Progressive people should call out the problematic things that progressive people do, without being handcuffed by a fear of what right wingers will use that against them.
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Ilhan Omar (Twitter): They said “send her back” but @SpeakerPelosi didn’t just make arrangements to send me back, she went back with me
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Progressive people should call out the problematic things that progressive people do, without being handcuffed by a fear of what right wingers will use that against them.
Too many people worry about giving the right 'ammo', when the right will get their ammo from literally anywhere, even packets of mustard. Example - Biden's spineless 'I'm sure republicans will be nice to me when trumps gone' attitude hasn't stopped them from calling him a creepy old sex pest. Being passive about mediocrity on the left just leads to some boring candidate that nobody feels like voting for
It's 'interesting' is it?
Go on then, elaborate on how some are 'happily' erasing her agency.
People are going on and on about how this is a PR move from Pelosi..... as if this isn't posted willingly by Omar to show them together.
I mean, if this was only posted by Pelosi on her timeline, yea judge her motives, but this is not even coming from her.
But that clearly won't stop Era's narrative.
You're right. I shouldn't have speculated on the emotional state of people as they willfully ignore Omar's role in her relationship with Pelosi and her opinions thereof.
Well when you put it that way it makes a lot of sense. When will you and the rest of the smart, pragmatic moderate Democrats start stanning for the NRA, transphobia and pro-life groups as well?
Gotta throw away those unicorns and do whatever it takes to win.
those things are not in any way mutually exclusive. Refusing to participate in a photo op like this would just be antagonizing Pelosi for the sake of antagonizing her, whereas participating costs Omar nothing in terms of her own agenda.
it's not a matter of Omar lacking agency, it's just politics. Build relationships where you can, save battles with leadership for things that actually matter.
Sure it is. That's why "but still fuck Pelosi" is the prevailing sentiment, completely ignoring the motivation for Omar to post this herself.
I still can't believe you are going for "you are the real sexist" here.
I have to give you credit for posting in this hornet's nest.
It's so obvious Pelosi forced Omar to post this to most everyone else.
Right. If Omar is okay and feels good i accept it as what it is.
Who is doing that? Like I said earlier, I'm fine with her doing stuff like this, but it doesn't erase the bad things Pelosi has done this year.
like I said above, either this photo op should be taken completely at face value and Pelosi/Omar have buried the hatchet and are BFFs now, or Omar was forced to post this against her will by the evil witch Pelosi. those are the only two possible explanations, apparently
No one is saying that. People are fine and even happy with Omar and Pelosi sharing a photo shoot. That still doesn't erase what Pelosi did, especially since there are people who are saying that throwing Omar under the bus was the smart mouth.
Exactly. They didn't suddenly focus their neo-nazi hate on Omar because of Pelosi.
Calling something a lie doesn't make it so.
I know this is how we handle things in 2019, but not everything needs to be "erased". Sometimes it's ok to either get the fuck over things, or look back and realise that maybe they weren't quite as bad as you thought, particularly when the people involved have done just that.
the entire "Trump attacks the Squad" news cycle was driven by Trump reacting to a Fox and Friends segment about... the previous week of attacks on Omar, AOC, Tlaib, and Pressley by Pelosi and the rest of Dem leadership. this is so disingenuous
and accusing Omar of antisemitism - on top of the other reasons I mentioned for why it was so incredibly dangerous and harmful, on top of being just plain wrong - absolutely played directly into much more explicitly bigoted attacks from the right, because "Muslims irrationally hate Jews" is a crucial component of right-wing Islamophobia. I get that liberals will refuse to acknowledge that because they see themselves as infallibly woke and thus incapable of complicity in racism or Islamophobia, but that's the truth.
Yeah guys, just forget about the islamophobia from democrats.
Again, you operate off this implicit assumption that Pelosi was the catalyst to this photo op. It's weird how y'all jump to this conclusion so quickly.
Now that's some spin.
Criticizing Pelosi is now erasing Omar's agency.
Congratulations, that's the worst take I've read today. Still early though.
so? even if it was Omar's idea, that still wouldn't change my point too much: that it's an easy way to work towards mending (or appearing to work towards mending, anyway) her relationship with Pelosi, someone with far more power than Omar, without actually compromising on anything substantive. Freezing Pelosi out on a trip they both went on wouldn't accomplish anything besides antagonizing her.
