Readers Write: Public better served confronting bad ideas

The Island Now

Re “Trump, Soros and the news media” (Port Washington Times, Dec. 30):

At the risk of giving further undeserved attention to John O’Kelly’s anti-Semitic views, I feel compelled to respond to his latest letter in which he endeavors to defend the indefensible.

First, he blames this newspaper for the headline claiming Donald Trump’s victory as a victory for Christians, as though there were no basis in his letter for that headline.

In fact, I counted at least four assertions by Mr. O’Kelly that the opposition to Mr. Trump was “anti-Christian” and two more referencing the Christianity of Mr. Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Sounds like a call for a victory lap for Christianity to me.

Second, he accuses the letter writers who responded to his initial screed (one of which was the undersigned) of engaging in ad hominem attacks, as if this somehow excused his recital of age-old anti-Semitic tropes about “Rothschild bankers,” “anti-American globalists” and “the bankers’ plan for an international, atheistic, totalitarian world order,” among others.

His words sound as if they were lifted right out of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” that infamous anti-Semitic tract initially published in the Russian Empire to incite pogroms against Jews and published by Henry Ford in America and by the Nazis to stir up anti-Jewish sentiment.

Finally, Mr. O’Kelly seeks to cloak his bigotry with the mantle of “populism,” as though that somehow gives him license to utter the most virulent anti-Semitic slanders.

As I wrote before, there can be no mistaking Mr. O’Kelly’s meaning, nothing less than thinly veiled anti-Semitism.

That said, I agree with Mr. O’Kelly that the First Amendment allows him to voice his offensive beliefs and Blank Slate Media to publish them.

As the publisher states in his editorial, “we are better served by confronting ignorant or hateful ideas than pretending they don’t exist.”

Now that Mr. O’Kelly’s critics have confronted his bigotry, the time has come for Mr. O’Kelly to take to heart their criticisms instead of attacking them.

There is no place for prejudice in our society.

 

Jay N. Feldman

Port Washington

P.S.  Thank you to Blank Slate Media for providing a forum in which bigotry can be openly addressed.

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