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Notes -
Mayor Mamdani Bends the Knee - and the Problem with Left-Wing Antisemitism
According to Mamdani the initiative entails "investing millions in Jewish cultural centers and nonprofits" as well as bussing students to the Museum of Jewish Heritage. The high-level details are available in the report.
NYC already hosts two dedicated Holocaust Museums and 6 memorials, but the plan also "calls on the federal government to support Holocaust educational centers and museums in New York City, and to continue to support the large number of Holocaust survivors in NYC through existing federal programs. Additionally, the Mamdani administration supports federal legislative efforts to increase Holocaust educational programming." The plan also pledges $2 million capital investment in the design and construction of the Queens Holocaust Memorial.
The plan also includes a $2.5 capital investment in the Center for New Jewish Culture, a Jewish-dedicated private space. The plan also pledges additional NYPD resources for Jewish neighborhoods.
One of the fascinating aspects of this announcement is that it cites and then wildly misinterprets a passage from the Talmud:
The standard print versions of the Talmud, which Jews actually study, specify "mi-Yisrael" or the soul of a Jew. And this gets to the heart of the problem of left-wing antisemitism, especially with notorious left-wing commentators like Hasan Piker. They always denounce antisemitism in their diatribe against Israel. When in fact the right-Wing antisemites are correct that this is not only a problem with Israel, it is actually a problem with the way Jews politically and culturally organize in the United States. It leads to wildly inappropriate and disparate treatment of Jews in which they get all sorts of public funding and support for their dedicated spaces, combined with unlimited cultural veneration and educational propaganda.
This puts the left-wing antisemites in an impossible position, they are unwilling to admit that it's not just an Israel problem or a Netanyahu problem. The game they are trying to play is impossible, and trying to split those hairs just makes them get immediately bulldozed and subjugated in trying to defend themselves from the accusation of antisemitism.
If you're like me you've encountered Jews who were absolutely certain that Mamdani was going to bring Sharia to NYC and expel the Jews or something. Instead we just even more Jewish special treatment and taxpayer-financed privileges from the left-wing Israel critics who are completely in denial of the actual problem.
Politics in America is an enormous iceberg where all the weightiness exists under the surface. There are votes and then there are pre-votes and you can control the pre-votes by influencing media, news, algorithms, education, ad spending, and so on through advocacy groups. Mamdani is pretty clever because he allocated some money to Partners Against the Hate, which itself funds the Arab American Association of New York which itself funds anti-Muslim awareness campaigns. Of course, every possible category of person has these advocacy groups except for the people who actually created the country and bled for it, which makes quite literally zero sense, but I foresee this changing within the decade.
Recently I’ve been looking into the Indian advocacy network and it’s fascinating, just obviously fresh off the boat Hindus with clear ties to the Indian political state working in concert to weaponize thousands of Indian-origin advocacy groups for power —
In the case of Mamdani, I imagine he feels that he has to set a good example so that future Muslim politicians can point to him as an example for the next couple decades to come. I do not think he actually believes the stuff he’s saying wrt antisemitism. He’s doing his own group’s advocacy, Jews are doing their own advocacy, it’s advocacy all the way down. I guess the original Americans in this extended metaphor are the passengers on the Titanic.
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