Murdoch says worst anti-Semitism comes “from the left”

Murdoch: “Today it seems that the most virulent strains” of anti-Semitism “come from the left.” In an October 13 speech to the Anti-Defamation League in New York, Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp. -- the parent company of Fox News -- said:

You [the ADL] were founded a century ago against the backdrop of something we cannot imagine in America today: the conviction and then lynching of an innocent Jew. In the century since then, you have fought anti-Semitism wherever you have found it. You have championed equal treatment for all races and creeds. And you have held America to her founding promise. So successful have you been, a few years ago some people were beginning to say, “maybe we don't need an ADL anymore.” That is a much harder argument to make these days. Now, there's not a single person in this room who needs a lecture on the evil of anti-Semitism. My own perspective is simple: We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews.

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For me, this ongoing war is a fairly obvious fact of life. Every day, the citizens of the Jewish homeland defend themselves against armies of terrorists whose maps spell out the goal they have in mind: a Middle East without Israel. In Europe, Jewish populations increasingly find themselves targeted by people who share that goal. And in the United States, I fear that our foreign policy sometimes emboldens these extremists.

Tonight I'd like to speak about two things that worry me most. First is the disturbing new home that anti-Semitism has found in polite society -- especially in Europe. Second is how violence and extremism are encouraged when the world sees Israel's greatest ally distancing herself from the Jewish state.

When Americans think of anti-Semitism, we tend to think of the vulgar caricatures and attacks of the first part of the 20th century.

Today it seems that the most virulent strains come from the left. Often this new anti-Semitism dresses itself up as legitimate disagreement with Israel.

Fox News promotes anti-Semitic authors and websites

Beck cited book from Nazi supporter Elizabeth Dilling on his radio show. On the June 4 edition of his radio program, Glenn Beck promoted The Red Network by Elizabeth Dilling, which is a book that contains numerous passages espousing anti-Semitism and racism. At various points throughout the book, Dilling attacks “racial inter-mixture” as a communist plot, refers to “un-Christianized” “colored people” as “savages,” called Hinduism and Islam “debasing and degrading,” and blamed Nazi Germany's anti-Semitism on “revolutionary Russian Jews.” Furthermore, Dilling was a Nazi sympathizer who visited Germany in the late 1930s, attended Nazi party meetings, and praised Adolf Hitler's leadership. Dilling also spoke at rallies hosted by the leading U.S. Nazi organization, the German-American Bund.

Dilling's history of anti-Semitism includes calling President Eisenhower “Ike the Kike” and labeling President Kennedy's New Frontier program the “Jew frontier.” British professors Christopher Partridge and Ron Geaves wrote that Dilling was a “pro-Nazi antisemite” who disseminated the anti-Semitic hoax Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Furthermore, Dilling's work has been promoted by David Duke and the group Women for Aryan Unity.

Beck refused to apologize for promoting Dilling's work, saying on the June 7 edition of his radio show:

But I'm also getting some amazing mail from the left that now says I'm a Nazi anti-Semite because I quoted a book on Friday -- it was the Red Book, or something like that. It was a who's who, who's in the communist party in 1935. Apparently, I don't know, apparently written by a Nazi sympathizer here in America. Part of the, I'm sure -- I don't know because I didn't look it up -- but I'm sure part of the Father Coughlin, social justice crowd, because this is the choice that progressives give you -- you're either a Nazi or a communist. No, I'm neither. But now -- so now I'm kind of stuck between the place where the left says that I'm a Nazi sympathizer and a Jew lover. So I guess the left can have it all, that I'm a Jew-loving Nazi sympathizer. It's a really interesting place that I don't know if anybody's ever been.

Beck pushed book from “anti-Semitic” “one-man organization of hate” on Fox News. On the September 22 edition of his Fox News show, Beck cited Eustace Mullins' book Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Mullins was a 9-11 truther who has been described as an “anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist” and a “nationally known white supremacist”; the ADL called the book “a re-hash of Mullins' anti-Semitic theories about the origins of the Federal Reserve.” In addition, in an obituary for Mullins, the Daily News Leader of Staunton, Virginia, described Mullins as a "[n]ationally known white supremacist and anti-Semite."

