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WHY ARE LEFTIST MONOPOLIES SUCH CESSPITS OF ANTISEMITISM? The anti-Semitism row rocking Hollywood.

Fast-forward almost three years and the museum’s attempt to repair things has, if anything, made it worse. The exhibition, in a small, dimly-lit corner on the third floor, opened last month and its framing has fuelled accusations of anti-Semitism at a time of heightened sensitivity.

Jack Warner is described as “brash and irreverent” and a “womaniser” who was “frugal” when he built his studio with his brothers; Harry Cohn, the co-founder of Columbia Pictures, is labelled a “tyrant and predator” who “modelled his office after Italian dictator Benito Mussolini”; Carl Laemmle of Universal is noted for his “nepotism”.

Al Jolson, the Lithuanian-born actor, starred in 1927’s The Jazz Singer, which was notable for being the first major release to have sound synchronised with its pictures. Yet along with this brief description, the museum makes a point of the film’s use of blackface, which made it guilty of “perpetuating a century-long tradition in the United States that caricatures and dehumanises black people”.

Thus began yet another culture war in Tinseltown. Los Angeles magazine says that the exhibition “relegated Hollywood’s Jewish founders to the ghetto” and this week a group of more than 300 Hollywood luminaries – including Friends star David Schwimmer, TV writer Amy Sherman-Palladino and Lawrence Bender, Quentin Tarantino’s producer — circulated an open letter under the banner of United Jewish Writers to criticise the use of anti-Semitic tropes.

“Using the words ‘tyrant’, ‘oppressive’, ‘womaniser’, ‘predator’, ‘offensive’, ‘racial oppression’, ‘nepotism’, and ‘prejudices’, it is the only section of the museum that vilifies those it purports to celebrate,” the letter reads. “While we acknowledge the value in confronting Hollywood’s problematic past, the despicable double standard of the Jewish Founders exhibit, blaming only the Jews for that problematic past, is unacceptable and, whether intentional or not, anti-Semitic.” The group also urged the museum to honour the Jewish men “with the same respect and enthusiasm granted to those celebrated throughout the rest of the museum”.

* * * * * * * * *

Neal Gabler, the author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, said: “You have to understand that Hollywood in its very inception was formed out of a fear that its founders – and those who maintained the industry – would be identified as Jews.”

In the 1998 A&E documentary version of Gabler’s excellent 1989 book,  the narrator (actor R.H. Thomson) notes that after being unable to break the monopoly that east coast-based Thomas Edison had on moviemaking at the start of the 20th century, the largely Jewish immigrants who created what we now call Hollywood went west, both for the excellent weather that allowed them to film outdoors throughout most of the year, and for the freedom to build, as Gabler dubbed it in his title, “An Empire of their Own,” far from Edison’s (often anti-Semitic) control. Eventually, with 75 percent of the American public going to the movies at least once a week between the wars.

Today, thanks to the hangover from the covid lockdowns, and a by-and-large unwatchable product produced by Hollywood, that number is far lower. It’s an industry that apparently despises its founding fathers — but then, the left, driven by what Roger Scruton called “the culture of repudiation,” hates the real founding fathers as well. And as we’ve seen, even before the riots of 2020, controlling how the past is viewed is a huge part of the “Woke” project on both coasts.

Or to put it another way:

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 15th, 2024

BECAUSE THEY’RE RUN BY AWFUL, GREEDY PEOPLE: Why Are the Universities Cesspits of Anti-Semitism? “These international students, the large majority from countries with little freedom of speech and little or no tradition of academic freedom, are the shock troops of anti-Semitism. True, they bring some leftist students along with them. But the most anti-Semitic universities, like Harvard, Penn and MIT, are also the ones with the most foreign students from anti-Semitic countries. This was illustrated by the fact that when violently anti-Semitic students assaulted Jewish students at MIT, isolating them in the library and trying to break down the doors to get at them, MIT declined to expel the anti-Semitic thugs. Why? For fear that they would be deported. There are a number of reasons for the corruption of higher education; this is by no means the only one. But it is an important part of the explanation of why our allegedly top universities have gone so completely off the rails. This story in the London Times relates to the U.K., where reliance on foreign students is even more extreme than in the U.S. But it sheds a lot of light on why British universities are so tolerant of anti-Semitism and other left-wing outrages.”

