Why did what Bill Maher said get so little notice?

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Bill Maher pummels leftwing antisemitism amid Israel-Hamas war: 'You’re the ones with the tiki torches now!'

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While watching I noticed, my mouth dropped.

That is one of the most bigoted things one can say about any group.
A lot of people saw it, the articles about that segment quoted him.

I have a theory. It is context. The segment was as a whole condemning anti semitism. He is completely on the Israeli side of the current dispute. There is much more evidence that he is Islamophobic then antisemitic. It could be in part explained that his audience knows that his whole schtick is that people are too oversensitive and you have to put things in context and is with him in on that.

That does not fully explain the no reaction. There are many people that hate him and what he stands for and we are in an era where people won’t let anything slip by. When he said “house n****r” a few years back the next week he had to do an apology episode. But any double standards about tolerance towards prejudiced things said about Jews does not explain this either. People are pretty hyperaware about antisemitism at the moment. stopantisemism.org will tweet any random confrontation between two people where a bad thing was said and if they can find them, post their picture and get them fired. Crickets. Anti-Defamation League, Simon Wiesenthal Center nothing.

I am not going to boycott him for some of the reasons mentioned above.

I am just baffled.

Post-strike I have found him off his game.

I also think the two guest format, which was okay for covid lockdown, stunts the amount of intellect in the room.

No reaction? The reaction was from Fox Noise, for Heaven's sake. Anyway, he isn't really saying anything terribly different from what a lot of other people are saying.

Here is the original clip



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7bnXDe ... hBillMaher

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Maybe it is because Bill Maher's influence and popularity are declining as he slowly becomes irrelevant.

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It's because you're misunderstanding him; he didn't say "the Jews bring this on themselves", he's saying that antisemitism is more prevalent than is often acknowledged, and is citing the unhinged reaction of many leftists towards Israel as evidence. This is a fairly common view, that in the grand scheme of things there are far worse human rights offenders than Israel and much more oppressed peoples than the Palestinians (hello Uyghurs!), but left wing activists focus with such single minded intensity and hatred on Israel that there must be something else going on with them beyond their stated concerns about human rights and such, that Jew hatred is the real cause.

Yeah.

If THATS what you're upset about then there is nothing to be upset about.

He is accusing parts of the Left of being antisemitic.

When he said "there must be something about the Jews" Maher was not saying "Jews deserve to be hated".

He was saying that the Jews get some kind of double standard that other groups dont get. Though it IS a weirdly constructed statement.

If you noticed...he inserted a defense of Israel into the sentence by saying "not that Israel colonized anything", and more important...he is Jewish himself. So the media gives him leeway for the listener to ponder what he said.

If he had been a Gentile the media WOULD have flown off of the handle...damn what he "really meant" and damn the torpedos and full steam ahead! The way the media DID react to his "I am a house n****r" statement (which any Black comic woudve had license to say...and wouldve gotten praise for saying).

You and Dox are misunderstanding what I am saying. While I understand that he was trying to express bafflement about perceived double standards and did it very badly, public figures have a few words from whole statements twisted to make them sound racist all the time. And those words are usually less “obvious”. Taken out of context those words sound like classic victim blaming.

How many people actually know Maher is part Jewish? He talks about his Catholic upbringing all the time rarely if ever about being Jewish. People have been criticizing blacks for using the N-Word and its variations since the 80s. Stopantisemitism.org whom I mentioned in the OP goes after anti-Zionist Jews.

Going a bit off topic what also surprises me is that the anti-woke Maher who is always criticizing the overemphases on group identity is baffled by this. I am reminded of a conversation we had about something Whoopi Goldberg said where you went off on me for saying when I was growing up and Jews were considered a white ethnic group that was the best diaspora ever, and that “wokeness” with its emphasis on group oppression and privilege is bad for Jews because history has shown that when Jews are racialized it does not end well. I understand most not getting this because whatever the left was doing badly, it seemingly paled in comparison to marchers saying Jews will not replace us, right wing mass shootings at synagogues, Trump constantly using dual loyalty tropes, and having a meal with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West. I am surprised by a person with Mahers way of thinking missing it.

So, what you're saying is that you think more people should have misunderstood and/or misrepresented what Maher said? Seems like an odd point to make.

Also, say what you will about Donald Trump, calling him antisemitic isn't really going to stick given his family connections and record in the Middle East.

This thread is not about whether he should or should not have been misunderstood but that the media the way they are misunderstood or more likely just missed it and wondering why.

That last paragraph is based on my reading progressive Jews feeling betrayed by fellow progressives in general and in particular to Maher’s surprise at the ferocity and breadth of the current antisemitic outbreak. I have no problem wondering why progressives missed the antisemitism coming from their ideological peers. You would call it Trump Derangement Syndrome. I have been. saying something similar to what I said in that last paragraph for at least 5 years. I have gotten reactions you are familiar with, the woke threat is a nothing burger, it is something but way overhyped, there is no both sides here and if you claim otherwise you are a racist or are being played by racists. And in those years as the left constantly reminded us right wing terrorism was killing more people. So like I wrote the threat from Trump/MAGA’s/right seemed more obvious. The last few weeks have changed that.

Agreed that Israel/Palestine -- and the Middle East more generally -- gets a disproportionate amount of attention relative to, say, the Uyghurs. That disproportionate amount of attention comes not just from the left, but from American society as a whole, including the mass media. Obvious possible reasons for this include:

1) Israel is regarded as a holy land, by not just Jews but also by Christians and Muslims, who together constitute at least half the world's population.

