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D.C. lawmaker who said Jews control the weather visits Holocaust Museum but leaves early


Viper

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This is definitely one of those stories that I'm not sure should go in here or in Lulz.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-lawmaker-who-said-jews-control-the-weather-visits-holocaust-museum/2018/04/19/0b69ddde-4329-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html

 

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D.C. lawmaker who said Jews control the weather visits Holocaust Museum but leaves early

 
Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) posted a video on his Facebook page saying the snow resulted from "the Rothschilds controlling the climate." (Trayon White/Facebook)
By Peter Jamison April 19 at 9:23 PM 

The photo, taken in 1935, depicts a woman in a dark dress shuffling down a street in Norden, Germany. A large sign hangs from her neck: “I am a German girl and allowed myself to be defiled by a Jew.” She is surrounded by Nazi stormtroopers.

D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) studied the image. “Are they protecting her?”

Lynn Williams, an expert on educational programs at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and White’s tour guide for the day, stared at the photo.

“No,” she said. “They’re marching her through.”

“Marching through is protecting,” White said.

“I think they’re humiliating her,” Williams replied.

White, who drew widespread criticism last month when he asserted that wealthy Jews control the weather, on Wednesday made a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. With him was Rabbi Batya Glazer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, a group that has been heavily involved in the first-term Democratic lawmaker’s public rehabilitation.

[D.C. lawmaker says snowfall caused by ‘Rothschilds controlling the climate’]

“There’s nothing more powerful than visiting the Holocaust museum for understanding the culture of the Jewish community, and our concerns about anti-Semitism,” Glazer told an uninvited reporter who shadowed the tour.

Those concerns surged after The Washington Post reported on White’s comments on his public Facebook page espousing a conspiracy theory linking the Rothschild family — a Jewish banking dynasty and frequent target of anti-Semitic propaganda — with a murky plot of climate ma­nipu­la­tion.

White later apologized and said he did not realize Jews might consider his comments offensive. He attended a Passover Seder and a bagels-and-lox breakfast with local Jewish leaders at city hall. He did not publicize his visit to the museum off the Mall in Southwest Washington.

“It’s not like this is what you do when you’ve been bad,” Glazer said. “This is a place where one’s world view is completely altered.”

 

[Trayon White Sr. also said Jewish banking family controls the federal government’]

Also with White was his staff, which had closed the office early to join the guided tour. The overwhelmingly African American neighborhoods their office represents in Ward 8 are among the city’s poorest and most isolated.

The museum allows photos for personal use, and the council member and his aides took many. As Williams explained the workings of the Nazis’ pseudoscientific race propaganda, White held up his cellphone before a poster with images of black, Native American and Australian men, titled “Rassen der Erde” — “Races of the Earth.” An aide took a shot of a pile of Torahs desecrated on Kristallnacht.

The group paused before grainy photos of German troops executing Catholic clergy in Poland by firing squad. “Were they actually manufacturing these weapons?” White asked.

Moments later, White was nowhere to be seen.

Glazer, the rabbi, texted him to ask his whereabouts. He wrote back that he hoped to see her outside the museum but he had to leave soon for an event in Ward 8.

The tour, scheduled to last 90 minutes, was halfway done. Seven of White’s staff members stayed with the guide, who soon was showing them an exhibit on the Warsaw Ghetto. As she explained the walling in of Polish Jews, one aide asked whether it was similar to “a gated community.”

Glazer spoke up.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t call it a gated community,” she said. “More like a prison.”

The group continued without White, past a scale model of a gas chamber and photos of the residents of an eradicated shtetl. They stopped at the famous exhibit of shoes confiscated from concentration-camp prisoners.

The tour over, the rabbi praised White for being “very sincere in wanting to come here.” But she was perplexed by his abrupt exit.

[Jewish leaders invite D.C. lawmaker to Seders after comments on Rothschilds]

“I do not know what happened, and I find it confusing,” she said.

White, it turned out, was standing alone on the sidewalk outside the museum.

“I’ll be coming back to see more of the museum. I didn’t get a chance to see the whole thing,” he said. “But I think it’s a lot of education here, a lot of synergy here between what happened to the Jewish community and the African community.”

Asked why he left the tour halfway and where he went, he said nothing and held his cellphone to his ear.

Asked whether he had reassessed his comments about the Rothschilds in light of what he had just seen, White walked east on Independence Avenue.

