Jan 11: "have protested this blood libel"
Jan. 14th, 2011 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bemused_leftistETA: More examples, from Daily Howler. Also trying to collect all my previous examples below the cut here.
"Some surprising sources,however, have protested this blood libel."
-- refugee50s
Please note these links are to excellent comments made by "refugee50s" at James Nicoll's blog, in opposition to Nicoll's anti-Palin remark.
Posted at 2011-01-11 08:35 am UTC at
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/2828404.html?thread=54086004#t54086004
His post contains much good information and links, as do his neighboring posts at
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/2828404.html?thread=53993076#t53993076
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/2828404.html?thread=54009716#t54009716
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/2828404.html?thread=54107252#t54107252
ETA: Removed wrong attribution -- my error, and thanks to InteractiveLeaf for the heads up.
Some of the following were in previous entries here.
Other precedents and support for 'blood libel' as a US political term. Apparently no one objected to the term on those occasions, even though the Salon examples sound like the sort of leisurely elite talk shows where objection would have fitted in well.
From Salon:
Mike Barnicle said that the Swift Boaters' accusation against Kerry was a blood libel.
Tony Blankley said that a Time report on a possible massacre of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines was being used as a blood libel against the military, "a propoganda catastrophe" for the US.
Tucker Carlson said that an accusation against Ashcroft was a blood libel being resurrected by the Center for American Progress (accusing him of advance knowledge of the 9/11 attack).
Source: Salon's, oh dear, War Room....
salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/12/blood_libel_politics/index.html
Worth reading Salon for the context of these usages. The speakers all sound like they're using a familiar term in a familiar sense.
Since 1773, maybe.
----------------
What Rove is giving voice to here is nothing less than the new blood libel of our age: that those who oppose the Bush Administration's unconstitutional actions are opening the door to a new 9/11. The implication is clear: anyone who speaks up for the Constitution is working for the death of innocent Americans.
mathaba.net/news/?x=542246
By Chris Floyd, the author of Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime
I googled for anyone objecting to Floyd's use of the term, but found none.
------------------
To be sure, America should embrace civil political discourse for its own sake, and no political faction should engage in demonizing rhetoric. But promoting this high principle by simultaneously violating it and engaging in a blood libel against innocent parties is both irresponsible and immoral.
-- Rabbi Boteach
---------------
Lost the cite on this:
In fact, as Jim Geraghty of National Review Online documents, the use of the term “blood libel” in political discourse is common both on the left and the right to describe incendiary false accusations which tend to blame a person for inciting violence and making the person a target of violence.
Much like the use of the term “holocaust” (e.g., nuclear holocaust) is not used in the strict sense of The Holocaust, the use of the term “blood libel” does not offend the traditional meaning of the term.
The looser, more modern usage of the term certainly seems to fit here.
-------------------
online.wsj.com/.../SB10001424052748703583404576079823067585318.html -
Judaism rejects the idea of collective responsibility for murder.
Despite the strong association of the term with collective Jewish guilt and concomitant slaughter, Sarah Palin has every right to use it. The expression may be used whenever an amorphous mass is collectively accused of being murderers or accessories to murder.
The abominable element of the blood libel is not that it was used to accuse Jews, but that it was used to accuse innocent Jews—their innocence, rather than their Jewishness, being the operative point. Had the Jews been guilty of any of these heinous acts, the charge would not have been a libel.
---------------------
Support and disapproval:
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League:
“While the term ‘blood-libel’ has become part of the English parlance to refer to someone being falsely accused, we wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one so fraught with pain in Jewish history.”
politico.com/news/stories/0111/47490.html
-------------------------
ETA: More, from Daily Howler at
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh011311.shtml
OLBERMANN (1/12/11): The term is used by others. Our friend Gene Robinson used it after the false charges of a woman in Pennsylvania before the 2008 election. He said it was the equivalent of—or towards that affect, of the blood libel. Usually, when somebody invokes it, it`s related to actual persecution of another group.
[....]
Dan Savage, MSNBC, 10/12/10. (A group of Hasidic Jews had directed a “blood libel” against gay and lesbian citizens.)
Gene Robinson, MSNBC, 10/24/08. (A bogus accusation had revived “the blood libel against black men concerning the defilement of the flower of Caucasian womanhood.”)
[....]
Frank Rich, New York Times, 10/15/06. (Bush administration allies had spread a “blood libel” against gays.)
[....]
Alex Beam, Boston Globe, 1/14/05. (The claim that two Globe executives had used and tolerated use of the N-word “amounted to ‘blood libel’ against” the execs.)
Andrew Sullivan, The Advocate, 2/2/02. (The claim that gays can’t be trusted around children is “the oldest blood-libel against us.”)
Rep. Peter Deutsch, D-FL, CNN, 11/20/00. (“The accusation that Vice President Gore tried to stop military ballots…literally rises to the level of blood libel.”)
Thomas Oliphant, Boston Globe, 11/18/97. (Seymour Hersh had directed a “blood libel” against Kenneth O’Donnell, the former Kennedy aide.)
On December 19, 2000, Jack Kemp told Chris Matthews on Hardball that the NAACP had run a “brutal, ad hominem, blood-libel ad against George W. Bush.”