I wouldn't call what the DNC did to Omar "not quite as bad as you thought". It wasn't just Nancy who did it nor did she do the worst thing (that was Schumer's blatantly using a right wing talking point and lie to attack Omar) and Nancy's own participation in it, the bill made to silence her, is something that will be referenced. I'm sorry we won't "get the fuck over" that but we won't. Even if Nancy does a 180 it still is a mark on her record. Just as is AOC not 100% supporting Omar right away is also a mark on her record. It doesn't define either of them but we are not going to forget it happened.
Yes neo-nazis and white supramacists were hand wringing about Omar's anti-Semitic statements. The people that are sending her death threats are the same ones sending death threats to Jewish politicians and reporters. Blaming Pelosi is moronic.
Omar also used blatant right wing talking points. Even David Duke praised her.
She recognized her error, apologized and moved on. Democrats are ready to work with her. Literally hand in hand. It's some of her own supposed supporters that can't move on and will continue to feed this fire.
wow, associating Omar, a black Muslim woman with David Duke? not the first time I've heard that one (thanks, Batya Ungar-Sargon), but what a truly disgusting attack, good lord. Glad to hear you'll treat a white supremacist's opinion as credible and valid when it helps defend the Democratic establishment and suppress criticism of the Israel lobby.
also, as I told Adder above: even accepting for the sake of argument that Omar's apology for her AIPAC tweets ends any debate as to whether there was any antisemitism contained therein (which it doesn't and shouldn't, but whatever, let's just go with that), she made no such apology for the "allegiance to a foreign country" comments a month later, and yet with very few exceptions, I didn't see anyone who supported Democrats throwing her under the bus in February defending her from the party in March.
and apparently you're unfamiliar with the entire concept of philosemitism, so look it up. Right-wing philosemitism (in defense of Israel) and antisemitism (against Jewish liberals) have gone hand in hand for a long, long, time. they're in no way mutually exclusive.
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It's not credible. It's hateful and horrible. But it's the same as you saying white supremacists are taking Pelosi and Schumer's language and using it to attack her (ie: using right wing talking points). It's no different and people should stop doing it.
The entire situation was a fucked up mess. Some people are trying move on. Omar included.
Trump literally quoted the "all about the Benjamins" tweet mere seconds after the "send her back" chant, but sure.
holy shit at bringing up David Duke.
David Duke also praised Netanyahu's son for sharing explicitly anti-semitic memes, I guess we can equate Israel with neo-Nazis now?
David Duke also praised Netanyahu's son for sharing explicitly anti-semitic memes, I guess we can equate Israel with neo-Nazis now?
I am not equating Israel to neo-Nazis
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Right-wing philosemitism in support of Israel and right-wing antisemitism against (((George Soros))) and (((cosmopolitan liberal elites))) are anything but mutually exclusive; they go hand in hand, and even more so in recent years, which is why Netanyahu is so comfortable forming alliances with Trump and Orban, and why the Israeli right more generally is fine with antisemitism against Diaspora Jews, as Yair Netanyahu's memes demonstrate.
and back to the subject at hand, it's also why there's no contradiction between bigoted Republicans taking Democrats at their word about Omar's supposed "antisemitic tropes," and those same Republicans making death threats against Jewish NYT reporters or whichever (((elite liberals))) have pissed them off that day
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Speaking of Orban and Netanyahu, Netanyahu's key advisors literally spawned the antisemetic Soros memes.
The Unbelievable Story Of The Plot Against George Soros
How two Jewish American political consultants helped create the world’s largest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
www.buzzfeednews.com
Opportunistic sociopathic pieces of shit. Entire article is worth a read.
What Omar said was Problematic (I don't think she's antisemitic, but she used the wrong words), and I don't feel like Jewish liberals who felt like it was hurtful were wrong. Again, we can't not hold each other accountable because right-wingers are going to be racist.
I'm sure your intentions are good, but I'm Jewish, and I absolutely think Jews who found it hurtful are wrong for the reasons I laid out previously. perceiving what she said as antisemitic doesn't inherently make that view valid, nor do I accept that it gives one moral authority over Jews like me, let alone over the Muslims and POC who found the "antisemitic tropes" accusation inherently Islamophobic and racist (but whose voices never seem to count in this conversation, even though "only members of group X can define bigotry against group X, their judgment is infallible and must not be questioned" is the very principle liberals invoked against Omar).
