New York Times: anti-globalism = antisemitism

Debate rages over the extent to which the protests on the political left constitute coded or even direct attacks on Jews.  But far less attention has been paid to a trend on the right: For all of their rhetoric of the moment, increasingly through the Trump era many Republicans have helped inject into the mainstream thinly veiled anti-Jewish messages with deep historical roots. 

The conspiracy theory taking on fresh currency is one that dates back hundreds of years and has perennially bubbled into view: that a shady cabal of wealthy Jews secretly controls events and institutions contrary to the national interest of whatever country it is operating in. 

The current formulation of the trope taps into the populist loathing of an elite “ruling class.”  “Globalists” or “globalist elites” are blamed for everything from Black Lives Matter to the influx of migrants across the southern border, often described as a plot to replace native-born Americans with foreigners who will vote for Democrats.  The favored personification of the globalist enemy is George Soros, the 93-year-old Hungarian American Jewish financier and Holocaust survivor who has spent billions in support of liberal causes and democratic institutions. 

This language is hardly new — Mr. Soros became a boogeyman of the American far right long before the ascendancy of Mr. Trump.  And the elected officials now invoking him or the globalists rarely, if ever, directly mention Jews or blame them outright.  Some of them may not immediately understand the antisemitic resonance of the meme, and in some cases its use may simply be reflexive political rhetoric.  But its rising ubiquity reflects the breaking down of old guardrails on all types of degrading speech, and the cross-pollination with the raw, sometimes hate-filled speech of the extreme right, in a party under the sway of the norm-defying former, and perhaps future, president. 

In a July 2023 email to supporters, the Trump campaign employed an image that bears striking resemblance to a Nazi-era cartoon of a hook-nosed puppet master manipulating world figures: Mr. Soros as puppet master, pulling the strings controlling President Biden. 

~ Karen Yourish, Danielle Ivory, Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Alex Lemonides, "How Republicans Echo Antisemitic Tropes Despite Declaring Support for Israel," The New York Times, May 9, 2024

David Leonhardt on Covid deaths and the vaccine

Covid has not only been one of the worst pandemics in modern times.  It has been an unnecessarily terrible pandemic.  Of the more than 700,000 Americans who have died from it, nearly 200,000 probably could have been saved if they had chosen to take a vaccine.  That is a national tragedy.

~ David Leonhardt, "Covid, In Retreat," The New York Times, "The Morning" newsletter, October 4, 2021

The New York Times admits that government protects Big Business from smaller competitors

The economy suffers from a lack of fair competition, many economists believe.  Large corporations are often able to increase profits not by providing better products than their rivals but instead by being so big that they exercise power over workers and consumers.  The government also plays a role, through policies that protect existing companies at the expense of start-ups and new entrants into an industry.

~ The New York Times, July 9, 2021

The New York Times on how to raise living standards

There isn’t a big mystery about how to reduce inequality and lift living standards for most Americans. Raising taxes on the wealthy, which are historically low, and devoting the money to everyone else would make a real difference.

~ The New York Times, May 2, 2021

Napoleon on voting

I care not who casts the votes of a nation, provided I can count them.

~ Napoleon, New York Times editorial, May 26, 1880

Michael Tomasky on why mask mandates are compatible with freedom

Freedom emphatically does not include the freedom to get someone else sick. It does not include the freedom to refuse to wear a mask in the grocery store, sneeze on someone in the produce section and give him the virus. That’s not freedom for the person who is sneezed upon. For that person, the first person’s “freedom” means chains — potential illness and even perhaps a death sentence. No society can function on that definition of freedom.

~ Michael Tomasky, "There's a Word For Why We Wear Masks, and Liberals Should Say It," The New York Times, October 17, 2020

Kevin Duffy tweet: This is a property rights issue. Grocery stores, restaurants, your neighbors, grandma... they all make the rules once you step on their property. If they require masks, abide by the rules or leave. But this also applies to businesses and customers who agree not to mask. 

Government lockdowns violate the rights of the latter group and destroy freedom of association in the process. They are tyranny plain and simple, and incompatible with freedom.

Michael Tomasky tweet: You are silly. And muted.

Jenin Younes on media coverage of the coronavirus

[T]he media’s dereliction of duty is beyond evident.  As [Karina] Reiss and [Sucharit] Bhakdi observe, broadcasters and the press became “servile mouthpieces of the government” and never “critically questioned” the “disturbing images and frightening numbers."  Incidentally, a letter recently published by 200 Belgian scientists similarly criticized the media: “[t]he relentless bombardment of numbers, unleashed on the population day after day, hour after hour, without indicating those numbers, without comparing them to flu deaths in other years, without comparing them with deaths from other causes, has induced a true psychosis of fear in the population.  This is not information, but manipulation.” 

As an avid consumer of the New York Times, the New Yorker, and NPR, I can attest to the media having operated no differently in the United States.  Apart from a few pieces in early March that questioned the wisdom of the course we had set upon, there was no serious discussion and no debate, at least in the left-leaning media, and anyone who dissented from the prevailing view was and continues to be dismissed as stupid or selfish.  Early on, and without any nuanced analysis, Sweden was deemed a failure.  The public has been beset by such terror, driven by anecdotes often presented without context, that it has become virtually impossible to dispel these many misconceptions using facts, figures, and logic.

~ Jenin Younes, "Disease Panic vs. Medical Reality," AIER.org, September 28, 2020

New York Times publisher tells Henry Hazlitt that it can no longer fight Bretton Woods

Now Henry, when 43 governments sign an agreement, I don't see how the [New York] Times can any longer combat this.

~ Arthur Sulzberger, New York Times publisher, mid-1960s?