I got a call from my mother saying she saw on the news that OWS is antisemitic

[mucifer]

She called me at 7:15 this morning upset. She is 78 years old. I explained to her that I went to the demonstration in Chicago that had 2000 people there and it was very diverse and that I was looking for ANY antisemitic signs I could find and found none. I told here I would find more information about these people were outliers and not welcome at whatever OWS protest they were at.

We did discuss Oakland and Scott Olsen and she did say that she heard about that on the news. (I forgot to ask her if it was local Chicago news she was watching or if it was nightline.) Whatever it was, it scared her.

When I get back from work I will google and email her more stuff to back up my points. I gotta get my facts straight. I'm going to dinner with her and my conservative brother on Saturday. Wish me luck.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. The antisemitic individuals at OWS are likely RW plants.

I've heard that OWS is doing what it can to dispel them from the protest.

[mucifer]

2. well it's not working so well yet.

[oberliner]

3. No they aren't

They are the same anti-semitic crackpots that always make an appearance at demonstrations of various stripes. Usually they are Larouche supporters or something along those lines.

The salient point is, there are very very few of them. The same numbers that crop up anytime there is any kind of rally against anything.

[Douglas Carpenter]

20. I doubt it. There is always going to be a few nuts who show up at any large gathering

There are probably some characters wondering around some OWS site purporting some theory about space aliens, the Masons, the British royal family and the vatican.

[oberliner]

4. Fox News and other RW sources are playing this up

The truth is there are only a miniscule number of such folks - and they are the usual crew that shows up at various protests of any kind.

[mucifer]

5. what bothers me is this was not fox news my mom hates fox news. nt

[oberliner]

17. What was her source?

Just curious.

[enough]

6. Here's some information on how and why that idea is being spread around:

From Talking Points Memo

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/charges_of_occupy_wall_street_anti_semitism_find_audience_on_the_right.php

[mucifer]

7. thanks!

[mod mom]

8. Good luck. My experience with fact challenged relatives didn't end well.

My mother idolized dick cheney and john bolton. She watched FAUX & listened to the oxy addict. Since we lived far away and my mother was in her 80's, both my husband and I would promised not to bring up politics as there was no rationalizing with her. She would always start spewing lies she had heard and we would be pushed to the point of challenging her falsehoods. Luckily on our last visit with her, she was reminiscing about the past and we got to spend one last visit with her with out the tension.

I swear those RW propaganda sites brainwashes people with their lies. My father was a union man and growing up my parents voted Democratic.

Good luck with your visit. Maybe with the harsh economic times, they will realized who the GOP is working for-the extremely wealthy and couls give a shit about the rest of us.

[mucifer]

11. my mother is pretty liberal. I'm pretty sure my dad if he were

alive and healthy would have gone to the rally with me. Even my brother who is fairly conservative, voted for Obama. He's kind of a mixed bag. But, I know him and he is a zionist and will be upset about the antisemitism claims.

My problem is my brother is much better at thinking on his feet in an argument.

[valerief]

9. The RW is changing the message. OWS now has to defend themselves rather than raise awareness against

corporate greed.

[woo me with science]

18. OWS has to defend itself. (caution: graphic)

Well, apparently so.

[valerief]

23. Yes. The Gilded Age goons are in full force, getting their rocks off hurting innocent people.

It's a travesty that never seems to end.

[Erose999]

10. As usual the media manages to find the one LaDoucher - er, I mean LaRoucher- who showed up.

[mucifer]

12. here's the video from local abc news:

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/video?id=8407425

It's 3 minutes long and made my stomach turn.

[Ian David]

13. Occupy Sukkah: Incorporating Jewish tradition into the protests

Occupy Sukkah: Incorporating Jewish tradition into the protests
http://blog.chron.com/believeitornot/2011/10/occupy-sukkah-incorporating-jewish-tradition-into-the-protests/

[peacetalksforall]

14. Ask her what percentage of Congress members are Jewish. Ask her who

led and then voted to repeal the Glass-Steagle Bill and what the ratio was of Christians to Jews.