Beck cited an anti-Semitic smear of Soros on Fox News. On the October 5 edition of his Fox News show, Beck continued his smear campaign against George Soros, saying that “many, including the Malaysian prime minister, believe it was billionaire speculator George Soros who helped trigger the [Southeast Asian] economic meltdown” in 1997, a reference to former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's false and anti-Semitic claim that Soros was part of a Jewish “agenda” to collapse Southeast Asian currencies. In an October 10, 1997, report from the Malaysian newspaper Berita Harian (excerpted by BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, accessed via Nexis), Mahathir was quoted as saying: “We do not want to say that this is a plot by the Jews, but in reality it is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge, and coincidentally Soros is a Jew. It is also a coincidence that the Malaysians are mostly Muslim.” From the report:

Kuala Terengganu, 10th October: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad has said that the government suspects that the Jews have an agenda to destroy the economy of this country and other Muslim countries. Also Dr Mahathir did not reject the possibility that the attack on the local currency was to shut his mouth so that he would stop criticizing George Soros, a Jew who hailed from Hungary. “We do not want to say that this is a plot by the Jews, but in reality it is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge, and coincidentally Soros is a Jew. It is also a coincidence that the Malaysians are mostly Muslim.”

“Indeed, the Jews are not happy to see Muslims. If it were Palestine, the Jews would rob Palestinians. Thus this is what they are doing to our country,” he said when referring to Soros' involvement in the depreciation of the ringgit.

Fox Nation posted Obama smear from anti-Semitic website. On April 12, the website Fox Nation featured a “report” that claimed “Sarkozy Says Obama May Be 'Insane'.” The “report” came from the European Union Times, which the Southern Poverty Law Center reported “is registered to the wife of a racist skinhead gang member.” Previous articles at the EU Times included:

An article titled “China finally Learns the Truth about the Jews,” which once included the following image:

An article headlined “Federal Reserve said behind 95% decline in US Dollar,” accompanied by the following image:

And an article that blamed Jewish people for the September 11 terrorist attacks, with the following image:

Imus was criticized for anti-Semitic remarks before joining Fox Business. According to a mid-2005 report by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting titled “The Mainstreaming of Anti-Semitism,” radio host Don Imus, whose show is currently simulcast on the Fox Business Network, repeatedly made anti-Semitic comments on his radio show:

Shortly before Christmas last year, syndicated radio star and MSNBC host Don Imus called the book publishers Simon & Schuster “thieving Jews” (Imus in the Morning, 12/15/04), returning to the subject later in the program to offer a mock apology, saying that the phrase he used was “redundant.”

Anti-Semitism is nothing new on Imus' show, which is notorious for its ethnic and sexual slurs. In 1998, for instance, Imus called Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz “that boner-nosed . . . beanie-wearing little Jew boy” (Newsday, 10/19/98).

When Anti-Defamation League director Abe Foxman complained about Imus' Simon & Schuster slur, describing it in a letter (12/20/04) as “an age-old anti-Semitic canard that still, unfortunately, has great currency today,” Imus was defiant. “I wrote a two-word response across the face of [the letter],” Imus told listeners (1/4/05), “and sent it back to them.” Besides a handful of mentions in tabloid newspapers (New York Post, 1/5/05; Boston Herald, 1/7/05) and a short UPI report (1/5/05), the Imus affair received next to no coverage.

Kurtz also stated, “Over the years, Imus made fun of blacks, Jews, gays, politicians. He called them lying weasels. This was part of his charm. But when he went too far, he became his own worst enemy.”

On the November 30 edition of his radio show, Imus referred to the “Jewish management” of CBS Radio as “money grubbing bastards,” as The Forward reported.

