re: #365 Gus

Bzzt.

Anti-Semitic Reactions to Jimmy Carter’s Book: White Supremacists

Many scholars and experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have strongly criticized Jimmy Carter’s book, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid,” for its distortions, misrepresentations, and one-sided arguments that blame Israel for the conflict while giving the Palestinians a pass. Yet the book is being celebrated in online white supremacist forums for its anti-Israel, conspiratorial and anti-Semitic propaganda value. Some white supremacists in the United States have embraced the message of Carter’s book, pointing to criticism by supporters of Israel as confirmation of their anti-Semitic notions of Jewish power.

As a result, various online anti-Semitic forums have hailed Carter’s book in diatribes laced with anti-Semitic invective. White supremacists, who already focus much of their hatred on Jews and believe that “Zionists” and Israel control the U.S. government and create the world’s problems, welcomed President Carter’s book as an affirmation of their warped anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

White supremacist forums such as Stormfront, the longest-running white supremacist Web site on the Internet, Aryan Nations Forum, a Web forum operated by the South Carolina-based Aryan Nations group headed by August Kreis, and Vanguard News Network (VNN), a white supremacist Web site and discussion forum run by neo-Nazi Alex Linder, have included posts praising President Carter for standing up to the “Zionist lobby” and Israel and reaffirming their views on the inherent evil nature of Jews. Many of the messages expressed support for Carter, claiming that any criticism of his book is an attack by “the Zionists.”

Mark Weber of the Institute for Historical Review, a Holocaust denial organization, listed the book along with the conspiratorial paper on the “Israel Lobby” by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt as one of the year’s crowning achievements, showing the “growing awareness of Jewish-Zionist power.”