2) Within the U.S.A., there is no big pro-China/anti-Uyghur movement analogous to the evangelical Christian pro-Zionist movement here in the U.S.A. There is no major religious movement, here in the U.S.A., claiming that God commands us all to "bless China" at the expense of the Uyghurs.

3) The Middle East is strategically valuable to the West, in ways that Xinjiang Uyghur isn't.

4) Plain old white racism. I suspect that residual racism may subconsciously make it easier for white Westerners, even leftists, to care more about the near-white Palestinians than about the slightly darker-hued Uyghurs.

Seems likely.

Pretty much this. Plus...

We and the Chinese government already hate each other's guts and have an 80 year long "adversarial" relationship. In contrast Israel is not only our ally...its been our biggest recipient of foreign aid for over half of a century. We make Israel's foriegn policy for them pretty much So what they do reflects on us. And Israel at least pretends to be democracy. And on top of that we have leverage over Israel (because of the alliance and aid and the involvement of US interest groups like Jews and like Christian Evangelicals in Israel). So protesting Israel is like petitioning our own government . Protesting China is like complaining to God about the weather (pointless) .

And has anyone ever heard of a place called "Tibet"?

And as matter of fact Chinese oppression of Tibet WAS a cause celeb in the West for decades. And still is to some degree. But because we have no leverage over China...western concern over Tibet didnt do Tibet much good. So concern about the more recent stories of oppression of the Uighurs is likely just as futile..so thats why there isnt much of a groundswell about it.

And China has leverage over US (they make every damned thing we buy in shopping malls).

So the West is not really being hyporcritical.

But the Muslim world IS being hypocritical. The Uighurs are a Muslim group. Oppressed about as much the Palestinians by a non Muslim nation. But you dont hear about it much in the Muslim world.

Beijing is now partnering with the newly reinstated Taliban regime in Afghanstan to build infrastructure. And part of their mutual agreement IS...that the Taliban cant say anything about China's oppression of the Muslim Uighurs. From what I understand thats even a specific agreement in writing.

That's a good point. Here in the U.S.A. at least, because Israel depends on support from the U.S.A., protests against Israel's policies are more likely to have an effect than protests against China's policies, hence may be seen as more worthwhile. That's a legitimate reason to focus on Israel.

Another legitimate reason (as far as Western leftists, in particular, are concerned) is that, given that Israel and the Middle East are already being shoved in our faces 24/7 anyhow by the mass media, many leftists feel compelled to take a stand against obvious injustices.


Yep.

On the other hand, another possible not-so-good reason why the Uighurs don't get as much attention as Tibet did, from the Western mass media, might be Islamophobia, given that the Uighurs are Muslim.


Yep. That's a problem.


Yep. China is a great power, a budding superpower, thus can much more easily get its way.

While perceived disproportionate attention towards Israel is an issue the main and secondary issues intended for this thread are no attention to what Maher said and progressive Jews downplaying or ignoring “woke antisemitism”.

I am not buying that Maher has no influence. His shows air late Friday evening and often he is trending the next day. He was trending the next day for the show in question for the left are now the ones carrying Tiki Torches remark not the something about the Jews remark.

As far as the progressive Jews missing or downplaying “woke antisematism” or identity politics on steroids related antisemitism the evidence has been there for a while. The 2018 Women’s March was cochaired by three people with ties to “Jews are Termites” Louis Farrakhan. While that was so obvious they had to leave that it got so far was no oversite. The Washington D.C. Dyke March the following year banned pride flags with star of david symbols. BLM has been sympathetic to the Palestinian and not the Israel cause since the get go and one chapter paid the bail for an apparent Black Hebrew that shot at a Jewish mayoral candidate. More importantly BLM was instrumental in popularizing the white privilege and white adjacent ideas. The last Israel-Hamas War in 2021 also featured clashes between pro Israel and pro Palestinian demonstrators, demonstrators chanting from river to sea and random attacks on Jews. While those incidents and since then Jewish students feeling unsafe on campuses, and Jews feeling fearful of being openly Jewish and antisemitism from the left in general have been discussed in mainstream Jewish circles I had not seen it much from strong progressive Jews until now.

Besides the concurrent MAGA phenomenon I have a couple of theories as to why progressives missed what I was able to see. I went to Hebrew school just 20 years after the Holocaust ended. We were taught do not take for granted how well Jews are doing in the U.S. Jews were just as assimilated in Germany and look how that ended up. While the Holocaust has always been taught since I don’t know in what way. In the 1970s the plight of the Jews in the Soviet Union was a cause celebre, so the idea that not only Nazis but left wingers can be dangerous to Jews was not foreign to me.

From the 1960s until the 2010s outside of one offs and schoolyard bullying which you probably did not experience unless you grew up in a non Jewish neighborhood like me you had little experience with it personally and certainly had little reason view it as an existential threat to you if you lived in America. Even during the 2020 great awokening while the left wing antisemitism was there you had to be of the right mindset to notice it or to feel that intersectionality in its “oppression olympics” form was dangerous. That is because the emphasis was unearthing non obvious systematic racism in general and police brutality in particular.

Those are theories, who really knows?

I truly think the few people who actually paid attention saw it as verbal irony.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30807881/#:~:text=Verbal%20irony%20is%20a%20figure,with%20the%20intent%20to%20criticise.