The Key to Bernie Sanders's Appeal Isn't Socialism. It's Yiddish Socialism

[flamingdem]

* It's about time this history was acknowledged and celebrated in the USA. Bernie is bringing this to the conversation.

At a rally last October, Remaz Abdelgader — a hijab-wearing Muslim, a senior at George Mason University and the daughter of Sudanese immigrants — stood to ask Bernie Sanders a question.

She started by referring to the Islamophobic bigotry of many of the Republican candidates. As she continued, calling herself “an American Muslim student who aspires to change the world,” Sanders interrupted her to invite her up to the stage and embrace her, and then, respectfully, he gave her the opportunity to finish her question onstage on equal footing. How would Sanders respond, Abdelgadar asked, to the Islamophobia spouted by the Republicans and amplified by the media? Sanders gently took her hand and stood next to her at the lectern as he responded.

Had this scene been scripted, it would have been a remarkable tableau vivant. It was not rehearsed, but neither was it accidental. Sanders’s response to her question gave us a rich insight into the Socialist worldview that underpinned the Jewish and multicultural Brooklyn environment in which he was raised, which goes a good way toward explaining his broad and growing appeal.

Sanders began by equating anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia. He hearkened to his own Jewish heritage and recalled the murders of his father’s family in Nazi concentration camps. Racism is not only about pent up hatred and stupidity, he explained; it is also a tool that politicians and the wealthy elite use to keep workers divided and to weaken their efforts to organize. Politicians, he said, told white workers, “Hey, you think you’re in trouble, but you’re better off than blacks, that can’t drink out of water fountains and go to your school.” By pitting black against white, men against women and straight against gay, “that’s how the rich got richer while everybody else was fighting each other.”

Read more: http://forward.com/opinion/333489/the-key-to-bernie-sanderss-appeal-isnt-socialism-its-yiddish-socialism/#ixzz40UySLTvA

[mikehiggins]

1. Oy! Brooklyn Rules

Gotta wonder why HRC doesn't want to debate there.

[flamingdem]

2. I know right. I am a New Yorker too

Jewish culture is a big part of what makes NY great and Bernie is a mensch!

[grasswire]

3. very interesting, thanks. nt

[Behind the Aegis]

4. I saw the video.

I wonder if Sanders will be accused of playing the "Jewish card" again. And, no, I am not kidding; that was actually said.

There is much cross over in different forms of bigotry and he is correct it is often used to play one group off another, sometimes, even within groups.

[flamingdem]

5. That's the old left idealism, and it has always held true

I notice that it's not always obvious to younger people. That is why I think Bernie was taken aback by attacks around race, it is just assumed we're all in in together.

I wonder if conservative Jews will be tempted to vote for Bernie.

[Behind the Aegis]

9. I am not sure what is happening with conservative Jews.

I have read some conservative sites and most are all about attacking Clinton. The few I have seen regarding Sanders are more about his being a "communist" and the evils of socialism. Some of the articles are tinged with some very classic anti-Semitism, which is quite common on the right, they just aren't as "out" about it as they are with other forms of bigotry. I have only seen a few on the right attacking Sanders for not being "good" on Israel (i.e. a "bad Jew&quot ; most of the ones tying him to Israel have been from the left; no surprises there.

[Uncle Joe]

7. This paragraph nails it.

Sanders began by equating anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia. He hearkened to his own Jewish heritage and recalled the murders of his father’s family in Nazi concentration camps. Racism is not only about pent up hatred and stupidity, he explained; it is also a tool that politicians and the wealthy elite use to keep workers divided and to weaken their efforts to organize. Politicians, he said, told white workers, “Hey, you think you’re in trouble, but you’re better off than blacks, that can’t drink out of water fountains and go to your school.” By pitting black against white, men against women and straight against gay, “that’s how the rich got richer while everybody else was fighting each other.”

Thanks for the thread, flamingdem.

[flamingdem]

8. It's funny that a Jew from Brooklyn can seem so cosmopolitan, beyond

the cliches, worldly - at least compared to the cliche of Trump the American.

Maybe it's time to make the Jew from Brooklyn the model behavior rather than the rich jerk example.

I can't believe those two might be up against one another in the General.

[Ilsa]

11. Precisely. It's amazing how easy it is to

get people to blame another small helpless group for their problems which are actually caused by greedy, super-wealthy corporatists. Creating a distraction keeps their position safer.

[JDPriestly]

10. I like this:

Sanders is giving voice to an emerging current among those who occupied Wall Street, declared they are undocumented and unafraid, and insisted that black lives matter. He understands all oppression as an ecosystem. An injury to one is an injury to all. And the solutions have to be broad and interconnected. Throughout American history, too many movements for social justice have ignored, ridiculed or barred some other group. Sanders’s call to unite poor people, people of color, women, LGBT people, students, immigrants, people of all faiths and no faith, and others, is inspired by an emerging movement of inclusion that may prove to be longer lasting, more effective and more powerful than we have seen before in this country.

http://forward.com/opinion/333489/the-key-to-bernie-sanderss-appeal-isnt-socialism-its-yiddish-socialism/#ixzz40UySLTvA

[RufusTFirefly]

12. K & R!

I think I must have been 1930s Yiddish Socialist in another life.

[cali]

13. I loved that movie.

[RufusTFirefly]

14. Moi aussi!

Or, perhaps I should say, "mir aoykh"?

[Admiral Loinpresser]

15. My favorite was the weak standup comedian guy:

Q: "How did you die, sir?"

A: "Onstage, like you."

[flamingdem]

18. What movie is this?

Everyone seems to know but moi.

[RufusTFirefly]

19. "Defending Your Life," 1991 Albert Brooks movie

https://m.

[beam me up scottie]

16. Perfect thread for this: Whatta Mensch - Schmaltz and Schlepper - Bernie Sanders for President

[LWolf]

17. The keystone:

He understands all oppression as an ecosystem. An injury to one is an injury to all. And the solutions have to be broad and interconnected.

This is something that I have understood for all of my life: interconnections and how influencing one strand affects all the others.

It's one of the reasons I've mightily resisted the "reforms" in my profession: deconstructing learning down to long lists of isolated standards and skills without addressing the whole, designing lessons and assessments to test one isolated skill after another, without acknowledging how they are all interconnected...

Maybe this is why Sanders' agenda resonates so strongly with me.