Well, that didn’t take long. The Occupy Wall Street crowd has already displayed some forceful anti-semitism. And unlike, for instance, the claim that Tea Partiers shouted racial slurs at black Democratic members of Congress, the anti-semitism is on video.
One blogger with LiveLeak.com (“redefining the media,” that lot) took a shot at “Journalist & Jew Natalie Rothschild” because she wrote an item on what she called “Monty Python’s Occupy Wall Street” that pointed out the absurd aspects of the protest – sorry, “revolution;” they’re revolutionaries down there. Rothschild noted in an ensuing Huffington Post piece that she’s received “a string of indignant emails and tweets about my [supposed] Jewish, kleptocrat banking connections . . . Unfortunately, though, I have no wealthy backers,” Rothschild wrote.
And National Review Online has video of one Occupy Wall Streeter having a confrontation with an observant Jew. You can see the video below, in which the protester – who self-identifies as Jewish – tells his interlocutor “go back to Israel.” The protester also says that his interlocutor only opposes the protests because “You’ve got the money, that’s why you’re fighting [with us] Jewish man.” (Curiously, that’s the same ad hominem attack leveled at Rothschild.) The protester also noted that he is employed and claimed membership “in the Local 1 Plumber’s Union.”
Certainly, the majority of Occupy Wall Street protesters likely do not have such anti-Semitic sentiments. Then again, the majority isn’t that big.
While such a display is disturbing in any particular encounter, it would be more concerning if the Occupy Wall Street crowd could be taken more seriously. But there is something about a crowd of angry twenty-somethings waving signs that include slogans such as “eat the rich” and “Jesus was a Marxist” that doesn’t inspire a sense of electoral backlash. For one thing, as The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein noted, there are no families involved in the protest. Unlike the Tea Party rallies, these demonstrations convey no sense that the bedrock of American society is actually invested in this demonstration.
Nevertheless, Chris Matthews of MSNBCs Hardball suggested on Morning Joe that the protest might galvanize a labor movement to put pressure on President Obama for a jobs strategy and vigorous reelection campaign. Van Jones, Obama’s former green jobs czar, announces that “this is a big deal.” Occupy Wall Street is “about to shake up politics,” he says. And film-maker Michael Moore declares that “this is going to spread” because “the rich are kleptomaniacs.”
If such a movement as Occupy Wall Street could spread in America, the nation would have serious problems. As it is, the Occupy Wall Street rallies tend to demonstrate what happens when a gaggle of self-absorbed juveniles without an apparent vested interest in society or the well-being of others gets too much media attention.