------------------------
"Some surprising sources,however, have protested this blood libel."
-- refugee50s
Please note these links are to excellent comments made by "refugee50s" at James Nicoll's blog, in opposition to Nicoll's anti-Palin remark.
Posted at 2011-01-11 08:35 am UTC at
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/2828404.html?thread=54086004#t54086004
His post contains much good information and links, as do his neighboring posts at
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/2828404.html?thread=53993076#t53993076
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/2828404.html?thread=54009716#t54009716
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/2828404.html?thread=54107252#t54107252
ETA: Removed wrong attribution -- my error, and thanks to InteractiveLeaf for the heads up.
Some of the following were in previous entries here.
Other precedents and support for 'blood libel' as a US political term. Apparently no one objected to the term on those occasions, even though the Salon examples sound like the sort of leisurely elite talk shows where objection would have fitted in well.
From Salon:
Mike Barnicle said that the Swift Boaters' accusation against Kerry was a blood libel.
Tony Blankley said that a Time report on a possible massacre of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines was being used as a blood libel against the military, "a propoganda catastrophe" for the US.
Tucker Carlson said that an accusation against Ashcroft was a blood libel being resurrected by the Center for American Progress (accusing him of advance knowledge of the 9/11 attack).
Source: Salon's, oh dear, War Room....
salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/12/blood_libel_politics/index.html
Worth reading Salon for the context of these usages. The speakers all sound like they're using a familiar term in a familiar sense.
Since 1773, maybe.
----------------
What Rove is giving voice to here is nothing less than the new blood libel of our age: that those who oppose the Bush Administration's unconstitutional actions are opening the door to a new 9/11. The implication is clear: anyone who speaks up for the Constitution is working for the death of innocent Americans.
mathaba.net/news/?x=542246
By Chris Floyd, the author of Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime
I googled for anyone objecting to Floyd's use of the term, but found none.
------------------
To be sure, America should embrace civil political discourse for its own sake, and no political faction should engage in demonizing rhetoric. But promoting this high principle by simultaneously violating it and engaging in a blood libel against innocent parties is both irresponsible and immoral.
-- Rabbi Boteach
---------------
Lost the cite on this:
In fact, as Jim Geraghty of National Review Online documents, the use of the term “blood libel” in political discourse is common both on the left and the right to describe incendiary false accusations which tend to blame a person for inciting violence and making the person a target of violence.
Much like the use of the term “holocaust” (e.g., nuclear holocaust) is not used in the strict sense of The Holocaust, the use of the term “blood libel” does not offend the traditional meaning of the term.
The looser, more modern usage of the term certainly seems to fit here.
-------------------
online.wsj.com/.../SB10001424052748703583404576079823067585318.html -
Judaism rejects the idea of collective responsibility for murder.
Despite the strong association of the term with collective Jewish guilt and concomitant slaughter, Sarah Palin has every right to use it. The expression may be used whenever an amorphous mass is collectively accused of being murderers or accessories to murder.
The abominable element of the blood libel is not that it was used to accuse Jews, but that it was used to accuse innocent Jews—their innocence, rather than their Jewishness, being the operative point. Had the Jews been guilty of any of these heinous acts, the charge would not have been a libel.
---------------------
Support and disapproval:
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League:
“While the term ‘blood-libel’ has become part of the English parlance to refer to someone being falsely accused, we wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one so fraught with pain in Jewish history.”
politico.com/news/stories/0111/47490.html
-------------------------
ETA: More, from Daily Howler at
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh011311.shtml
OLBERMANN (1/12/11): The term is used by others. Our friend Gene Robinson used it after the false charges of a woman in Pennsylvania before the 2008 election. He said it was the equivalent of—or towards that affect, of the blood libel. Usually, when somebody invokes it, it`s related to actual persecution of another group.
[....]
Dan Savage, MSNBC, 10/12/10. (A group of Hasidic Jews had directed a “blood libel” against gay and lesbian citizens.)
Gene Robinson, MSNBC, 10/24/08. (A bogus accusation had revived “the blood libel against black men concerning the defilement of the flower of Caucasian womanhood.”)
[....]
Frank Rich, New York Times, 10/15/06. (Bush administration allies had spread a “blood libel” against gays.)
[....]
Alex Beam, Boston Globe, 1/14/05. (The claim that two Globe executives had used and tolerated use of the N-word “amounted to ‘blood libel’ against” the execs.)
Andrew Sullivan, The Advocate, 2/2/02. (The claim that gays can’t be trusted around children is “the oldest blood-libel against us.”)
Rep. Peter Deutsch, D-FL, CNN, 11/20/00. (“The accusation that Vice President Gore tried to stop military ballots…literally rises to the level of blood libel.”)
Thomas Oliphant, Boston Globe, 11/18/97. (Seymour Hersh had directed a “blood libel” against Kenneth O’Donnell, the former Kennedy aide.)
On December 19, 2000, Jack Kemp told Chris Matthews on Hardball that the NAACP had run a “brutal, ad hominem, blood-libel ad against George W. Bush.”
------------------------