“This opportunity has given me the chance to meet a lot of great Jews, a lot of people. A lot of good Jews that I’ve never had the chance to meet before,” he said after a long silence. “It’s an awesome experience.”

 

Edited by Viper
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Seriously, though, I can understand a black person from the greater DC area being ignorant of Jews and the Holocaust, because I understand that inner-city education can really be that bad, even if one is an attentive student. which may be no small feat itself.  But this guy is a college graduate.  Even the dumbest motherfucker in community studies at UT presumably has to take two semesters of American History.  I suppose it's some form of white privilege on my part to expect someone to be cognizant of the byproducts of the biggest conflict of the 20th century.  I don't know anymore.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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Now that this has become such a cause, how hard would it be to find a history professor from one of the many fairly impressive colleges in the DC area to publicly instruct the guy and his staff - it wouldn't take 10 minutes to give him the overview.  Or maybe make him watch one of the many movies on the subject.  Then take them to the museum and say - "here's what they were talking about."

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Gotta love Ward 8 in DC.

Same ward that elected Marion Barry to the City Council with 95% of the vote after stepped down from being mayor for the fourth time (a position to which he was elected after serving time in federal prison). He was reelected every cycle until he died.

Every year there was a ballot initiative to ban convicted felons from serving on the city council. Every cycle, it failed.

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1 hour ago, eljinca said:

Gotta love Ward 8 in DC.

Same ward that elected Marion Barry to the City Council with 95% of the vote after stepped down from being mayor for the fourth time (a position to which he was elected after serving time in federal prison). He was reelected every cycle until he died.

Every year there was a ballot initiative to ban convicted felons from serving on the city council. Every cycle, it failed.

Bitch set him up!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Get it together DC City Council Democrats. (Are there any republican council members?)

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A spiraling controversy over anti-Semitic comments and conspiracy theories has roiled the Washington city government, seemingly getting worse with every public attempt to ease the tensions.

The issue nearly derailed a City Council meeting Tuesday morning and resulted in the resignation of a city official who organized a disastrous “unity rally” that featured a speaker who called all Jews “termites.”

At the heart of the debacle is Trayon White, a council member who ignited a firestorm on March 16 by posting a short video on his Facebook page claiming that an unexpected snowfall was because of “the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters.”

Fellow council members and Jewish community leaders accused White of spreading an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about Jewish control of world events. The Rothschilds, a prominent Jewish family whose banking dynasty dates back to the 18th century, are a frequent target of global conspiracy theories.

White, 33, who like most city officials is a Democrat, said he was unaware the Rothschild theory could be construed as anti-Semitic. The first-term African-American council member reached out to try to mend fences, but several of the gestures seem to have made things worse.

He attended a Passover Seder and met with Jewish community leaders for breakfast over bagels and lox. He went on a guided tour of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum but abruptly left halfway through without explanation.

Then video surfaced from a February meeting of top city officials that showed White floating a similar conspiracy during an innocuous presentation about the University of the District of Columbia. White posed a question centered on the claim that the Rothschilds controlled both the World Bank and the federal government.

The video shows city leaders in the room, including Mayor Muriel Bowser, awkwardly laughing it off and moving on, but the footage further upset Jewish community leaders.

Then a further revelation: White had contributed $500 from a fund meant for his Ward 8 constituents to a Chicago event for Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam.

Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam have a decades-old history of overtly anti-Semitic rhetoric. The Nation of Islam also does significant social and charitable work in black communities and retains some respect among those who don’t share its views.

Last week, supporters of White held a rally organized by a member of the city’s public housing authority board. At the rally, a representative of the Nation of Islam called one of two Jewish D.C. councilmembers a “fake Jew.”

The rally prompted calls for the resignation of Josh Lopez, the mayoral appointee who organized it. White did not attend the rally.

The events came to a head Tuesday morning before the council’s regular session. A pre-session breakfast meeting ran an hour long as council members debated how best to respond to the rally and whether to call for Lopez’s resignation. A local rabbi who was there as an observer shouted that the council members should be ashamed of themselves.

The council members then held an impromptu press conference outside the building where City Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said that “intolerant speech ... has no place in our city.”

As the council returned inside and resumed its normal meeting, news broke that Lopez had resigned.

Bowser’s office had called for Lopez to apologize but not resign, but she accepted the resignation and issued a statement calling for unity going forward.

Repeated attempts to contact White for comment were unsuccessful. On Tuesday, White pushed past a reporter who tried to ask him a question.

