On Friday, The Forward published an article by Lili Bayer arguing that Sebastian “Seb” Gorka, the deputy assistant to President Trump and a frequent presence on television and radio, was linked to anti-Semitic right-wing extremists in Hungary. Using the logic of six degrees of separation, Bayer argued that Gorka was anti-Semitic, never mind that the 3,000-word report did not cite a single instance of Gorka’s alleged anti-Semitism.
The whole piece smacks of a political hatchet job.
Eli Clifton, a former blogger with the Center for American Progress — the think tank at the heart of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and once disavowed by the Obama White House for an alleged anti-Israel obsession — originated the fanciful accusation that Gorka was linked to Hungarian neo-Nazis. In 2012, a report in The Jerusalem Post said that, “The Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have all termed the anti-Israeli rhetoric of… [Clifton]…to be infected with Jew-hatred and discriminatory policy positions toward Israel.”
No sooner did The Forward publish its piece than the Anti-Defamation League — now led by Jonathan Greenblatt, a former Obama administration official — demanded that Gorka disavow Hungarian hate groups. In effect, the ADL lends it name to a campaign without substance to smear a man against whom no one has found evidence of anti-Semitism.
Greenblatt’s actions follow the logic of the Salem Witch Trials: Only the guilty float when thrown into a pond. In this case, if Gorka does not respond, the ADL can suggest the Trump administration ignores anti-Semitism, but if Gorka does respond even to denounce Hungarian extremism, it suggests legitimacy to the charge.
Indeed, the obsession with Gorka and all the debunked charges thrown his way should have given Greenblatt and the ADL pause.
Consider: Gorka was accused of lying about being an expert witness in the Boston Marathon bombing case, but then was able to produce a note from the Department of Justice thanking him for his service in that capacity. Then Michael S. Smith, a terrorism analyst at Kronos Advisory, accused Gorka of faking expertise, only to have Rep. Robert Pittenger, R-N.C., write that it was Smith, not Gorka, who falsified his biography with regard to links to a Congressional anti-terrorism taskforce which Pittenger chaired. Academic terrorism experts who say they do not know Gorka’s work may not understand that it is they rather than Gorka who are out-of-touch given Gorka’s preference to focus on practitioners rather than the academic theorists.
I have known Gorka for 13 years. We first met at the Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany, and have crossed paths repeatedly during conferences and academic programs for United States Special Forces, U.S. Marine Corps University, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His defining ideology is an appreciation for individual freedom and liberty, having seen forces of both the extreme Left and extreme Right try to deny it to his family and his ancestral homeland. In this, he is less known but little different than a generation of other figures shaped in reaction to the tyranny of communism: Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic, Radek Sikorski in Poland, or Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia.
While Gorka may seem like a useful man for left-wing activists to attack as a proxy to attacking Trump himself, especially given how articulate and effective Gorka has been in the media, it is ironic that the ADL and others would imply Gorka to have Nazi sympathies given Gorka’s support for Israel as a Jewish state and his articulation that the goal of the Trump administration’s counterterror campaign is to make “the ISIS black flag… as repugnant as the Nazi Swasitka.”
This is not the first time the ADL has substituted partisanship for principle, but every time it does so it cheapens its brand. Likewise, progressives should understand that relying on character assassination rather than substantive discussion will not win the policy debate.
Correction: A previous version of this piece said Eli Clifton was fired from the Center for American Progress. He was not fired, but he no longer works there.
Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
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