OK, in this 1-20-20 essay I commented:
Yes, I've heard Shapiro accused of being a racist because he doesn't like Palestinian culture. I defy you to produce an actual quote in which he's attacked Palestinians or any Muslims for being "subhuman." As an Orthodox Jew he's threatened by the Muslim hatred of his people, with their frequent promises to push all Jews into the sea, so I don't doubt that he's castigated their culture. But that's not the same as calling the people themselves subhuman. Moreover, while it's not impossible someone could find some questionable remark in Shapiro's history, that's a long way from demonstrating that he's any more a doctrinaire racist than Trump.
Ryan wrote, in part:
Wrong. Shapiro's comments basically said that "Jewish settlements are awesome" Arabs like to "live in sewage." That's basically saying they're animals no matter what prettying attempts you use to justify it. When Andrew O'Neil called him out on it he got angry and called him a lefty (which is rather rich).
Ryan did not supply me with "an actual quote," so I found a useful summation here, which happens to cover the Andrew O'Neil interview that Ryan finds so supportive of his position:Shapiro, the founder of "The Daily Wire," was a guest on BBC's "Politics Live" Thursday to talk about his new book, "The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great." He reacted negatively when Neil brought up an old tweet of his where he said, "Israelis like to build, Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage."
"That's a dumb tweet, but it is important to understand that the next few tweets clarified that that tweet is specifically referring to the Hamas leadership," Shapiro replied.
Neil had the next tweet too: "'It's not all Arabs that want to live in open sewage, it is just Palestinians,' you went on to say. And then you said the Palestinian Arab population is 'rotten to the core,' you went on to say. Not Hamas. The Palestinian Arab population."
"I say that by poll numbers, they elected Hamas," Shapiro said in defense of his comment about Palestinians. "They elected Hamas, they educate their children in school that Israel should be obliterated."
First, Shapiro later apologized to O'Neil, at least for mischaracterizing him as a Lefty. Second, in the transcript above he admits that he made a "dumb tweet," but he still viewed the Palestinians as "rotten to the core" because so many of them support the terrorist organization Hamas. (Why Ryan has a problem with this cultural slander I do not know, since he's shown elsewhere that he's totally OK with regarding all Trump-supporters as racists.) Third, Ryan is demonstrably wrong in that none of the tweets insult the Palestinians by calling them "animals" or "subhuman:" he insulted their lack of moral rigor-- which in turn, in more dubious fashion, he links to their willingness to live in crappy conditions.
Now, Ryan is, in theory, on slightly stronger factual ground when he comments upon a host of abuses that the Palestinians allegedly would have suffered had they agreed to a "two nations" agreement with Israel. I don't imagine that Orthodox Jew Shapiro has any great empathy with Palestinian sufferings; I can imagine-- and this is only speculation-- that he might think that they should have to accept less than equal conditions because Israel had to protect themselves from an assortment of peoples whose ancestors were entirely willing (as I said before) to drive all Jews into the sea. Nevertheless, I believe that *currently* Shapiro advocates a "two nations" solution, even if he doesn't advocate giving Palestine every thing it wants.
My personal take is that neither Israel nor Palestine are playing with a straight deck, and in that respect, I can imagine that Shapiro is a Jewish chauvinist. But that's still not the same as his being racist, except in the minds of Americans who like to portray the Israel-Palestine conflict as a conflict of white skins and brown skins-- which I'm kind of surprised Ryan didn't bring up.
Ryan then cites "all the usual suspects" to "prove" Trump racist: the Fair Housing Act, allegations of racism from former employees, yada yada yada. The Trump-quote about Japan "stripping the United States of economic dignity" is ill-chosen, implying that no one can make any criticisms of an Asian government without being racist. Then Ryan brings up the matter of the Central Park Five. As it happened, I posted elsewhere some objections to the media's characterizations of both the 1980s Trump ad and his more recent comments:
Note the words in the original ad "when they kill." Since the CPF case did not involve someone being killed, it should go without saying that Trump did not call for the CPF to be executed for the alleged crimes of assault and rape. Thus it follows that he did say that criminals who did not commit the crime of murder "should be forced to suffer," but that's the extent of his verdict regarding the crimes of which the CPF were accused.
