Yesterday, USA Today, ran the headline “Donald Trump using antisemitic rhetoric to get political donations after indictment.” The author, Erin Mansfield, writes, “Less than two hours after his indictment became public, former President Donald Trump’s fundraising machine sent out an email to supporters on his behalf loaded with extremist rhetoric and antisemitic tropes.”
“The Deep State will use anything at their disposal to shut down the one political movement that puts YOU first,” Trump wrote in the email. This, Mansfield explained is “a reference to a conspiracy theory about a network of people working inside the federal government to exercise power over ordinary people.”
Mansfield then told readers that “Trump also attacked Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, whose office was responsible for bringing the case to the grand jury, as being funded by George Soros,” who she admitted is “a major donor to Democratic causes,” before asserting that Soros is “a popular target of anti-Semitism on the far-right, including in his birth country of Hungary.”
Mansfield talks to a professor at American University, Kurt Braddock, a public communication professor, who leans into the corporate state characterization of Trump’s communications. “They’re loaded with antisemitic language, some of which has been used in the past to validate violence against Jews,” said Braddock. “There’s no other way to describe it—he’s using anti-Jewish stereotypes and historical hatred to raise money.”
Braddock pointed to language pinning Bragg’s activity on Soros and presenting Soros as “a shadowy financier” that “feeds into anti-Semitic tropes related to Jews and money,” and references to Soros as part of a “globalist cabal.” Mansfield then drops the obligatory QAnon conspiracy theory reference, an Internet boogie ideology “based around the idea of a shadowy cabal going after Trump.”
Mansfield is not the only corporate state mouthpiece peddling the smear. Jonathan Hurley identifies another one here:
Everyday the corporate state media tells you what it’s doing. They mean to mobilize an army of reactionaries made stupid by how smart they think they are, talking now about rank-and-file progressives. Hot off the heels of blaming Christians for a trans man murdering Christians and making her the victim, the corporate state now accuses those who object to lawfare as “anti-semitic conspiracy theorists.” There is no decency to be found here. The establishment will use whatever tactic is needed to marginalize and silence those who point out facts and their implications.
Here’s how it works: A person talks about the deep state, the existence of which has been clearly established in hearings over the last several weeks being conducted by the Judiciary Committee subcommittee on the weaponization of government, chaired by Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and he is advancing a “conspiracy theory.” It’s as if the deep state is invisible and secret and therefore to talk about it is to proceed without evidence. But it is not invisible. Nor has it been able to keep its secrets. (See Church 2.0. See here, as well.)
If the hearings over the last month have not been enough to confirm the existence of the deep state, recall that the existence of the deep state was established by the Church Committee hearings back in the 1970s. The hearings, conducted by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities from 1975 to 1976, were a series of investigations initiated in response to revelations of illegal and unethical activities by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other government agencies in the 1960s and early 1970s. The committee held numerous public and closed-door hearings, conducted interviews, and reviewed classified documents related to intelligence-gathering activities by the government. The committee’s final report, which summarized its findings and recommendations, was released to the public on April 26, 1976.
I was a teenager in the 1970s, and the Church Committee hearings are burned into my memory. The committee conducted extensive hearings over a period of several months, interviewing witnesses and reviewing classified documents to investigate various intelligence-gathering activities by the government and it was covered on all the TV channels. The hearings revealed a range of abuses and excesses committed by intelligence agencies, including the CIA’s covert operations to overthrow foreign governments, its illegal surveillance of American citizens, and its use of drugs and other forms of coercion to obtain information from suspects. The FBI was also found to have engaged in illegal activities, including the use of warrantless wiretaps and other forms of surveillance against Americans.
What they’re really telling us is that there is a deep state and that you’re not allowed to talk about it.
If you correctly observe that George Soros spends millions of dollars to elect prosecutors who intentionally fail to enforce the law knowing this will increase disorder in the neighborhoods under their control, then you will be accused of advancing an “anti-semitic conspiracy theory.” Why? Because Soros is Jewish and that makes any criticism of him racist. Is this because all Jews are like Soros and they all want—and this desire flows from the Jewishness—the levels of crime disorder sufficient to make the lives of black and brown Americans a living hell? (See my many blogs on criminal justice. See also George Soros, Philanthrocapitalism, and the Coming Era of Global Neo-Feudalism.)
Alan Dershowitz is a high-profile critic of Soros. Dershowitz is a Jew. Does Dershowitz advance anti-semitic conspiracy theories? Or is he a “self-hating” Jew? You know, like any black person who doesn’t vote for Biden isn’t really black, is Dershowitz not really a Jew? Are the millions of Jews who despise Soros and voted for Trump really Jewish? What about the millions of blacks and Hispanics who voted for Trump? Are they really black or brown? Or are all of the criticisms of Dershowitz because he defended Trump in an absurd impeachment proceeding antisemitic themselves? Who are the antisemites? Those who express fear, hatred, and loathing of Jews? Or anyone, including Jews, who deviate from the progressive corporate state narrative?
The corporate state media telling us that just mentioning that Alvin Bragg received funded from George Soros is “antisemitic” because Soros is Jewish is like telling us that reporting on homicide and robberies in America because black men are responsible for most of them is “racist,” or that the massacre of people at a Christian school in Nashville because the shooter identified as transgender is “transphobic,” or that the mass murder of gay men at an Orlando nightclub in 2016 because the shooter was a Muslim is “Islamophobic.”
Indeed, in each of these cases, because they are bad things the individuals did, we’re supposed to avoid thinking about the racial, gender, or religious identity of the actor because it might raise more thoughts we’re not supposed to think, for example that seems to be something about the culture or ideology associated with those identities that is a source of criminal violence. The corporate state must remind us not to think this way because we have not yet acquired the reflex to disattend to certain facts. Meanwhile, the population is encouraged to think about the racial, gender, and religious identities of people when they accomplish something (such as being the first this or that) or are looking for sympathy—and of course in thinking about the white male Christians who are responsible for all the bad things that happen in the world.
freedom and reason 