Media Erupts in Cries of 'Anti-Semitism' After Trump Uses Innocuous Word
Donald Trump: anti-semite? Yes, that’s the latest controversy to hit the Trump administration — and boy, is it a doozy.
See, Trump used a word that has “antisemitic connotations.” It’s a pretty loaded word, so we must warn you, this is going to be a pretty tough article. Reader discretion is advised.
See, it’s not just that he used the word in the “Access Hollywood” tape. It’s not just that he used a swear word. Or even your normal ethnic slur. No, it went far beyond that.
If you’re squeamish or have a heart condition, I implore you: Just push the back button. This is serious. At least two Conservative Tribune staffers had to be rushed to the hospital with heart palpitations after hearing this one. If you pass this line, management bears no responsibility for your physical or mental health.
Okay, so we’re all prepared: In describing outgoing White House chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, who is Jewish, several people called him a “globalist.”
I know. I’m so sorry. This must be traumatic. For Conservative Tribune employees, we had trouble finding workable safe spaces within the corporate complex, but sessions will be held in the port-a-potties at the edge of the parking lot.
Yes, apparently calling someone the innocuous term globalist — in a foreign relations paradigm that has divided itself between nationalism and globalism — is antisemetic if a globalist happens to be Jewish.
Take, for instance, the HuffPo. Please. (Thank you, Henny Youngman.)
“There’s perhaps never a bad time to stretch or rethink one’s vocabulary,” Nina Golgowski and Luke O’Brien wrote in a piece that amazingly took two writers.
“The term ‘globalist’ has been used at the White House at least three times this week in reference to an outgoing Jewish Trump administration official, raising some eyebrows because the word is increasingly used in xenophobic and anti-Semitic contexts.
“The word came up on Wednesday when a reporter asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders whether a similar candidate will take the place of Gary Cohn, the outgoing director of President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council.”
Yet, in the very next paragraph Golgowski and/or O’Brien openly admitted that the term was originally brought up by reporters.
“This followed Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, using the word ‘globalist,’ in quotation marks, to describe Cohn in a statement that was tweeted by his department on Tuesday,” Golgowski and/or O’Brien continue. “Mulvaney’s statement also noted that he was surprised to get along with Cohn, who he said ended up being ‘one of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with.'”
The article then delves into profoundly esoteric conspiracy theories that link “globalists” with Jewish world domination, Alex Jones and Twitter reactions.
And, oh, by the way, the title of the piece is “This Anti-Semitic Term Was Casually Used At The White House 3 Times This Week.” Ignoring the fact that there’s not a bit of actual evidence “globalist” represents an anti-Semitic term aside from the fact that crazy people use it sometimes, a piece that took two people to write and is mostly comprised of Twitter reactions can’t actually count the number of times the phrase was used by the White House in the context they’re reacting to. I’m not leaving anything out — this “anti-Semitic term” that isn’t an anti-Semitic term was only used twice (or at least by two people) but nobody could freaking count.
The HuffPo isn’t exactly the meniscus of American political opinion, but the New York Daily News is slightly closer to it. Unfortunately, things didn’t get much better there.
“President Trump, who’s built a political career on inflammatory and racially-charged rhetoric, set off waves of outrage after he called his outgoing top economic adviser Gary Cohn a ‘globalist’ during a Cabinet meeting Thursday,” the News reported of Cohn’s departure.
“‘He may be a globalist, but I still like him,’ Trump quipped of Cohn as the rest of the room chuckled. ‘He is seriously a globalist. There’s no question.'”
“While Trump ostensibly hinted at Cohn’s long-held commitment to free trade policies, the term ‘globalist’ carries problematic connotations that trace back decades. Hate speech watchdogs quickly pounced on Trump’s usage of the term and pointed out his remarks took on another layer of controversy since Cohn is Jewish.”
The Daily News continued that calling someone globalist “perpetuates a long held anti-Semitic conspiracy theory Jews can’t be ‘loyal’ to any given country because for centuries they had no homeland of their own, Tuchman said. Conspiracy theorists claim Jews are instead loyal to a transnational agenda that aims to undermine Christian identities and western nations.”
Here’s the TL;DR version, according to the HuffPo and (to a lesser extent) the New York Daily News: The president and those around him really believe in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion or something to that effect and wanted to fire Gary Cohn before he infected the whole system. Except they hired him in the first place. And his departure came on the heels of the announcement of a trade measure that could be seen as protectionist, which Cohn doesn’t believe in. But they called him a globalist, so they’re all bigots.
It’s worth noting that the fight against so-called globalism has mostly been fought on the left thus far. I don’t exactly see the HuffPo and the New York Daily News holding anti-globalist figures like Naomi Klein or Adbusters to account.
In fact, Klein — a supporter of the highly antisemitic BDS movement — just so happens to have written for the Daily News. HuffPo, meanwhile, hypes Linda Sarsour in its pages the same way that The Source used to hype Benzino’s rap career — which is to say, incessantly and without explicable reason. That said, Sarsour has been linked to infamous anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and also has done enough to hate Jews in her own right without the aged, conked “prophet” at her defense.
If either one of these publications were truly concerned about anti-Semitism, we would point out that they’ve published and/or supported anti-Semites in their own publicaitons. We would advise them — implore them, in fact — to publicly cut ties with them and delete their articles.
This is somewhat besides the point, however. They’ve taken a word which has a very particular context in a dichotomous paradigm of world politics and assumed — given the residents of the White House — that it’s anti-Semitic. In reality, the word is in common circulation as an antonym to “nationalist.” The evidence they’ve given — idiotic conspiracy theorists who have used the word as an anti-Semitic slur with no documented connection to the White House — gives no actual connection, circumstantial or evidentiary, that what anyone said was motivated by anti-Semitism.
In a perfect world, everyone who was involved in the decision to publish these articles would apologize for ascribing motives for which there is no evidence. The likelihood of this happening, unfortunately, is near zero.
Please like and share on Facebook and Twitter with your thoughts on these articles.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