City officials hope the immediate controversy will die down with time, and White doesn’t face re-election for another two years. The council member may still face some sort of public censure if his contribution to Farrakhan is judged as a minor campaign finance violation. But the public and personal scars from the past few weeks could linger.

“Yes, it got personal,” said Councilmember Jack Evans. “I hope that relationships can be repaired, and they will be, and we will move on.”

There’s also the issue of White’s relationship with the local Jewish community.

“I sincerely think he was just repeating conspiracy theories he had heard somewhere,” said Rabbi Batya Glazer, who had met with White on the issue. “It does mean he has an obligation to clarify what his position is.”

The controversy has also poked at some long-dormant societal sore spots. The Rothschild conspiracy theory has persisted for decades on the fringes of both black and white culture in America.

“Conspiracy theories are very dangerous ... because they exacerbate splits that already exist,” said Andre Perry, who studies race and urban policy for the Brookings Institution. “This isn’t about one city council member. This is about how susceptible we are to tribalism that is created by a lack of trust in one another.”

 

Edited by Viper
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The issue nearly derailed a City Council meeting Tuesday morning and resulted in the resignation of a city official who organized a disastrous “unity rally” that featured a speaker who called all Jews “termites.”aiEJH.gif?noredirect

He was complimenting their work ethic?

Jesus was a Jew and worked with wood?

Edited by Cheeseweasel
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On 4/24/2018 at 7:17 AM, DigglerontheHoof said:

A cannot fucking believe anyone is stupid enough to ask if the Warsaw ghetto was "like a gated community".  Jessus titty fucking Christ....what a bunch of assholes. 

Heard at the Slavery Museum...

"Is that like a bungie cord?"

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On 4/24/2018 at 7:17 AM, DigglerontheHoof said:

A cannot fucking believe anyone is stupid enough to ask if the Warsaw ghetto was "like a gated community".  Jessus titty fucking Christ....what a bunch of assholes. 

I have no doubt that they had a better HOA in Warsaw, though.

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6 hours ago, Swearengen said:

The entire situation is a unintentionally hilarious farce. 

Yeah, I don't actually believe any of these people are actually anti-Semitic.  I doubt they even know what it means.  It's just a fairly astounding display of ignorance:  biting hard on conspiracy theories without understanding that these particular ones are modern versions of blood libel; not having the first foggy clue about the Holocaust or events of WWII; and I think a lot of black folks are attracted to the good orderly discipline of Farrakhan and the Nation without understanding what they stand for.

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12 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Yeah, I don't actually believe any of these people are actually anti-Semitic.  I doubt they even know what it means.  It's just a fairly astounding display of ignorance:  biting hard on conspiracy theories without understanding that these particular ones are modern versions of blood libel; not having the first foggy clue about the Holocaust or events of WWII; and I think a lot of black folks are attracted to the good orderly discipline of Farrakhan and the Nation without understanding what they stand for.

I disagree. I think they're anti-Semetic and do not realize it because they were raised that way. Remember black civil rights leader Jesse Jackson's prejudice towards Jews?

Quote

Jackson was criticized in the early 1980s for referring to Jews as "Hymies" and New York City as "Hymietown" in remarks to a black Washington Post reporter. (Hymie is a perjorative term for Jews.) Jackson mistakenly assumed the references would not be printed. Louis Farrakhan made the situation worse by issuing, in Jackson's presence, a public warning to Jews that "If you harm this brother [Jackson], it will be the last one you harm." Jackson made a public apology to Jews for the pejorative remarks, but Jackson refused to denounce Farrakhan's warning to Jews. Jackson apologized during a speech before national Jewish leaders in a Manchester , New Hampshire synagogue, but an enduring split between Jackson and many in the Jewish community continued at least through the 1990s.

Jackson also made other remarks evidencing a negative attitude toward Jews including saying that Richard Nixon was less attentive to poverty in the U.S. because "four out of five [of Nixon's top advisers] are German Jews and their priorities are on Europe and Asia"; that he was "sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust"; and that there are "very few Jewish reporters that have the capacity to be objective about Arab affairs".

Shortly after President Jimmy Carter fired U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young for meeting with Palestine Liberation Organization representatives, Jackson and other black leaders began publicly endorsing a Palestinian state, with Jackson calling Israel's prime minister a "terrorist", and then soliciting Arab-American financial support. Jackson has since apologized for some of these remarks, but they badly damaged his presidential campaign, as "Jackson was seen by many conservatives in the United States as hostile to Israel and far too close to Arab governments." - Wikipedia.

