Elise Stefanik’s Calculated Demagoguery on Antisemitism and Free Speech

Jay Michaelson

Updated Dec. 06, 202

WN: The writer is dead-on! And there is a surprise at the end of the article, as to who the writer is (more than one category). And how sick is the subject of the article! One wonders: what rock did her actions crawl out from?

excerpts:

Whether for reasons of trauma or political expediency, people have lost their moral compasses when it comes to antisemitism on college campuses.

Case in point: by the time this article gets posted, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill, may be out of a job, having fallen into a trap laid by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) at a congressional hearing Tuesday.

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And yet, Magill was clearly right.

Here’s the exchange that may cost Magill her position. See if you can spot exactly where it goes off the rails:

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But now Stefanik is practicing cancel culture on steroids. She and others are calling for Magill’s ouster—not for anything she personally said or did, but for merely stating that hateful antisemitic speech may or may not count as harassment, depending on the circumstances.

It’s cancel culture when it’s me, but not when it’s thee.

What I find most personally repellant about this whole spectacle is how it exploits the trauma and pain that the Jewish community is still feeling (while utterly ignoring the trauma and pain that Palestinians are experiencing).

Even those of us profoundly troubled by the extent of Israel’s military action in Gaza are still reeling from the massacres, rapes, and torture of Oct. 7. We are terrified by the rise in antisemitism in America and Europe. We are hurting.

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But that’s what demagogues do, whether it’s Trump or Stefanik or anyone else: they pander to our fear and rage, and sublimate that pain into harmful actions.