It just means you had your feelings hurt and you see yourself as a victim, and well, America in 2019 is full of people who wrongly perceive themselves as victims and (intentionally or not) weaponize their sense of injury against others. White liberal Jews aren't immune to white fragility.
IMO, the broader issue here is that too many liberals define bigotry and solidarity primarily on the basis of subjective feelings of injury and trauma, rather than an understanding of power and how it's (ab)used, and I've laid that out at greater length in the past.
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I don't feel comfortable dismissing Jewish people's sensitively to words which can be easily seen an Antisemitism as White Fragility. And maybe you're not doing this on purpose, but I also don't feel comfortable which the positioning of any critique of Muslims in regards to how they talk about Jewish people as inherently Islamophobic and racist.
It's okay that you don't feel that way, but a lot of other Jewish people do. I don't feel like Racism or Antisemitism exists in a binary way, where things are strictly racist or not racist. Therefore, I disagree with the idea that people who were hurt are just wrong. There are loads of things which land differently to different people. The idea that Jewish people who feel differently to you are just trying to play the victim, I disagree with that. We should all just try and do better and recognise when our words can be taken in the wrong way.
Also, you can't separate subjective feelings of injury and trauma, and power and how it's abused.
Edit: I've read a lot of what you've said in this thread and I haven't personally, seen a strong explicit argument on how what she said was not problematic
I've mentioned this example before but I'll repeat it. British Asians got offended when a character in Jurassic World panicked because "The Pachys are out of containment". It sounds exactly like a racial slur directed at British Asian people not unlike the N-word and hearing it is like that same punch in the gut you get from hearing racist abuse.
But here's the thing, just because the pain felt was real doesn't make the movie racist. You can acknowledge that some Jewish people felt uncomfortable but that doesn't make what Omar said anti-semitic.
But here's the thing, just because the pain felt was real doesn't make the movie racist. You can acknowledge that some Jewish people felt uncomfortable but that doesn't make what Omar said anti-semitic.
Omar's twitter feed RTed someone upset by the comment into her feed. Almost certainly on accident because she or whoever was running it didn't read the whole thing, and the first 2/3ds isolated would have been a positive statement. It turned it from something that could have been solved with a clarification statement to something where she was going to need to put out an apology for and directly address. (For the twitter unaware: RTing someone complaining about you into your feed is generally done when you want to make fun of them.)
User banned (5 days): Trolling, inflammatory and disingenuous rhetoric.
Cool, maybe you and other leftists on this forum can stop erasing all the minorities who don't agree with your worldview when you make statements that the vast majority of minorities would disagree with, like that the Democratic Party turned it's back on minorities, because in truth, leftists are disproportionately white in America.
If you truly cared about what minorities thought, you'd be on the Biden Express and praising Obama. But you don't - you just want to use them as a shield for you ideology.
not sure if you misread my post, but the point is about the accusations of antisemitism against a black Muslim woman being perceived as rooted in racism and Islamophobia. It has nothing to do with "Jewish people" in general.
There certainly are cases where it's easy to say, or should be, that criticism of Israel has crossed the line into antisemitism. There are cases where it's a grey area. But I really strongly believe that neither her AIPAC tweets nor her "allegiance to a foreign country" comments fall into either of those two categories. I'm sure I'm in the minority on that, but if I were obligated to defer to what a majority of American Jews think, I'd have to support Zionism.
I'm not accusing anyone of "trying" to play the victim. People who weaponize their own injury and feelings of victimhood against others are rarely consciously aware that that's what they're doing.
And yeah, we should all recognize when our words can be taken the wrong way, but that's precisely why I'm concerned with the harmful effects of accusing a black Muslim woman of antisemitism on the basis of remarks criticizing the lobby for a racist ethnostate that made no mention of Jews.
You should click through to my post from earlier this year. I laid out the specific factors in Omar's case that are ignored as a result of exclusively focusing on the subjective injury of Jews who perceived her comments as antisemitic.
Saying lobbyists derive their power via financial influence is not problematic.
I didn't think we'd get a "If you cared about minorities you'd be praising segregationists" take but here we are
and neither is saying that the Israel lobby effectively demands congresspeople's allegiance to Israel, because that's exactly what they do.
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