 

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On ‎4‎/‎23‎/‎2018 at 9:58 PM, Larry T. Spider said:

“This opportunity has given me the chance to meet a lot of great Jews, a lot of people. A lot of good Jews that I’ve never had the chance to meet before,” he said after a long silence. “It’s an awesome experience.”

 

I read this in Trumps voice on accident.

I was thinking it could've been uttered by a faithful twenty year member of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's congregation in Chicago.

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9 hours ago, Stoogey said:

I disagree. I think they're anti-Semetic and do not realize it because they were raised that way. Remember black civil rights leader Jesse Jackson's prejudice towards Jews?

 

*Semitic.  You really gonna lump all black people in the same boat?  Jackson is anything but ignorant.  These people are displaying abject ignorance at every turn.  And while I am not promoting separate but equal, I suspect Jackson probably received a better basic education at his segregated SC high school and HBCU than these maroons in inner-city DC.

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On 5/2/2018 at 11:43 PM, Stoogey said:

I disagree. I think they're anti-Semetic and do not realize it because they were raised that way. Remember black civil rights leader Jesse Jackson's prejudice towards Jews?

 

Besides, blacks can't be racist toward Jews because they have no power.  *rme*  Jews actually had quite a bit of power in Germany before the 1930s and in many cases more power than the people who eventually exterminated them.

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On 4/23/2018 at 3:24 PM, HenryJames said:

No one talks about the positive aspects of the Holocaust.

KKK dude on Reno 911 summed it up well: "I look at it as of those 6 million killed, at least 1 or 2 of them had to have been a serial killer". 

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On 5/3/2018 at 9:48 AM, TwiceHorn said:

Jackson is anything but ignorant. 

Didn't say that he was - maybe too outspoken at inopportune moments would be a better way to describe him - Jackson had the black vote but needed the liberal vote in the 1984 presidential elections. Had Jackson not made the Hymie and Hymietown remarks and then disremember making those remarks to a reporter (a black reporter whom Jackson thought would keep the bro code) before apologizing and admitting the truth, his Rainbow Coalition would have come to fruition.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1984/04/08/a-reporters-story/807486fd-b978-484d-8110-e5a544d072aa/?utm_term=.a3e64ca3d0da

Would it have made a difference? Probably not as Reagan won easily over Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro. And there was Jackson's speech at Yeshiva University and Jackson's "cut his nuts off" reaction picked up by a live microphone to the Father's Day speech in which Obama was critical of black men not supporting their children. 

What I am saying is the comments towards Jews are coming from someone. How was White - a person who displays abject ignorance at every turn, doesn't comprehend Kristallnacht, misunderstands stormtroopers humiliating the German woman being  marched through - able to name the Rothschilds? There is no parthenogenesis in hatred, it's a learned behavior. And it is people like Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan shaping these attitudes. ""I sincerely think he [White] was just repeating conspiracy theories he had heard somewhere," said Rabbi Batya Glazer, who had met with White on the issue." 

White donated $500 to the Nation of Islam's Saviours' Day where Farrakhan said, "Powerful Jews are my enemy," from funds to directly benefit D.C. Ward 8 residents. “I am not resigning, I’m not backing down, I’m not discouraged, I’m not depressed, so run all the media stories you want because my people are going to support me. I know some of my colleagues call for me to be censured. We going to have problems, we going to have major problems, because people are going to start coming down to the Wilson Building standing up. No longer are we going to be kowtowed into being silent about the things that matter.”

That sounds like Jesse Jackson rhetoric. Is White being groomed since Jesse Jackson Jr is out of the political picture?
  

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My only real point is that Jackson is different from Farrakhan is different from this lil hopper, as is fairly obvious, but in particular in the origin and depth of their anti-Semitic views.

Farrakhan is pretty much a virulent racist as a result of the extra-perverted form of Islam that is the Nation. 

I'm not sure what Jackson's deal is, but at some level, I believe that those who play race/identity politics at some point, become "jealous" of other minority groups as they "steal" attention/money/power from the player's group.  I also suspect that he picked up the "hymie" stuff from white politicians and power brokers, directly or indirectly.  And while he most certainly said those things, I rather doubt that he harbors much animus toward Jews.

And I am willing to bet that lil hopper White had no real idea about Jews or that the Rothschild "theories" were anti-Semitic in origin, or even that the Rotshchilds were Jewish.  It's something he read on facebook or the like.

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