Posted at 12:37 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Mar 25th, 2024

WHY ARE BLUE CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF HATRED, RACISM, AND BIGOTRY?

Posted at 4:42 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 31st, 2024

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT MONOPOLY COLLEGE CAMPUSES SUCH CESSPITS OF ANTISEMITISM? Sammy Tweedy, son of Wilco frontman, became a ‘pariah’ on his college campus after speaking up for Israel.

Some young adults who say they were handed a one-sided perspective on Israel have gotten involved in criticizing the country from a Jewish point of view. IfNotNow, for example, was founded in 2014 by graduates of Jewish day schools and summer camps to oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its war on Gaza at the time.

Tweedy went a different direction. After his Birthright trip, he enrolled in history classes about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and found himself defending Israel. When students in class argued that “the Jewish connection to the land of Israel is completely fabricated,” he would speak up, offering historical perspective about the Jewish history in the region that dates back to biblical times. He says he was soon labeled a “racist” around campus.

“I was like, ‘What did I say that was racist? Why are they saying that?’ It’s because ‘you said Jewish people are indigenous to Israel.’ And I was like, that’s not f—ing racist. That doesn’t mean that Palestinians shouldn’t be able to live in that land or call it Palestine or whatever,” he said.

Tweedy also felt dismayed when the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter endorsed “armed struggle” against Israel and honored Khaire Alkam — who shot and killed seven Israelis at a synagogue — on a “wall of martyrs” in a campus building shortly after the attack this past January.

As word got around about his views, Tweedy was hit with a wave of social media messages from fellow students calling him out. Since Hamas’ attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza, the barrage increased. One post shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency read “the blood of gaza is on your hands.” In another, a student admitted to harassing him. He sometimes joined in arguments, as shown in messages he shared with JTA.

He filed a bias incident report to administrators on Nov. 11, after he saw the campus SJP charter say in an online post that U.S. media is “controlled by Zionists.” He said the school determined that the use of the word “Zionist” made the post acceptable.

A Sarah Lawrence spokesperson told JTA that the school does not share information on students with the media.

But Tweedy is far from the first Jewish Sarah Lawrence student to complain about the school’s handling of reported antisemitic incidents. On Oct. 31, Hillels of Westchester — representing chapters at Sarah Lawrence and a handful of other nearby schools — sent a letter to Sarah Lawrence President Cristle Collins Judd alleging that since at least 2014, Jewish students have been “harassed, intimidated, bullied, and ‘canceled’ for simply expressing themselves as Jews, or discussing or identifying with Israel.”

Flashback: Shocked by the Jew-Hate on College Campuses? I Wasn’t.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 16th, 2023

WHY ARE LEFTY NEIGHBORHOODS SUCH CESSPITS OF RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY?

Posted at 6:45 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Oct 13th, 2023

WHY ARE BLUE STATE GOVERNMENTS SUCH CESSPITS OF ABUSE? Chief of staff to NY AG Letitia James resigns after allegations of sexual harassment. “There must be something in the water. Back in 2018, New York’s Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman resigned after being accused of violence by at least four women. And then last year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned after being accused of sexual harassment by a series of women. Today, Ibrahim Khan, the chief of staff to current Attorney General of New York, Letitia James, has resigned after allegations of sexual harassment.”

Plus: “Leititia James was just reelected last month. No doubt this would have proved embarrassing if it had come out sooner.”

Posted at 11:21 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Dec 2nd, 2022

WHY ARE OUR UNIVERSITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM? ‘Anti-racist’ professor calls Herschel Walker ‘subliterate,’ uses racial slur.

Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker is “coonish” and “subliterate,” according to a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor who is also an “anti-racist” consultant.

Walker is “incompetent, subliterate and coonish,” Professor Sundiata Cha-Jua, a history and African-American studies professor, wrote in The News-Gazette in his regular column on October 23. “Coon” is a racial slur that refers to depictions of black individuals as lazy or dumb.

His column focused on black Republicans and how they are actually “MAGA Black White supremacists.”

So basically he’s a bigot AND an idiot.

Posted at 1:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Nov 4th, 2022
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