"Did Anti-Semitism Factor Into The Shooting Of Congresswoman Giffords?"
01/12/2011
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The mainstream media had been working themselves up into a frenzy of hatred over the last year against the voters of Arizona, ever since the passing of the state's illegal immigration bill. Thus, the press was primed to flagrantly misinterpret the Tucson Massacre.

From The New Republic, a story that let's you get a glimpse of the irrational attitudes that have so much impact over how The Narrative gets framed in the mainstream media.

A Gnawing Worry

Did anti-Semitism factor into the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords?

by David Greenberg

The papers have mentioned it mainly in passing. Had this happened a decade ago, I would not have fixed on this detail. But Gabrielle Giffords is Jewish. And her alleged assassin, Jared Lee Loughner, is reported to have admired Mein Kampf

He also admired the Communist Manifesto and To Kill a Mockingbird. Most of his reading list pretty much reflected the kind of books that get assigned in schools.
and claimed ties to the anti-Semitic hate group called American Renaissance.
No, he didn't. That's a libelous hoax. As is calling American Renaissance anti-Semitic or a hate group.
Was this an anti-Semitic attack? There is no significant evidence to conclude as much, since we know hardly anything about the suspected killer. And yet, I'm confident that I'm not the only one today with a gnawing worry.

... The news of the years since September 11 has been full of more anti-Semitism than any decade in my lifetime, from the murderous kind in Mumbai and the banlieues of Paris to the "genteel" variety espoused by Caryl Churchill and Stephen Walt and John Mearshimer [sic]. Much of it has been blithely tolerated.

Walt & Mearsheimer?
... My point is not to place blame but rather to call attention to the chill in the air, the silent worry-harbored, I suspect, in more quarters than we will hear from in the news media.

Forty-two years ago, when Sirhan Sirhan murdered Robert F. Kennedy because of his support for Israel, Americans everywhere despaired that the nation was coming apart at the seams, but Jews felt no special sense of fear. Today, in contrast, for all the Tea Party extremism, the streets are still calm. And yet, the sense of anxiety felt specifically by the Jews of America is, I suspect, considerably more acute.

Contributing Editor David Greenberg is a professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for the 2010-11 academic year.

Both poor Rep. Giffords and the assassin have (reportedly) one Jewish parent, but why let facts get in the way?
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