Authorities are investigating reports of vandals targeting the homes of the #BrooklynMuseum's #Jewish director & some board members after #NYC Comptroller Brad Lander posted photos of red paint-smeared doors & hateful speech.
"The cowards who did this are way over the line into #antisemitism, harming the cause they claim to care about, & making everyone less safe," Lander said.
#DeSantis press secretary Jeremy Redfern said the state will appeal the decision.
“Under Governor Ron DeSantis, #Florida will continue to fight to ensure children are not chemically or physically mutilated in the name of radical, new age ‘gender ideology,’” Redfern wrote in an email.
Kristin du Mez offers a valuable interview with Gionathan Lo Mascolo, editor of a recent collection entitled The Christian Right in Europe: Movements, Networks, and Denominations.
Lo Mascolo notes that "the Christian Right in Europe has undergone a thematic concentration," focusing in a concentrated way transnationally on culture war issues.
"Secondly, there is a surprising interdenominational collaboration between Christian Right actors, marking a significant departure from the past when conflicts between denominations profoundly shaped European history. This collaboration between ultraconservative Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Protestants—former adversaries in churches and on battlefields for centuries—forms what has been described as an 'Ecumenism of Hate.'"
Peter Wehner on how Trump and his supporters have "a deep investment in promoting fear" — e.g., in lying about a non-existent crime wave under Biden.
But "for many Trump supporters, then, fear is not so much the cause of their support for the former president as a justification for it. They use fear to rationalize their backing for Trump."
This is, Wehner says, particularly true for Trump's white evangelical supporters.
Claiming that they have been "dishonored and disrespected by elite culture" when they haven't been – they've been checked in their claim that God gave this country to them to control – they choose to construe Trump as a divinely sent savior who will avenge them and justify their hate:
"Malice, enmity, resentments: These are the emotions driving many Trump supporters."
Peter Wehner knows his fellow white evangelicals. He's right about this.
Among many things, use of the word “#Zionist” sets off alarms for the many different people who hear it. Is it pure #antisemitism? Or is it an attack on the Israeli govt, whose snr leaders have expressed concern that the #ICC will issue arrest warrants for them? Is it an assault on the right of #Israel to exist? Or is it a demand that it not continue to exist w/in its current contours & constructs w/the #Palestinian people?
For some college presidents, there seems to be a belief that by ripping away the tents & clearing the courtyards, they are also expunging any #hate & hurt from their campus — as if #antisemitism lives in these makeshift shelters & not in the heart. They demand that the protests be polite, convenient & perfect, or in the words of Princeton’s president, that the protests adhere to “time, place & manner” regulations.
Peter Wehner explains to Tim Miller why white evangelicals continue to be red hot for Donald Trump's return to the White House:
"The grievances and resentments and anger are just pulsating on the American right and within evangelical circles. People felt dishonored and disrespected."
"And I think when Donald Trump came along he gave voice to that anger and he said, you know, in 2024, too, 'I'm your vengeance. I'm your retribution.' And that I think emotionally resonated with a lot of people. They're really, really angry. There's a lot of hate out there and they feel like this guy is going to do to them what deserves to be done to them."
Who has "dishonored and disrespected" white evangelicals? When have they been dishonored and disrepected?
When they have informed us that "God" gave this nation into their hands, that they are to control it and the rest of us, and they were told that they are inventing a mythology about the founding of the nation and no religion has the right to dictate laws in a pluralistic secular democracy, were they being disrespected?
Their claims about owning the nation because "God" gave it to them are invalid on the face of it. Anyone, any group, pressing such a claim should be told, in a pluralistic, secular democracy that it's an invalid claim.
This is not disrespect. It's speaking truth.
So the grievances and resentment and anger and hate white evangelicals feel, which make them choose Trump, are unwarranted and unmerited responses.
Above and beyond that, they are deeply inconsistent with claims that one follows Jesus. To brand Christian faith in the US with those words – grievances, resentment, anger, hate — how shameful. How tragic. What a shocking betrayal of the Christian gospels.
And for Donald Trump?!
Perhaps Trump is showing us who white evangelicals have been for a very long time, and what they have been about for a very long time.
Berlin police raided and cut off electricity to the Palestinian Congress conference before banning the three-day event. Organizers say Germany’s antidemocratic authoritarian response to Palestine activism is growing by the day.
"Watching Trump sell his swindle about migrants, it occurred to me that those suckered by the Trump Media IPO got a better deal, relatively speaking. Those who bought “DJT” shares lost only their shirts. But those who have been snookered into seeing migrants as diseased animals have lost part of their souls." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/05/trump-swindle-crowd-green-bay-rally/
"Bereft of any vision of positive change, this is a man who is only capable of exploiting an aggrieved people’s worst instincts—who has figured out that he can get what he wants by stoking the fear, hatred and anger of others. He uses violence, not imagination. Conflict, not collaboration. Cruelty, never kindness. Retribution, not affirmation."
"These are the tools of a weak man inciting the mob to satisfy his hunger for carnage.
A man like this sells bibles wrapped in an American flag. Desperate for dollars and loyalty, he laughably claims the bible is his 'favorite; book and that he has many of them. Empty and broken inside, he needs to compare himself to Jesus Christ on the holy weekend of Easter."
Donald Trump represents the absolute worst of us. Yes, it’s important to understand how he came to power and why so many people support him. But make no mistake. He does represent the absolute worst of us. He’s the ugly result of a broken, out of touch media and political system — Joe Walsh #quotes#quote#Trump#Hate#Revenge#Retribution#Vengeance#MAGA