In a recent CNN interview, journalist Joel Mowbray states,

Well, first, I would like to respond to the last comment made about the neo-con shell game that’s going on. This is a big red herring that the people on the left always want to drag out. You know, the so-called neo-con cabal. Some people just come outright and say that they mean the Jews in the administration.

In a May 27 column, Mowbray explores the issue at length, outright defining “Neocon” as slang for “Jew.”

“Now they’re accusing people of being anti-Semites for using the word neoconservative,” quips fellow blogger Atrios, raising a very tough and personal issue, and one that I raise in my recent letter to Adbusters, chastising them for their piece on the Neocons. The problem is not that people criticize Neocons, it’s that when people raise the issue of Neoconservativism, they can’t but help invoke the Jewish heritage of its advocates. This blurring of distinction between Jewish people and the proponents of a particular political ideology has ultimately become a “justification” for a modern resurgence of antisemitism, and is an issue that needs to seriously be addressed, particularly on the Left.

All the hub-bub began when Pat Buchanan went after the neocons in the current administration, saying that they were affecting American policy in favor of Israel because of their own cultural biases. Soon after, Virginia Democrat Jim Moran echoed the same contempt, saying that it was the influence of the Jewish community that created the race to war in Iraq, a contention that even the White House went to lengths to dismiss as assenine and which The Washington Post called “insulting.”

Now take a good look at who these mainstream voices are sharing rhetoric with—on the Right, there’s white supremacists like David Duke (who operates the anitsemitic hate site nowarforisrael.com) and Rev. Texe Marrs (who claims Abe Foxman of the ADL told Dubya to renounce his faith in Jesus); and on the Left, you’ve got the folks at Dissident Voice who go so far as to call the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion a “Neocon Manifesto,” and the IMC camp which has dismissed the Necon “cabal” as “Zionazi” idealogues.

So the reality of the situation is that when people say “Neoconservatives” some of them often do, indeed, mean “Jews,” and are in fact victims or proponents of the same antisemitic propaganda that’s been spun around for ages upon ages. Worse yet, such conspiracy theory is only detrimental to the advancement of just concerns, and further, demonstrates a fallacy in rationalle, that a small clique of individuals can actually have that much influence over all of humanity. It’s nonsense.

The question is, what do the policies of Neoconservatives really have to do with being Jewish at all? The great anarchist and communist thinkers of the 19th & 20th centuries, such as Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Rose Pesotta, Karl Marx, and V.I. Lenin, were all Jews. In fact I would wager some of the greatest proponents of neoliberalism are likely Jewish as well. What do they have in common with Neocons? Virtually nothing at all. So what is the relevance of their being Jewish? Again, nothing. But because Jews have historically served as the scapegoat—that group the world traditionally pins its insurmountable problems on—they are an easy target for people’s scorn, and so they shift all their miseries onto this particular group, and eventually (at worst) fire up the ovens thinking there’s some “final solution” to all the world’s problems.

Welp… It’s just not true. Thus people who criticize Neocons, or likewise people who criticize Israel, are not being antisemitic—they’re expressing valid concern for issues that are of grave importance to all of us. However, when they start dragging the ethnic, religious or cultural heritages of the people they’re admonishing into the conversation, they’re exhibiting racist, xenophobic, and antisemitic characteristics. This is a line that we should all be wary of, and this line has been crossed all too often by spinsters on both the Right and the Left with an agenda to advance.

Just keep an eye out and your ears open, and hopefully you won’t fall for it too.

don’t forget to pick up your
“international jewish conspiracy” t-shirt
in the jewschool sto’