Fact-check: Tlaib did not say Nessel charged pro-Palestinian protesters because she’s Jewish - eviltoast

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democratic state lawmaker, and some news agencies are falsely claiming that U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib said Nessel’s office only filed charges against pro-Palestinian activists at the University of Michigan because she’s Jewish.

The spurious claims stem from an interview that Tlaib did with Metro Times on Sept. 13. Tlaib, who was born in Detroit to Palestinian immigrants and is the only Palestinian American member of Congress, argued the charges were an unjust and heavy-handed response to peaceful civil disobedience.

Tlaib pointed out that Nessel, who has been in office since January 2019, has not filed charges against protesters opposed to racism, police brutality, water shutoffs, and environmental contamination.

Tlaib never once mentioned Nessel’s religion or Judaism. But Metro Times pointed out in the story that Nessel is Jewish, and that appears to be the spark that led to the false claims.

Shortly after the article was published, state Sen. Jeremy Moss, a Democrat who is Jewish, posted a screenshot of the story on X and claimed that Tlaib’s response was an attempt “to divide us into ‘good’ Jews she accepts & bad Jews.”

On Sunday, CNN host Jake Tapper followed up with a segment in which he falsely claimed that Tlaib said Nessel only filed the charges “because she’s Jewish and the protesters are not.” Tapper made the statement while interviewing Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and tried to get her to weigh in on his false claim.

  • anarcho_blinkenist@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    You don’t seem to allow yourself to be a very deep thinker when it comes to your electoral “team.” Have you considered maybe that communists are anti-genocide and anti-fascist? Are anti-colonialism? Are anti-imperialism and anti-death-merchantry from these private arms manufacturers? All of which happens with open handshakes and benefits and with the eager help of the majority of establishment Democrats? That communists criticize the Democrats who participate in these things, for their active participation in these things?

    Unlike Liberals who can only think in abstract ideals and empty rhetoric to then be indignant and status-quo defending at being confronted with reality, or can only see things in terms of individual identity politics instead of material class relations and material historical context, Marxists have a scientific methodology for approaching politics, events, information, etc. which is rooted in class interest and material conditions. These are criticisms based on their material actions, and when a politician’s material actions are good — are against these bad things; when their actions are anti-genocide, anti-imperialism, anti-war, anti-arming extremists in proxy wars, anti-nuclear brinksmanship etc. (Almost as rare for Democrats as it is for Republicans), then those actions are said to be good, but there are held no other illusions or delusions or weird idealist or identity fixations like Liberals have — like you clearly have.

    Communists are against these bad things — are against genocide, imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, war and proxy war, etc.; but and also realize that all of these things are inherently and inexorably linked to the growth of the capitalist system and the interests and needs of its ruling class for defending markets and cheap sources of labor and resources for capitalists to exploit, and control and crush competition or resistance to that expansion and theft; and that these things arise due to the inherent and irreconcilable contradictions of the capitalist system (which the bourgeois politicians depend and defend and are agents of; and whose police and army are the enforcers of) and the capitalist social relations; such as the need for constant growth to stave off crises and collapse even if all markets are saturated by capitalists; the need for profits necessarily maximized and costs necessarily forced (often through direct or indirect socio-economic systemic violence) to minimum in order that the capitalist can extract as much surplus value to make active as capital as possible in order to reproduce capital and expand their capital and markets in order to not “lose” in competition and be cannibalized by other capitalists; that this capital which is inherently concentrating in the hands of the few and the most vicious and the most cost-suppressing due to the private extraction of the surplus value provided by socialized labor and the ‘jungle-law’ of capitalist competition.

    Communists have also been vehemently anti-Obama and anti-Clinton and anti-Kerry, not because they “are Democrat” but because they, as Democrats, used their mandate to for instance utterly destroy Libya — previously the richest country in Africa, instigating multiple ethnic cleansing campaigns and turning it into an open air-slave market; and trying to do the same in Syria, even allowing ISIS to take root and grow and capture cities to use as proxy warriors and turning both of these regions into an Al Qaeda and ISIS playground which was supplied by US weapons rubber-stamped by the Democrat president and most Democrats in congress.

    Communists have hated Obama and Trump both for being nearly indistinguishable in their barbarity toward immigrants, just as communists see as an enemy Biden for continuing to do the same and worse. Communists also hate Obama and Trump for their indistinguishable bipartisan also-genocidal arming and funding and participating in slowly genociding Yemenis for a decade, one hospital, wedding, and schoolbus full of children at a time.

    Communists pointed out that Obama’s cabinet was hand-picked by Citigroup and his bailing out the banks was not an anomoly, not because “Democrat,” but because of the material interests that, in material reality, Obama shamelessly represented and furthered; regardless of any advertising rhetoric out of his and his supporters’ mouths – it was and is his actions that matter. Same when communists point out that Biden brought into his administration a bunch of the most bloodthirsty neo-cons he could find like Nuland and Blinken; and that he reappointed a Trump-admin judge who was Chevron lawyer who defended destroying the Amazon and poisoning Indigenous people and jailing their most prominent vocal opponent. Same when communists point out that Biden went around congress twice to ship guns and bombs to the Zionist occupation faster than even they were already bipartisanly moving toward hoping they’d would wipe Gaza’s inhabitants off the map before election time so they wouldn’t face such ongoing political consequences and the mass-defections from their party and mass protests demanding an end to this genocidal atrocity they support.

    I’ve seen many of your comments, and you’re remarkably bad-faith when it comes to politics. It often comes across as petulant. And it is very telling and indicative of where your values and interests actually lie that you spend more time and energy lashing out at those who criticize the Democrats for their participation in genocide, neo-colonialism, imperialist nuclear brinksmanship sponsored by arms-manufacturers, and far right and mass-murderous economic and immigration polices, and who advocate for starving them of the working class margins that they take for granted and rely on for a mandate; than you ever spend advocating for the sufficiently-near-unanimous-to-just-say-Democrats Democrats to stop this genocide which they could with a phone call.

    Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are anomolies, exceptions to the rule in these kinds of cases, and communists support their (and any) action against exploitation, imperialism, genocide, colonialism, war, etc. But they stand and have stood alone in a party of vampires, and for taking these stands they’ve faced endless persecution and betrayal and slander and maligning and sidelining by ‘their own’ party, including even their former allies of the “Progressives” (don’t laugh!) of “the squad.”

    When a 3rd party rises, with my and others’ support, Ilhan and Tlaib would probably abandon the Democrats like ‘rats from a sinking ship,’ along with every other progressive-minded individual communist-or-not who haven’t already (which many have over the years, me included, and will continue to). Stop lashing out at the 3rd party voters and critics who have a conscience, and a material understanding, and a memory longer than that of a goldfish; and instead force your own ‘team’ to reckon with what they are and became; or otherwise admit you’re a nationalist that likes these terrible things being this way because you benefit; or otherwise admit that the critics are right and join them.