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CNN Caption Stirs Up Charges of Anti-Semitism
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/cnn_chyron_wonders_jews_are_people_inspi
red_by_trumpist_neofascism_20161123/
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Posted on Nov 23, 2016
By Juan Cole (http://www.truthdig.com/staff/juan_cole) / Informed Comment
(http://www.juancole.com/2016/11/inspired-trumpist-neofascism.html)
Richard Spencer is a rock star of the Neofascist movement that hides behind
the euphemism alt-right. (Since theyre always going on about how manly
white people are, why dont they man up and admit their Nazism? Why hide
behind weak tea like a keyboard pun?)
Trumps new Goebbels, Steve Bannon, had turned Breitbart.com, he said, into
an organ of the alt-right, i.e. of Neofascism, and Richard Spencer is the
leader of the movement Bannon/ Trump have empowered.
On Saturday the Neofascists met at a restaurant in Washington, D.C., and
Spencer gave an unhinged rant I mean, speech during which he denounced
the Lügenpresse, a toxic German word. The lying press or mendacious
press is not just an attack on journalists in the tradition of the German
far right wing. Everyone understood that the term was racialized. Pure
Germans did not write lying newspaper articles. Only Jews and mongrel
leftist inferior Germans would do such a thing. This connotation of the word
(http://diepresse.com/home/zeitgeschichte/4628933/Lugenpresse-Ein-neuer-alte
r-Kampfruf) was very deep and preceded the rise of the National Socialists.
But it was especially used by the Nazis to deflect criticism. Who could
dissent from the dynamic march of Nazism but the lying Jewish press?
Thus, during the Spanish civil war the German air squadron, the Condor
Legion, was loaned to Gen. Francisco Franco by Hitler. It bombarded the
Basque town of Guernica in April of 1937, dropping 3,000 incendiary bombs on
it. News of the atrocity provoked the horror of the outside world.
Among those deeply touched (http://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp) by
the piles of scattered body parts was Pablo Picasso, whose masterpiece on
the subject in turn caught the global imagination.
Courtesy of www.PabloPicasso.org (http://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp)
In response, the Nazi propaganda machine swung into action. There was no
massacre from the air of Guernica. It was an ancient archeological site that
had long been rubble. Allegations to the contrary were, you guessed it,
dismissed as the work of the jüdische Lügenpresse
(http://www.today-in-history.de/index.php?what=thmanu&manu_id=1693&tag=12&mo
nat=7&year=2016&dayisset=1&lang=en) , the mendacious Jewish press.
Richard Spencer last Sunday said the word lovingly, with a broad mischievous
smile, looking for all the world like Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the
Lambs after a hearty meal of human and fava beans, drawing out the umlaut on
the u . . . Lü. . . ü . . . ügenpresse. He knew exactly the Nazi dog
whistle he was blowing, knew that he was using a highly racialized term.
Spencer complained of the mainstream press and the army of social media
commentators who predicted the outcome of the election incorrectly, adding,
One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless Golem.
Right-wing rags are defending Spencer, saying that he did not direct this
last sentence at Jews. But of course he did. First of all, he had already
identified the target of his ire as the Lügenpresse, which has heavy racial
overtones especially in the world of white supremacism in which Spencer
operates. The second dog whistle is his use of the word golem, which derives
from a Jewish fable about clay that is brought to life by magic. Then there
were his hysterical shouts of Heil! at the end of his speech, which rather
give the show away.
Spencer went on to say that the present United States had become a sick,
corrupted society. He alleged, America was, until this last generation, a
white country designed for ourselves and our posterity . . . It is our
creation, it is our inheritance and it belongs to us. I somehow dont think
Spencer includes Arabs and Jews in the category of white. You even suspect
you have a good idea who exactly he thinks corrupted American society.
Act two of this sordid tale, which deeply implicates Steve Bannon and Donald
J. Trump, came on Monday on CNN when reporter Jim Sciutto asked a panel
(http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cnn-sees-backlash-jews-are-people-hea
dline-chyron-949834) about Spencers speech, describing it as hate-filled
garbage against the Jews.
Contemporary cable television news services have contracted with the Chyron
company, which provides software that electronically generates captions in
the bottom third of the screen as interviews are proceeding . These captions
are called chyrons in the business.
Unfortunately, the robot script went very badly awry, when it operated on
Spencers National Socialist screed, throwing up the caption Alt-Right
Leader questions whether Jews are People.
Jewish viewers, who were under the firm impression that their membership in
homo sapiens sapiens was uncontroversial, were shocked and horrified that
this question was being posed on the small screen in bright letters, as were
we other bona fide members of that genus and species. Maybe the Neanderthals
of the Neofascist movement not so much.
I fear the condemnations issued by hard right pro-Netanyahu Jewish groups of
Spencers ugly discourse will not carry much moral weight. They have
squandered their credibility by crying Antisemite at people who care
whether Palestinians are stateless, and by aligning with a Republican Party
that has had its lips glued to the dog whistle for some decades. That
Israeli cabinet members have stood up for Trump and Bannon further debases
their coin. American Jews deserve to be represented by decent organizations
who care as much about Palestinian rights as they do about those of Jews.
What happened was not Jim Sciuttos fault he was obviously deeply appalled
by Spencers remarks. He was filling in for Jake Tapper, who is Jewish, so
the awkwardness is, like, multidimensional. It was the gaffe of a robot, and
of television producers who had automated chyron-generation.
But Id like to point that this misstep of the chyron bot is simply
symptomatic for CNN in its 2-year-long coverage of the presidential
campaign. It almost nightly turned the airwaves over to Trump bloviating at
his rallies and saying racist things. Moreover, its reporters have rushed to
normalize Trumpism. The disgust and discomfort we all felt at seeing the
Nazi chyron is not a new emotion. We had felt it when Mexicans were being
excoriated as rapists and all Muslims as dangerous, and women were
configured as undressed Barbie Dolls whose limbs and genitals are available
for twisting.
The Nazi chyron, in short, is the perfect symbol of the complete
pusillanimity and complicity of the corporate media in the dark side of the
Trump phenomenon, which Steve Bannon has admitted has more in common with
the planet-destroying Darth Vader than with George Washington and James
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