I’ve never been offended by anything I have ever heard. What kind of wimp bases an essay on somebody’s ‘offensive’ words? Words are only offensive to those who choose to get offended. Whenever I see an argument based on ‘offense,’ I know I’m dealing with a writer whose moral foundation is his feelings. We expect this from women (which is one reason women cannot serve as witnesses in Jewish law), but when a man does it, it is pathetic.
There are only two honorable forms of argument — to contest facts and logic. This Tabletmag essay tries to construct an argument by heaping on the slurs and hurt feelz.
Yesterday’s New York Times featured an illuminating profile of Momentum, the hard-left political activist organization that has effectively captured Britain’s Labour party for its radical leader Jeremy Corbyn. Co-written by reporter Stephen Castle and the Times‘ excellent London bureau chief Steven Erlanger, the article opened with an enthusiastic quote from the group’s vice chair, Jackie Walker, who exclaims, “We’re part of the biggest political movement in the last 50 years! The seeds we are sowing, who knows what fruit they will bring?”
What the piece does not mention is that Jackie Walker is an anti-Semite who blamed the Jews for being the “chief financiers” of the slave trade, falsely criticized Britain’s official Holocaust Memorial Day for not commemorating non-Jewish victims of genocide (it does), argued that Jewish schools do not need extra security in the face of threats, and said she hasn’t “heard a definition of anti-Semitism that I can work with.”
After her comment about Jews being behind the slave trade—a popular anti-Semitic conspiracy theory debunked by academics—Walker was suspended from the Labour party in May. But by the end of the month, she was reinstated, with no explanation from the party as to why she’d been cleared and no apology on her part. This week, Walker went after Holocaust Memorial Day and security at Jewish schools, provoking outrage across the political spectrum. (The recording of Walker’s most recent comments was leaked the day of the Times’ story, so it could not have been included.)
