There was a student group on Haverford's campus who called for the complete dismantling of the apartheid settler colonial state of Israel. By all means necessary. What does by all means necessary mean to you? Invoking that kind of terminology is repugnant because of what it can mean, [00:00:19] and I will not. - So does that depend on the context? - I will not defend that statement. So what disciplinary action was taken against that group or those individuals who made that call? Any disciplinary action. Disciplinary action can include expulsion. [00:00:36] And I'm not asking what it can include. I'm asking was it taken? So that is Representative Elise Stefanik shredding the president of Haverford University. Who I think Stefanik wanted the president to not be willing to condemn the student [00:00:52] speech that Stefanik pointed out, but the president did actually condemn it. And so Stefanik had to move to the next thing, which is, I guess, did you, I don't know, expel all of those students. Did you call up ice so we can start deporting the ones where we can do that? I don't know, but Stefanik was out for blood because this is a convenient thing [00:01:10] where the Republicans get to cosplay as if they care about antisemitism, so long as antisemitism is defined as purely being, speech. That's, I don't know, defensive towards civilians that are dying in Gaza or in some cases perhaps is too critical of Israel in the topic of this war. [00:01:26] That is one battlefield where Elise Stefanik and the Republicans feel like they don't look like the ones who have invited long term anti-Semites and literal KKK members, Nazis, into their party. The issue here is that there was an attempt by the other side [00:01:42] to point out some other issues around the topic of anti-Semitism that don't just start and stop with student speech. You had Jewish faculty members at some of the universities in question, as well as, Representative Greg Kassar calling out Republicans for their positions [00:01:57] and in some cases, weird missteps on the topic of Of anti-Semitism. So I just want to let you know that the hearing that you're seeing right there had, three different universities, being represented, Cal Poly, SLO, Haverford, the president we talked about, and DePaul University as well. [00:02:13] So it was the Haverford president, Wendy Raymond, talking with Stefanik. Right there. But we're going to turn now to, the Democratic representative, talking about some of the comments previously made by RFK Jr and President Donald Trump. Donald Trump said after neo-Nazis marched through Charlottesville that they were, [00:02:33] quote, very fine people on both sides. If you condemn Donald Trump saying this, will you raise your hand? RFK, the head of health and Human Services, [00:02:52] spread an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Covid was engineered to target white and black people. But spare Jewish people If you condemn the head of the US Health and Human Services for spreading this antisemitic conspiracy [00:03:11] theory, will you please raise your hand? Now, it doesn't look like anyone raised their hand in either of those cases. A cameraman did raise the camera, but I think he was just looking for a better angle. I don't think he was actually participating in what the representative [00:03:26] was doing there. And look, you could add a lot of other examples. I mean, they talked about the the conspiracy theory that RFK Jr spread about Jewish people helping to engineer the virus. But what about the great replacement theory? It was a long time antisemitic conspiracy theory, implying that Jewish people have [00:03:44] worked around the world to bring migrants in, to take over and destabilize America. There have been mass shootings against synagogues explicitly founded on a passionate belief in that conspiracy theory, and those who have spread it have not been shunned from the Republican Party. [00:04:00] They've been embraced. Donald Trump goes on Alex Jones. He's a fan of him that that Stew Peters guy who was literally joked about a Final Solution. He has Republicans on all the time. You can reference Jewish space lasers. You can do all that stuff. Okay. [00:04:15] You can cozy up to all these different groups, but they in the same way that they feel like, you know, after years and years of demonizing women, stripping away their rights, they can just now attack trans people, and that's defending women. They feel like they have a thing where now we're defending Jewish people in this one very narrowly tailored battlefield. [00:04:32] But anyway, we have more examples. We'll get to those. David, what do you make of all this? I think narrowly tailored is the perfect way to describe this. I've always been sort of thinking that the Republican view about anti-Semitism and about Jewish people in general is so peculiar. Most Republicans seem to think that the only issue Jewish people care about is Israel. And that's it. [00:04:50] And by the way, most Jewish people criticize the Israeli government. Most Israelis are critical of the way the Netanyahu government has handled the war in Gaza. But putting that aside, the reason that 70% of Jewish people are Democrats is because a they care more about things like women's rights and trans rights and progress and justice [00:05:10] and education and equal rights. All of that matters far more than the status of Israel in a particular war against terrorists or Hamas or whatever it is. But yet Republicans seem to think, oh, if we have these hearings where we accuse [00:05:25] universities of being anti-Semitic because they allow protesters against Israel, somehow we're going to get more Republican Jewish votes. It doesn't work that way. And at a certain point, I think it's going to dawn on at least some Republicans that Jewish people are not as simplistic and narrowly focused [00:05:43] as the Republicans seem to