God bless Jake Tapper.
The other day, NewsBusters reported: “CNN’s Jake Tapper Breaks Through Media Blackout, Covers Louis Farrakhan Controversy.”
Among other things, Curtis Houck reported as follows:
After offering a slew of tweets about the mounting evidence of anti-Semitic and anti-gay comments by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, CNN’s Jake Tapper broke with the rest of his establishment media colleagues on Monday by spending nearly three minutes during The Lead exposing it.
“I want to turn to some news on Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam. He went on an anti-Semitic rant during a major speech a week ago — yesterday,” Tapper began at the 4:50 p.m. Eastern mark prior to a clip of Farrakhan railing against “the Jews” in Hollywood creating the rise of transgenderism.
Following the clip, Tapper noted that “despite the anti-Semitism and homophobia inherent in that clip, several leaders of the Women’s March were — are supporters of Farrakhan and have not condemned him” plus “[m]embers of the Congressional Black Caucus.”
The CNN host pointed to one of those CBC members in Democratic Congressman Danny Davis (Ill.), who told The Daily Caller’s Peter Hasson on Sunday that he “not only refused to denounce Farrakhan, he said ‘the world is bigger than him and his Jewish question.’”
An exasperated Tapper turned to former Obama administration official Jen Psaki and wondered:
‘Ah — why is it so tough for some people to condemn a rabid anti-Semite who is always misogynist and anti-LGBTQ?’”
Well, exactly.
Meanwhile over at Fox News was this headline: "Republican Jewish Coalition demands resignation of Democratic leaders with ties to Farrakhan."
That story says in part:
The Republican Jewish Coalition on Tuesday called on the seven members of the CBC members to resign. The coalition’s director, Matt Brooks, told Fox News the Democratic leaders with ties to Farrakhan have been quick to denounce President Donald Trump and the GOP for remarks or actions that they view as bigoted, but overlook blatant racism and anti-Semitism when it comes to Farrakhan.
“There’s clearly a double standard,” Brooks said, then amended that to say “No, there’s a double double-standard. Not only do you get the progressive left wing and more centrist Democrats who aren’t shy about criticizing President Trump or branding the Republican Party as white nationalists or neo-Nazis, but when it comes to condemning Louis Farrakhan, they’re silent.
…The members called on to resign were the subject of a story in The Daily Caller, which reported a review of videos, photographs and other documents revealed the lawmakers have had ties to Farrakhan. They are Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Maxine Waters of California, Danny Davis of Illinois, Al Green of Texas, Barbara Lee of California, Andre Carson of Indiana, and Gregory Meeks of New York.
Bingo.
The liberal media, aside from being liberal, is not much for parsing the roots of political philosophy. So it falls to others to point out that anti-Semitism, neo-Nazis and Nazis come from the Left — not the Right. No conservative worth his Reagan jelly beans believes in other than principles of freedom, liberty, capitalism and free markets. There is a reason that when one examines the platform of the American Nazi Party, aside from the flat out racism that is decidedly not that of the Party of Lincoln one finds statements like this:
“We also demand public control of all banking and credit institutions as well as all utilities and all monopolies, confiscation of all conglomerate holdings, cancellation of all usurious debt, comprehensive profit sharing in all basic industries, and the institution of a national program of interest-free loans for families, farmers, and small businessmen.”
Which is to say, these people are hardly conservatives. They are socialists. As pointed out long, long ago by the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises in his classic tome Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. Written in 1922, after World War II von Mises added an epilogue on the Nazis which begins thusly, with the italics supplied in the original:
The philosophy of the Nazis, the German National Socialist Labour Party, is the purest and most consistent manifestation of the anti-capitalistic and socialistic spirit of our age…..(The Nazi slogan of ‘the commonwealth ranks above private profit’) implies that profit-seeking business harms the vital interests of the immense majority, and that it is the sacred duty of popular government to prevent the emergence of profits by public control of production and distribution.
Exactly. There is nothing “conservative” about Nazis or Neo-Nazis, and that goes double for their anti-Semitism which, like the Nazis of old, is inextricably tied to anti-capitalism.
To say the least Jake Tapper has performed a serious service here in his role as a media host. Clearly, he gets it and has no hesitation in saying so. As I can testify from personal experience, going after those on the Left who have been flagged for anti-Semitism can cause an uproar — and in my case I was dispatched from CNN for a tweet from a column at The American Spectator that ridiculed the anti-Semitism of the Leftists who run Media Matters. A group fingered for anti-Semitism by no less than liberal Clinton supporter and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and others.
The question here is a simple one: Where is the mainstream media’s mass condemnation of Farrakhan? Not to mention those seven Democrats - sitting members of Congress - who play footsie with him? The hard fact here is that for the most part the media has been silent.
Jake Tapper, as noted by Mr. Houck here at NewsBusters, has indeed had the guts to stand up and break through the media blackout on this subject. The question now? Will his colleagues across the spectrum of the mainstream media leave him out there standing alone?
We shall see.