I know that sounds smarmy because we barely know the details of this Bill in our head. But maybe we should research it and have it ready as one type of response.

What is more important is to emphasize how the elite owned multi-national companies own corporate tv and radio. They all have teams of the worst and they deliver the TALKING POINTS to them and it spreads like a Southwest fire.

This movement isn't going to go far if people resort to singling out people of the Jewish faith.

Many Jewish heroes stepped in to help the Civil Rights cause of Black-Americans. And it is not the only reason to use better judgement. It is indecent to smear an entire religious group for the crimes of a few mixed religion
thieves.

Talk to these people carrying those signs. (Expose them if they are imposter-provacateurs.)

Those sign holders are standing there with religious hate signs and are probably protesting with a group of people who could fall into a very well mixed group of Christians, Jews, Atheists, Buddhists, etc.

Take down those pompous thieves, but leave religion out of it. This is supposed to be a non-violent movement. Non-violent means more than just not destroying anything physically.

[firehorse]

15. At wall street, there was one guy with an anti semitic sign, he seemed "off" and he was 2 blocks

away from the masses at Zucotti.

The guy seemed homeless and a bit mental, and he was enjoying the attention of holding up his sign and everyone taking pictures of him. But I want to stress he was a lone wolf, not part of the pack. For every nutjob there are a 1000 people with their hearts in the right place. I'm not trying to put down homeless or people who could benefit from mental services, its just when you live in NYC there are people like this all the time who are a bit off, everyone knows it and nobody would think this guy is an authentic representative of the sentiments expressed at Zucotti.

These kinds of movements will attract all types, good and bad, but the if you stand there and count the people, the authentic demonstrators far outnumber the one lone wolf. It's unfortunate though that the media focuses on the one nutjob to make a sensationalist story instead of telling the fair real story.

[backtoblue]

16. I heard that shit on Fox last night

They showed a clip of a man ranting on how the Jews own everything and O'Fucktard gave him every bit of time to get his bullshit on the air. They are trying to divide us, as tools of those who have done so for a long time. It pisses me off that they didn't air the well-spoken gentleman who told the truth, but gave this man every second he needed to convince the masses that OWS is anti-semitic.

:mad:

[Bluenorthwest]

19. Any large group will attract nutters, especially in a city like NY

The nut with a nasty sign that I have seen in photos seems to be the same guy I have seen with such signs in NYC in the past, this is what he does, you can always find the crazy....

[Ikonoklast]

21. i have found that of you scratch a Paultard, you'll find an anti-Semite.

They hate the Fed.

The Fed controls the world economy.

The Fed is controlled by privately-held banks.

Those banks are all owned by Jews.

They try to hide it, but this always seems to come out in the end.

[starroute]

22. The most prominent sign-holder was there long before OWS

This originally appeared at Salon, though for some reason the link isn't coming up there.

http://occupywallst.org/forum/homeless-anti-semite-was-around-long-before-occupy/

Exhibit A in the ad (watch it below) is a sign-bearing man who yells that “Jews control Wall Street!” Now, as I’ve previously reported, Occupy protesters have taken to surrounding the man, who gave his name to me recently as David Smith, with rebuttal signs, including one that reads, “Asshole —>”. Smith has been hanging around Zuccotti Park nearly every day for a couple of weeks.

But as Josh Nathan-Kazis reports at the Forward, Smith started carrying anti-Semitic signs around the financial district long before Occupy Wall Street existed . . .

During a trip to Zuccotti Park to observe the early stages of the protest on September 19, two days after activists first set up camp there, the Forward’s Nate Lavey and I watched as Smith entered the plaza with his cardboard sign, was confronted by one vocal passerby, and then was chased out of the occupied plaza by a shouting mob of activists. Police eventually intervened to separate him from the crowd.

Smith is a familiar face to those of us who work downtown. The Forward office is a few blocks from Wall Street, and I saw him at least once earlier this summer, picketing silently near the New York Stock Exchange.