Anti-Semitism at Netroots Nation

I fail to understand why such groups are labelled progressive. In truth, Netroots Nation, meeting this week in Philadelphia is full-on-radical left. 

The Wall Street Journal describes the confab, which has its very own Joan of Arc, Elizabeth Warren:

The nation’s biggest progressive conference is rife with racial politics: multiple panels on race, an hourlong “quiet space/meditation for people of color,” even a table run by a group that solicits “reparations” from white men, which it promises to pay out directly. State Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania complains in a speech that the Democratic tent “seems to get smaller when loud, proud, black progressive women show up.”

Yet the crowd’s favored candidate doesn’t check the minority box—at least not anymore. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is the darling of Netroots Nation, an annual gathering that this year drew an estimated 3,900 people. Most of the attendees I talk to who have a favorite candidate say she’s the one. It doesn’t hurt that she showed up, along with Julián Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand and Jay Inslee.

It’s not all about racism. The conference also featured one Marc Lamont Hill, a man whose ravings about Israel got him fired from CNN. (For the record, Hill got his media start on Fox News.) When you are too far left to work for CNN, you have a problem. Anyway, Hill ranted about how Zionism is a form of bigotry… because Jews, well, you know, are white supremacists.

Ben Jacobs reports for Jewish Insider:

Former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill claimed that news outlets like NBC and ABC were “Zionist organizations” that produced “Zionist content,” during a panel on Friday at the annual Netroots Nation summit held by progressive activists in Philadelphia….

He made his comments during a panel on “embedding Palestinian rights in the 2020 agenda,” which also featured statements that Israel was engaged in a “white supremacist” project.

In response to a question from the audience, Hill described the choices faced by young journalists when they tell stories about Palestinians.

“They’re like, I want to work for Fox, or I want to work for ABC or NBC or whoever. I want to tell these stories,” he said. “You have to make choices about where you want to work. And if you work for a Zionist organization, you’re going to get Zionist content. And no matter how vigorous you are in the newsroom, there are going to be two, three, four, 17, or maybe one powerful person — not going to suggest a conspiracy — all news outlets have a point of a view. And if your point of view competes with the point of view of the institution, you’re going to have challenges.”

At the summit, t-shirts were sold grouping Zionism with racism, sexism, homophobia and antisemitism as maladies to be “resisted.”

And that was not all. Another speaker was more explicit and more radical:

Other panelists on Friday seemed to imply a desire to eliminate the State of Israel entirely. Noura Erekat, a professor at George Mason University, proclaimed “the whole land is occupied” and said those “still having conversations about a two-state solution are either ignorant or malicious.”

Erekat also described Hawaii as occupied and discussed an “explicit project” led by Ashkenazi Jews in Israel to avoid “sully[ing] the blood line with becoming dark and oriental” by mixing with Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews.

The Netroots Nation summit also included a training session on “making Palestine part of the progressive agenda,” where Israel was described as helping to drive the “environmental crisis” due to its role “driving the profits of the petrochemical companies and the weapons industry.”

These are, apparently, Elizabeth Warren supporters. Will anyone ask her to repudiate these blatant expressions of anti-Semitism? And why would she appear at a conference whose ideological leanings are so blatantly anti-Semitic?

And then, how many other media outlets are really covering Netroots Nation?