Frequent Glenn Beck guest Barton delivered speeches to anti-Semitic groups. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Beck historian and frequent Glenn Beck guest David Barton has spoken at events hosted by the Christian Identity movement, which “asserts that Jews are 'the synagogue of Satan'; that Blacks and other people of color are subhuman; and that northern European whites and their American descendants are the 'chosen people' of scriptural prophesy.” From the Anti-Defamation League's 1994 book The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance & Pluralism in America:

On at least two occasions, Barton has delivered his revisionist presentation in the meeting halls of the racist and anti-Semitic extreme right. In July 1991, Barton addressed the Colorado summer retreat of Scriptures for America, the Identity Church group headed by firebrand Pete Peters. He was advertised as “a new and special speaker” who would “bring the following messages: America's Godly Heritage -- Was it the plan of our forefathers that America be the melting pot home of various religions and philosophies? ...” Barton's fellow-speakers at the retreat included the virulently anti-Semitic Virginia stockbroker-polemicist Richard Kelly Hoskins; “Bo” Gritz, the 1992 presidential nominee of the far-right Populist Party and a self-described “white separatist”; and Canadian Holocaust-denier Malcolm Ross.

On November 24, 1991, Barton appeared at another Identity gathering, presenting the second annual Thanksgiving message to Identity preacher Mike Watson's Kingdom Covenant College in Grants Pass, Oregon. In a subsequent edition of The Centinel [sic], Watson's publication, Barton was described as a “nationally acclaimed speaker” who “has introduced many Americans to their godly Christian heritage.” [Pages 55-56]

Barton later said he was not aware that the events were hosted by groups with a racist ideology and said “that with as many as 400 speaking engagements a year, he cannot do background checks on each of the invitations he receives,” according to an April 10, 1996, Seattle Times article (retrieved via Nexis).

Hannity hosted guest who made “viciously anti-Semitic” comment. As Media Matters documented, on the October 5, 2008, edition of Hannity's America, Sean Hannity hosted Andy Martin, whom he identified as an “Internet journalist.” In United States v. Anthony Martin-Trigona (1985), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit wrote that Martin had previously made “viciously anti-Semitic assertions”:

Martin-Trigona filed a lawsuit against [Bankruptcy] Judge Lavien (among others); the complaint is rife with viciously anti-Semitic assertions such as that “Defendant Lavien has flatly asserted it is permissible for him to meet in secret with Jewish lawyers to determine how to loot plaintiff's property.”

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In his action filed in the Southern District of New York against a bankruptcy judge, Martin-Trigona v. Lavien, Civ. No. 83-2944 (S.D.N.Y.), Martin-Trigona referred to the judge as a “crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.” In his complaint in Martin-Trigona v. Lavien, Civ. No. H-83-305 (D.Conn.), he stated, among other comments:

“Jews, historically and in daily living, act through clans and in wolf pack syndrome....

”Non-Jewish lawyers in Connecticut refer to the Jewish cabal, uphemistically [sic], as 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves'....

“No sociological evidence exists that Jews have superior intelligence or any other special characteristics, other than the herd instinct....” In re Martin-Trigona, 573 F.Supp. 1245, 1263 (D.Conn.1983) (Appendix C.).

The U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut wrote in an order on June 23, 1983, granting a permanent injunction (retrieved from the Lexis database) against Martin that his “recent suits have taken on the ugly taint of anti-Jewish bigotry and suggest a substantial deterioration of an already problematical personality.” From the order:

Anthony R. Martin-Trigona's recent suits have taken on the ugly taint of anti-Jewish bigotry and suggest a substantial deterioration of an already problematical personality. In one such action, of which this court takes judicial notice, he referred to a United States Bankruptcy Judge as a “crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.” Martin-Trigona v. Lavien, Civ. No. 83-2944 (S.D.N.Y.), Unsworn Declaration in Support of Motion to Recuse, para. 2 The complaint in the above-captioned case of Martin-Trigona v. Lavien, Civ. No. H 83-305 (D.Conn.), is replete with such accusations and charges, of which the following excerpts are cited as examples:

This is a civil rights law suit against a group of Jews [who have] conspired ... to steal plaintiff's property.

This property was seized by the defendant Jews.

The “bankruptcy judges” ... have been Jews.

The trustees ... have been Jews.

The counsel for said trustees have been Jews.

The Jews speak and intrigue among themselves.

[They] meet in secret ... to determine how to loot plaintiff's property.

