaPo, that makes me one of many who have "slurred" poor Keith ...

In fact, I suppose it could be argued that by giving a pass to a person like Ellison, a true anti-Semite, the Democrats may have inadvertently encouraged hard-left activists or (heaven forbid!) radical Muslims, to act out against Jews. But those possibilities are never considered -- NEVER! And might it possibly be the eight years of veiled anti-Israel rhetoric coming out of the previous administration? Nah, after all, when was there ever an anti-Semitic, anti-Israel Democrat. Oh wait ... Ellison.

Yesterday, we learned of the first arrest associated with anti-Semitic incidents. A man named Juan M. Thompson was alleged to have called in threats to a number of Jewish entities.

This grudging report from The New York Times:

A former reporter for a news website was charged on Friday with making more than a half-dozen bomb threats against Jewish community centers, schools and a Jewish history museum, federal authorities said.

The man, Juan Thompson, 31, of St. Louis, made some of the threats using his own name and others implicating a former girlfriend as part of an effort to intimidate her, the authorities said in a federal complaint unsealed on Friday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

In one threat, made on Feb. 1 against a Jewish school in Farmington Hills, Mich., the complaint says, Mr. Thompson claimed he had placed two bombs in the school and was “eager for Jewish newtown,” an apparent reference to the 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Conn., in which a gunman killed 20 students and six school employees.

Try as hard as they might, the trained hamsters in the media can't seem to connect Thompson to Trump. Maybe that's because Thompson is a person of color and a left-wing writer (with plenty of content to prove it) who abhors Trump, his deplorables, and the "racist" policies of the United States. But the media is covering Thomson in an odd way. His politics are not thoroughly covered and there is never, ever the connect-the-dots approach that is always in play when right wing crazies do something awful. In this case Thompson is "disgraced" or "a jilted lover," or a "dishonest reporter" but never, ever an anti-Trump, left-winger.

Unlike far too many on the left, I will not suggest that progressives or Democrats somehow spurred this unhinged man to do what he did. But the fact that he is not a media's caricature of an anti-Semite, that is, a white-bread, low-IQ, right-wing, gun carrying deplorable, should give those on the left reason to pause. It won't, of course, but it should.

It's also reasonable to conclude that the truly unhinged non-stop, anti-Trump rhetoric on the Left, including the canard that Trump and his people are anti-Semitic, may spur some unbalanced left-wingers to create anti-Semitic incidents to prove that the prevailing meme is true. Crazy? Yes. But certainly as plausible as the as yet unsubstantiated "slurs" that Trump supporters are to blame.