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Tuesday, October 11, 2011

 
OWS And Anti-Semitism

One of the driving forces behind the Occupy Wall Street protests is Adbusters, an environmentalist and anti-consumerist organization based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

"Anti-consumerism" is a movement that claims that the Western world buys too many luxury consumer goods. Think of Adbusters as Greenpeace meets Fra Girolamo Savonarola, the Florentine Dominican friar who had instigated the most famous of the historic Bonfires of the Vanities.

Aside from OWS, Adbusters launched the anti-consumerist Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week campaigns.

It also has a nasty anti-Semitic Street, as Rush Limbaugh describes:

You know, Adbusters is also very much involved in the Occupy Wall Street Now movement. And David Brooks, you know, a clock is right twice a day. David Brooks has a column in the New York Times today with an interesting implication. He writes that the impetus for Occupy Wall Street was sparked by Adbusters magazine.

Now, Adbusters magazine, you may not have heard of them, but within certain circles Adbusters magazine is known for quite a lot and one of the things that they did that stands out was an essay in 2004 entitled "Why Won't They Say They Are Jewish?" David Brooks says that that 2004 essay in Adbusters outed influential Jews as a tiny elite with a nefarious grip on America. The old Jewish power brokers, the movies, the bankers, that stereotype, that conspiracy theory.

Commentary writer Abe Greenwald sees lots of anti-Semitism among the OWS protests (hat tip to Rand Simberg):

The Jew-hatred among protesters and sympathizers is diverse and unapologetic. It is, in fact, atmospheric. Tune in randomly to live television coverage of the spectacle and you’ll see—as I did—placards scapegoating Israel, Zionism, or “Hitler’s bankers.” Check out the continuous flurry of protest-supporting tweets and blog posts, and you’ll get more of the same.

Glenn Beck caught one anti-Semitic rant. Note that nearby OWS protesters do nothing to diss the ranter.

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