As I noted last week, after the first debate, in some corners of the Twitterverse and the blogosphere, the idea was started that some of the opposition to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign is grounded in anti-Semitism.
As I further noted, one blogger behind this idea went down the ...
Well, went down the social justice warrior road.
Regular readers know that while I don't reject the idea of sociologically grounded, structural inequalities, I don't throw around such ideas lightly, especially when they're first espoused by New New Left types.
So, since Jodi Dean (linked at my earlier blog post) talked about "patriarchy" and "privilege" as part of what might be anti-Semitism against Sanders, let me further crush this nuttery.
First, as I already noted on my first blog post, talking about "patriarchy" when you're also bashing Hillary Clinton for repeatedly talking about the burden of being a woman running for high office is both self-defeating and illogical. (That said, such impediments are common — and commonly ignored — in the SJW world.)
Second, despite Vermont being just 1 percent Jewish, or a little less than half the national average, Sanders managed to be elected multiple times as both its single, statewide, U.S. Representative, then multiple times as one of its two statewide U.S. Senators, winning a total of eight House and two (so far) Senate elections. If Vermonters had anti-Semitism on their minds, they sure hid it well.
Third, on the privilege issue, let's just look at Sanders' bio, per Wikipedia, first of all.
It's true that he comes from an unprivileged background. His father was a Jewish immigrant who lost much of his family in the Holocaust. But, his parents weren't poor, either. Sanders graduated college, attending the University of Chicago for most of that time. And, I'm sure that UofC wasn't cheap then, either.
Finally, the Atlantic comes along and skewers a subset of Sanders supporters as the "Berniebro."
What happens? Someone like Doug Henwood, who should know better, but already showed that, with Sanders, just to use him as a Democratic whipping stick or whatever, refuses to "know better," laments the piece. Or at least, that was my takeaway.
In actuality, besides a skewering, there's probably a certain degree of truth to it.
Way back in 1968, Bobby Kennedy lost the Oregon Democratic primary to Eugene McCarthy. Why?
Primarily because white proto-hipster liberals in the Pacific Northwest wanted to oppose the Vietnam War and support environmentalism, but often did not want to talk about racial injustice. (And, I don't doubt that Henwood knows that.) I'm sure some of Sanders' supporters are that way today.
Hell, we don't need to go to Portland.
As I blogged about long ago, the ground zero for the Occupy movement, the original Zucotti Park gathering, was whiter, more highly educated, and richer (by parentage) than national average. This came from protestors' self-surveys, by the way.
Update, Oct. 27: If the Bern-Boosters keep up the claims that talking about Sanders speech volume in an underhanded anti-Semitic trope, I'm going to keep writing blog posts kicking you in the nads.
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