Media Freaks Over Trump 'Anti-Semitic' Comment, But Look Where it Really Came From
President Donald Trump is being accused of using anti-Semitic language. Again.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the “anti-Semitic language” charge is absolute nonsense. Again.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. It seems like just yesterday that Trump’s administration was accused of anti-Semitism for calling outgoing administration official Gary Cohn a “globalist.” In a world that’s collapsed to a “globalist/nationalist” dichotomy when it comes to trade, there’s absolutely nothing that would make that remark suspect.
However, The Washington Post noted that the word “globalist” is frequently deployed in far-right and conspiracy-theory-minded circles on the Internet as a Jewish slur. In this line of thinking, globalists are a shadowy cabal who run the financial institutions, corporations and media organizations around the world.
“Cohn, of course, is one of the president’s most prominent Jewish advisers,” the paper noted.
Hence, Trump was such an anti-Semite that he hired … a prominent Jewish adviser. And if you think that was an isolated case, just wait until you hear the kerfuffle over the president’s feud with NBC’s Chuck Todd, in which a reporter actually suggested (wrongly) that the president was secretly insulting the “Meet the Press” host using an obscure, poorly-translated Nazi text.
As with so many things involving our 45th president, this all began on Twitter, where Trump criticized Todd for his reporting on North Korea.
Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Fake News NBC just stated that we have given up so much in our negotiations with North Korea, and they have given up nothing. Wow, we haven’t given up anything & they have agreed to denuclearization (so great for World), site closure, & no more testing!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 22, 2018
As Trump nicknames go, that’s actually not a bad one. Todd is a respected reporter, if left-leaning, but he always seems to have a mien that suggests he took an extra Benadryl by mistake and is now trying to power through the languor.
However, Todd is Jewish on his mother’s side — and, given that Judaism is matrilineal, that makes him Jewish. That normally wouldn’t present any problem or controversy.
You forget, however, that the president is Donald J. Trump and … well, take a look at how things went from there.
“Sleepy eyes” is an anti Semitic term that was and is stilled used by neo- nazis groups relating to “how to spot a Jew.” Donald Trump just used anti semitic terminology against a Jewish reporter. Why are people not talking about this?! https://t.co/cy54ZEE92v
— Sarah Chadwick (@Sarahchadwickk) April 23, 2018
Chadwick is one of the student activists from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School. She’s also now apparently an expert in Nazi propaganda. Except she isn’t.
Chadwick is referring to a propaganda piece published in “Der Giftpilz,” a children’s book published by notorious Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher, a man who was considered too anti-Semitic for the Nazi party and got himself kicked out. In “Der Giftpilz,” he instructed young Nazis on “How to Spot a Jew.”
Here is the only part that mentions anything about the eyes: “One can also recognize a Jew by his lips. His lips are usually puffy. The lower lip often protrudes. The eyes are different too. The eyelids are mostly thicker and more fleshy than ours. The Jewish look is wary and piercing. One can tell from his eyes that he is a deceitful person.”
There’s no mention of sleepy eyes in the passage, or anywhere in the piece. In fact, quite the opposite — Streicher believes that “(t)he Jewish look is wary and piercing.” The entire piece is utter cow fertilizer, but Chadwick’s attempt to paint the president as an anti-Semite is indicative of someone who apparently cannot read. Or, as Daily Wire reporter Ryan Saavedra claimed, she hadn’t even read it at all and simply picked it up from a random Twitter account.
This is a lie.
She based this entire tweet off of a highly unreliable Twitter account and claimed it as fact.
As my friend @ElliottRHams notes: She’s confusing “wary and piercing eyes” from Streicher’s “Der Giftpilz” with “sleepy eyes.” https://t.co/aHQrqe1z3J https://t.co/EfbZlMPRAz
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 23, 2018
Ben Shapiro was similarly unimpressed.
I have never heard this in my life https://t.co/uXDirlgD1O
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 23, 2018
That didn’t stop fringe liberals from trying to make it an issue. In fact, a fringe website called (aptly) the Empty Lighthouse tried to redeem the narrative by claiming “(t)he term ‘sleepy eyes’ originated from Nazi propaganda as a way of identifying Jewish people” and that neo-Nazi group Stormfront used the term.
Evidence provided? Zero. But it certainly sounds convincing if you don’t like the president, right?
Chadwick isn’t the first Parkland activist to prove that she simply isn’t ready for prime time, but this brings up a deeper issue. There’s been a narrative that Trump is somehow a secret anti-Semite in touch with a fringe cabal of neo-Nazis to whom he sends secret dog-whistle messages just to prove that he’s one of them.
The media mostly stays away from this tinfoil-hattery, with the exception of the globalist story. However, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard these kind of conspiracy theories and — no matter how uninformed they may be — it will hardly be the last example of this calumnious fraud.
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