Yes, the NY TIMES ad mentions the death penalty. This was a common refrain of the "tough on crime" faction, with which Trump was clearly aligning himself. It was not then, and is not now, a proof of a speaker's racism to voice the belief that the absence of the death penalty would encourage crime.as Trump aware of the CPF's impending trial? I have no doubt of that. But he did not call for the CPF to be killed, as many current narratives have it.In mentioning that the five were "convicted," you omit a salient point: that at some point the Five confessed to the crime. Since it's been verified that they did not rape the victim, it's indisputable that they did not commit that particular crime, though it's not been demonstrated that the NY police coerced the CPF into confessing. Later it was the contention of Linda Fairstein that the CPF had some association with Matias Reyes, but if-- and I repeat, if-- the Five were guilty of any lesser crimes, all accusations against them were vacated when Reyes confessed. Fairstein's opinion, which may be nothing more than an attempt at covering herself, is probably what Trump has referenced in recent times when he said he still did not believe the CPF innocent.
In summation, I don't necessarily believe that Trump was guilty of racism simply by stating that rapists should be punished by the law, and I do believe that recent attempts to simplify the real-life story are illustrative of the current form of shame culture.
I could go on, but I don't have any ambitions of convincing Ryan or anyone else that Trump isn't a racist. I've stated that he may be, but that that possibility is far less significant than the incredible animus that ultraliberals have churned up over him. Ryan's attempts to list every single one of Trump's examples of racist behavior proves everything I wrote in the TRUMP VS. SHAME CULTURE series:
Trump's very existence was a thumb in the eye to the Left's shame culture, which insists that nothing is more worthy of total condemnation than white racism. (Thus, the Donald's "both sides" Charlottesville remark far outpaces George Dubya getting the country mired down in Iraq in order to make money for the oil companies.) Sadly, Trump himself is not capable of enunciating an actual credo that might fight back against the virulence of shame culture; he merely says whatever he wants to say and basks in the attention it earns for him.What ultraliberals hate about Trump is that they weren't able to shame him out of the presidential race. Had Trump never made his inflammatory remarks at the outset of his campaign, there can be no doubt that his critics would still have reeled out all the same litany of past sins as Ryan has done, with particular emphasis on that horrible, deeply revelatory "birtherism" routine-- while conveniently ignoring Obama's far more serious sins.
Life is not a shooting gallery in which ultraliberals get to win by pot-shooting easy targets. Life is, as Paglia intimated, an arena, and Trump, in his crude way, exemplifies this fact, in part with his endless catcalls at his opponents. When historians judge Trump's Presidential legacy, they may find him guilty of political sins that undermined America's standing in the world community-- and here, I'm talking about sins on the level of Dubya's nation-making idiocy. Nevertheless, those sins won't be tied to all of these petty examples of his narcissistic insensitivity.
In one of his posts Ryan concludes by saying that I'm "basically an apologist for the worst conservative ideals." The inability of ultraliberals to know the difference between centrism and conservatism is something I've encountered and written about copiously, through my remarks on various Bertlatsky fellow travelers, various forums and a certain hive of buzzing psuedo-intellectuals who almost make Berlatsky look good. I call conservatives and liberals alike stupid when they say or do stupid things.
I think for myself, and I don't apologize for anything, least of all my belief that everyone in every political arena is irredeemably fucked up.
ADDENDUM: Just to further clarify my stance on the Central Park Five, when Ava Duveray's doc on the Five made the headlines, I listened to the earlier Ken Burns doc on the same subject. I found it interesting that one of the Five gives a lengthy description of how he and his chums went to the notorious Park that night, talking about other activities they passed by, and some of the violent acts they witnessed in the Park. But at no time did the guy say WHY he and his buddies chose to go there, rather than hanging out with other friends.
Only two real possibilities occur for going into a crime-ridden area like that one: either they dared one another to do so, like an adolescent rite of passage, or they were hoping to stumble across someone who would give them free sex, either with or without coercion. This does not mean that I am certain that the Five attempted to commit rape. But it may play a role in the confessions, as opposed to the narrative that the police simply browbeat the accused teens.
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