SocraticGadfly: The Nation decides to deep-dive pander to hardcore Zionism

January 15, 2022

The Nation decides to deep-dive pander to hardcore Zionism

Never heard of Alexis Grenell before, but after seeing this screed, it's clear she's in the territory of Batya Ungar-Sargon, Bari Weiss or worse. I saw it via Philip Weiss' crushing takedown on Mondoweiss.

And, crushing it is.

Here's a few of my hot take Tweets. Let's start with the first:

Then? Let's skip ahead several Tweets, as I saw that Grennell had made herself more shameful:

"Goysplaining"? Really? What D. Fuq?

Now, as far as some of the other specific slants of the piece, like Grenell saying that "goysplaining" includes telling non-Jewish Democrats why they need to kowtow to Zionists? That's because she's apparently some sort of Democratic consultant. She's also apparently "woke" on sexual rights (sex not gender, contra her language), per this piece. But, I think Weiss is halfway woke, too, but also engages in anti-Palestinian cancel culture. She's also an anti-Democratic Socialists of America person (outside of the DSA hits in The Nation piece), enough of one to call Bernie Sanders a misogynist in 2020. In other words, total BlueAnon. OK, so we now know she's full of multiple versions of BlueAnon identity politics. (That would, of course, include Israel but not Palestine!)

Back to some of my tweets, several inspired by Tweeters that Weiss linked to. Several riffed on "rightwing Zionist" Jeremy Burton's totally stanning Tweet, per Weiss. I'll give you the full thread, individually, starting with the first:

Then the second:

And, that's true, and Hispanics are a larger percentage of the American populace. They generally run around 65 percent or a bit more Democratic, with Jews just over 70 percent.

As I told The Nation in another Tweet, it can continue to offer its $2 a month subscription specials; it's only increased my disdain for it even at that price.

Back to the piece?

It's trash otherwise. 

Grenell dives in the sewer to go Godwin's Law on BDS, for example. And, she's not totally accurate about the lack of support for BDS. Per Pew, among secular Jews who have heard something about BDS (this is important, as many Jews, religious or secular, have not), 45 percent of that subset support BDS.

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Meanwhile, I didn't even tackle the utilitarian angle of this. Grenell (Dem operative/consultant, remember?) throughout the piece pushes the electoral politics angle of this, per my last Tweet and notes. In fact, it seems to me that's her overriding concern, not whether it's an ethical issue of the Democratic Party and leading national Democrats needing to be more vocal in their support for Israel, including denouncing BDS, because "never forget" or whatever. 

Nope. It's all about the politics for her, in end.

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Update: Nation editor D.D. Guttenplan attacked Mondoweiss for not only criticizing the piece itself, but him (if not by name) and the magazine in general for allegedly pulling a Grenell and running the piece to keep top donors happy. Hadn't thought of that at first, but it is possible, just like the mag talking a lot about the urgency of climate change but little about what to do to fix that.

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at Saturday, January 15, 2022 Posted by Gadfly

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