... Jewish bankruptcy judges appoint Jewish bankruptcy trustees who choose Jewish lawyers to represent them.

... Jews, historically and in daily living, act through clans and in wolf pack syndrome.

... Jews hate Christians, and have paranoid delusions.

Jews work through a national network.

Non-Jewish lawyers in Connecticut refer to the Jewish cabal, euphemistically, as “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.”

No sociological evidence exists that Jews have superior intelligence or any other special characteristics, other than the herd instinct [sic].

The plaintiff ... is beset by a horde of bankruptcy Jews who are trying to steal his property. [citations to page numbers in complaint omitted]

In a 1993 decision involving Martin, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit stated:

Anthony Martin-Trigona has sued literally hundreds, if not thousands, of attorneys, judges, their spouses, court officials, and other human beings. In summarizing the district court's findings, which it was careful to point out considerably understated his activities as a litigant, the Second Circuit said that:

Martin-Trigona is known to have filed over 250 civil actions, appeals, and other matters throughout the United States, which have been pursued with “persistence, viciousness, and general disregard for decency and logic.” He has used legal pleadings to ventilate his contempt and hatred of persons of Jewish heritage and to level accusations which “have often been personal, have often emphasized racial or religious affiliations, and have often involved the members of ... judges' and counsel's families.” The purpose, nature and effect of his resort to multiple litigation has been to involve as many persons in as many confounding legal processes as possible.

737 F.2d at 1259 (footnote omitted). That was eight years ago. Even a cursory search with Westlaw and Lexis reveals that his litigiousness has continued unabated since that time. Volumes could be written about Anthony Martin-Trigona's vexatious lawsuits, but any such treatise would have to contain annual pocket parts to provide any hope of keeping current.

In a February 10, 2006, article, the Chicago Tribune reported that Martin “has expressed anti-Semitic attitudes in the past”:

Martin also has expressed anti-Semitic attitudes in the past. When he ran for Congress in Connecticut in 1986, the name of his congressional campaign committee included the phrase “to exterminate Jew power in America,” Federal Election Commission records show.

In a 1983 personal bankruptcy case, he referred to a federal bankruptcy judge as a “crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.”

In a related court filing in the case, he also expressed sympathy to the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

“I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did, when Jew survivors are operating as a wolf pack to steal my property,” Martin wrote in an April 21, 1983, personal bankruptcy proceeding.

An October 6, 2008, New York Times article on Martin's Hannity's America appearance reported:

Mr. Martin came under strong attack from liberals on Monday. Many noted that the Republican Party of Florida decided against backing his bid for the State Senate in 1996 after receiving documents from his Congressional race 10 years earlier in Connecticut listing the purpose of one of his political committees as “to exterminate Jew power in America and to impeach the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City.”

Mr. Martin had previously said the documents were forged, and again denied their authenticity on Monday. He also denied harboring anti-Semitic sentiment, saying “it's peripheral, it draws you away from the issue.”

In Martin v. Brock (2007), Martin claimed that he has never engaged in “litigation activity or opinion commentary [which] even remotely rises to the level of anti-Semitism.” However, federal District Court Judge Blanche M. Manning wrote “that three courts have found to the contrary.” From the opinion:

Mr. Martin's complaint alleges that he has never engaged in “litigation activity or opinion commentary [which] even remotely rises to the level of anti-Semitism.” Complaint at 7. However, the court takes judicial notice of the fact that three courts have found to the contrary. See Martin-Trigona v. Shaw, 986 F.2d 1384, 1387 (11th Cir. 1993) (noting that the plaintiff “has used legal pleadings to ventilate his contempt and hatred of persons of Jewish heritage”); U.S. v. Martin-Trigona, 759 F.2d 1017, 1019 n.3 (2d Cir. 1985) (noting that one of the plaintiff's complaints was “rife with viciously anti-Semitic assertions”); In re Martin-Trigona, 737 F.2d 1254, 1256 (D. Conn. 1984) (stating that the plaintiff has used “pleadings and other legal papers, the contents of which are set out in their appalling detail in the district court's opinion, as a vehicle to launch vicious attacks upon persons of Jewish heritage”).