Very, Very Evil?

 I had been no huge fan of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed's Senate campaign in Michigan up to now (though everyone who can should of course vote for him to keep that Senate seat blue). 

On the one hand, I never bought the insinuation that El-Sayed is personally anti-semitic. On the other, there should never be a "part two" to any statement in which you are condemning a hate crime against a synagogue. As El-Sayed has himself since acknowledged, he should have just said: this is terrible "full stop."

El-Sayed has said that he was trying to provide "broader context" to the attack, with his comment about how "hurt people hurt people." But that "broader context" is only relevant if you think that Jewish communities are in some way collectively guilty or responsible for the actions of Israel's current extremist government, which would be the essence of an anti-semitic view. 

The other most questionable choice El-Sayed made was to campaign alongside our tankie friend Hasan Piker, who has recently made his own unfortunate remarks about Jewish collective guilt. 

If Piker did not say outright that Jews are responsible for whatever Israel's government does, his comment came pretty close. He insinuated that if "Jewish institutions" keep associating with Israel, a lot of people might act as if they were guilty. 

Many commentators have rightly observed that this sounds more like a threat than a warning. "Nice little synagogue you have there, be a shame if something happened to it." 

Come to think of it—if you're saying that people are collectively guilty for contributing to a false impression of their collective guilt, then—in fact—aren't you actually saying they are collectively guilty after all—if only for fostering the misimpression? Piker's comment, after all, wasn't directed just against the Israeli right. His reported remarks were about "Jews in America" in general.  

Even before this latest dust-up—which happened after the campaign—Piker has had a long history of praising various Stalinist regimes, including the PRC. Piker's legitimate concerns about the persecution and expulsion of Palestinians apparently do not extend to the mass internment and erasure of another vulnerable Muslim community: the Uighurs in Xinjiang. 

El-Sayed never should have campaigned with this guy, and he should distance himself overtly from him now—instead of just trying to change the subject or engaging in "what-aboutism." (And yes, to all those saying "well what about Laura Loomer?" it is absolutely true that the right is infinitely worse when it comes to racism—that's why I'm not here telling anyone to vote for them.)

So that's the baggage El-Sayed was carrying at this stage of the campaign. 

But he started to win me over yesterday during his back-and-forth with J.D. Vance. 

Vance was addressing a closed-door meeting of Jewish Republicans—some of whom have been "skeptical" of him, as the media says, because of things like, oh, say, his intimacy with and public defense of Tucker Carlson, that old Holocaust-doubting, Groyper-curious Father Coughlin of our time; or Vance's endorsement of the German extreme right; or his constant flirtation with the Nazi wing of MAGA....

Vance, in order to assuage these concerns, found it convenient to find an outside enemy he could scapegoat. And so, he blamed recent immigrants: "the worst antisemitism grows up," he reportedly said, "when you allow the importation of large groups of people who bring their ethnic rivalries in the United States."

In his typically slimy and disingenuous way, Vance here is trying to play two games at once. On the one hand, he is pandering to Islamophobia by implying that the big problem here is that Democrats allowed in too many Muslims. On the other hand, his remark is also perfectly consistent with the neo-Nazi "Great Replacement" theory that has motivated some of the worst antisemitic mass violence in recent years. 

According to this extremist view, Jews have actually brought antisemitism on themselves by supporting welcoming immigration policies. 

Recall the incident from 2023 when Elon Musk replied "You have said the actual truth" to an X poster who said: "Jewish commun[i]ties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. [...] I'm deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much."

So Vance, in his comments, gets to have it both ways. On the one hand, he can assuage the concerns of ultra-Zionist right-wing Jewish Republicans by appearing to pin everything on Islamic anti-semitism. But on the other hand, he can wink to the Groyper fanboys, whom he knows are part of his base, by also gesturing toward the Great Replacement theory, which is itself deeply and definitionally antisemitic. 

Anyone that Vance dislikes, then, already gets a few points in my book. And Vance has specifically tried to demonize El-Sayed in the hopes that his whole right-wing coalition can unify around hating a Muslim doctor and child of immigrants in Michigan. El-Sayed, Vance has said, is "very, very evil." 

To which, El-Sayed responded with a statement of his own: "Evil is ripping healthcare away from working people in exchange for tax breaks for billionaires. Evil is making people pay more for groceries and gas while pushing for trade wars and actual war. Evil is dividing people for your own gain. Evil is selling out your morals for a little bit of power."

This, I thought, was a near-perfect statement. It only got better the longer I looked at each element. Few have ever penned a more succinct encapsulation of this administration's record. 

Ripping healthcare away from working people in exchange for tax breaks for billionaires—yes, truly, Trump's big hideous budget bill from last summer did indeed cut Medicaid in order to free up funds for tax subsidies to the ultra-wealthy. In a politically cynical twist, these cuts are scheduled to take effect after Americans vote in the midterms. That is by design. 

Making people pay more for groceries and gas while pushing for trade wars and actual war—Yep; Trump's illegal war of aggression in Iran is raising the costs of fertilizer and oil around the globe, pushing up food prices, gas prices—and now bond yields too, which affect the cost of borrowing across the whole economy, as investors fear this war-related inflation is becoming entrenched. 

To quote James Russell Lowell again on the subject of the Mexican-American War: "If we could know that a part of the money we expend for tea and coffee goes to buy powder and balls, and that it is Mexican blood which makes the clothes on our backs more costly, it would set some of us athinking." Today, replace "Mexican" with "Iranian," and the same sentiment still stands. 

Dividing people for your own gain—yes, like scapegoating immigrants and Muslims for antisemitism when you, J.D. Vance, are affiliating publicly with the biggest antisemites to strut the stage of American politics since Gerald L.K. Smith!

Selling out your morals for a little bit of power—yes, indeed; that is what Vance has done every single time, from the moment he decided to switch from being a self-described "Never Trump" Republican to becoming Donald Trump's top henchman. Just for a little bit of power. "Just for a handful of silver he left us, / Just for a riband to stick in his coat—" to quote Browning's "Lost Leader." 

"Fed, paid, and pampered by the very men/ By whom his muse and morals had been mauled." (To quote Byron on the subject of Robert Southey's notorious political volte-face.)

That's what evil is indeed. 

I think I'm starting to come around on Dr. El-Sayed.