Maybe it’s because we’re so close to Christmas, and they resent celebrating the world’s most famous Jew. Maybe it’s because they want media coverage — for every thousand people disgusted by what they stand for, there are 10 or 12 who are eager to learn more. Or maybe it’s because in our slow, inexorable march to American fascism, these folks are relying on the most recent tactic from the despot’s playbook and its suggestions for useful idiots. Probably it’s a combination of all three.
But really, it was just ignorance and hate that led an anonymous, white-supremacist group to drop a bunch of anti-Semitic fliers in some of Greensboro’s toniest neighborhoods on Sunday morning.
That these fliers were dropped primarily in Old Irving Park and its environs — where a lot of Jewish folks live — suggests more an act of terror than recruitment, designed to strike fear. It names names, specifically people who work at the CDC, the US Dept. of Health & Human Services, Pfizer and a few other governmental/medical organizations. These are not public figures. Most of them are doctors.
The fliers are too stupid to be reproduced here; in broad strokes, the message implies a COVID conspiracy involving — you guessed it! — the Jews, who have installed members of the tribe at strategic posts in government and medicine, and….
Do we really need to list the dirty details here? It’s just so mind-numbingly stupid from top to bottom.
But it’s also dangerous.
Here at Triad City Beat, we must make a decision every time the right-wing shit machine drops another turd in the form of a flier, a protest, an event: Do we cover it, unleashing the collective disgust of our readership but also helping them recruit from that loathsome 0.01 percent that likes their message? Or do we not cover it, denying a platform to the hate, sure, but also enabling the roots of fascism to fester and grow just beneath the public eye?
The answer: It depends. Today we landed on the side of sunlight, which we believe to be the best disinfectant.
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