think. Yeah. And a lot of them seem to believe that it took Donald Trump for him to just like he blurts it out at his rallies, basically like implying that, you know, if you're a Christian or whatever, then maybe you're really interested in, like, I don't know, civil rights or the economy or whatever, [00:06:00] but if you're Jewish, it's just Israel. That's it. And so he literally will refer to people who've decided to support the Democrats as traitors, as if they should have more loyalty to a country that maybe they've never been to. They've literally never been there. But in his mind, that's the area that you can occupy. [00:06:18] And look, we let's give some other examples. You know, I know these aren't students. These are people with actual power, so there shouldn't be any consequences for them. But, Republican Representative Tim Walberg of Michigan is associated with the Moody Bible Institute, which, according to the memo, quote, trained students to convert Jewish people [00:06:34] to Christianity, which isn't very polite. Representative Mark Harris of North Carolina once said that until Jews and Muslims accept Jesus Christ, quote, there will never be peace in their soul or peace in their city. The faculty also condemned committee member Mary Miller of Illinois, [00:06:51] who, in a speech outside the US Capitol the day before the January 6th attack, quoted Hitler and said he was, quote, right on one thing when he said that whoever has the youth has the future, which Miller later apologized for. And I want to be very clear. [00:07:06] You can imply that the kids are the future without quoting Adolf. Okay. I think you could figure out a way. And there's others. We could talk. Okay, so a memo sent by some of the members, points to Appalachian State University, North Carolina, [00:07:22] in a district that committee member Virginia Foxx has represented for two decades, where in recent years, anti-Semitic groups have distributed promotional materials, scratched swastikas and racist slurs onto the car of a Jewish student, spray painted swastikas, and covered campus spaces with anti-Semitic stickers. [00:07:37] The university, quote, the memo notes, is not among those facing congressional investigations because, again, it's not about generalized concern about anti-Semitism. If it was, they would police their own people far more. It's about this particular topic, which, as we pointed out, narrowly tailored. [00:07:54] It's fun. Let's let's them do a little bit of cosplay, but also it fits in with their other goals, like cracking down on universities, cracking down on the speech of young people in general, definitely, but also perhaps paving the way to remove federal funding for universities, as they're trying to do with Harvard, [00:08:10] perhaps remove tax exempt status, basically just crack down in an area where they feel like it's more liberal than conservative. And so it's sort of like the perfect storm for them. But anyway, I'm going to just one more thing and then we'll discuss, representative Randy. Fine. [00:08:26] Was also called out by the memo, a Republican congressman who reportedly threatened to burn his own synagogue to the ground for hiring an LGBTQ plus staff member, which seems like something a terrorist would do. Honestly. But. Sorry, David, what do you think? [00:08:42] No. Every religion has its, every group has its nutballs. We talk about anti-Semitism and let's be clear, anti-Semitism is a problem. And I think we should all agree anti-Semitism is getting worse. And we all have a responsibility to try to address anti-Semitism, whether it's, you know, in academia, whether it's on college campuses, whether [00:09:00] it's in the public square, that's fine. We should address anti-Semitism. But the way you increase anti-Semitism is through holding back on educational funds and federal funds to universities because of Israel protests. [00:09:15] Or you hold or you eliminate. You put pressure on universities because they're not doing enough to crack down on anti-Israel speech. That, in a sense, actually creates more antisemitism. And so if the whole goal here, if you want to take Republicans at their word, [00:09:31] oh, this is all about cracking down on anti-Semitism, then the Republicans should stop pressuring these universities, stop cutting their budgets, stop funding the funding because you don't like the speech about Israel, because in doing that, you're actually ratcheting up even more [00:09:47] antisemitism than exists today. 100%. And in a larger sense, look, it would be difficult to do, but in some way maybe help to fight back against the rise of conspiracism and fake news and all of that stuff that it's inherently tied into. [00:10:03] Like the people who want easy scapegoats are always going to go to populations that are smaller, that they may not individually know members of that population. That's why it's so easy for so many conservatives who've never had a trans person wrong them in their life, believe that trans people [00:10:19] are behind every ill in our society. It's also easy for some people, depending on where you live in America, to do that towards Jewish people, because they may not know Jewish people. And the conspiracism around Jewish individuals has been around for so long that it's easy to tap into that. And look, there's anti-Semitism to go around. [00:10:36] It exists in all corners along, all points on the political spectrum. But I think we'd be crazy to not acknowledge that it has had very fertile ground among some right wingers over the past few decades in America. And so this is a this is a big topic. It needs to be fought back against in a lot of different ways. [00:10:52] But the idea that Elise Stefanik is going to point the finger at, like, Haverford University is as if they're causing it. I have a feeling that's probably not the base, cause. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.