Appearing as a guest on Tuesday’s Hardball, MSNBC political analyst and USA Today senior political reporter Heidi Przybyla brazenly argued that anti-Semitism is becoming “mainstream” on the right after having been only a “fringe, alt-right, white nationalist movement.”
Przybyla continued the liberal media’s obsession with normalizing white supremacists such as Richard Spencer by again touting his small gathering in late 2016 as a representation of where an entire portion of the country is heading with its core values and ideology.
Prior to Przybyla’s comments, Matthews attempted to toe the middle ground (even though he had a gushy segment earlier in the show about the Southern Poverty Law Center), ruling that discrimination of any kind is difficult to talk about since the United States has “many different ethnic groups and religions” that thus come with stark differences.
However, Matthews admitted that “something’s going bad here” whenever you see on the news that “someone goes to a graveyard on a weekend down in St. Louis and starts knocking over gravestones.”
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Przybyla began by observing that such incidents like the Jewish cemetery have applied “a magnifying glass for the whole country” to see this kind of hatred.
The USA Today correspondent ignored the fact that attacks on minorities were perpetuated by and synonymous for well over a century with the Democratic Party but correctly pointed out that anti-Semitic promoters have included a “fringe, alt-right, white nationalist movement.”
Przybyla’s analysis then flew off the rails as she asserted that anti-Semitism is a “right-wing” phenomenon and such attacks on Jewish people have become more acceptable to those in the “mainstream” political right.
“I don’t think that people are calling — just like that Jewish reporter — wasn’t calling Donald Trump anti-Semitic, but they’re asking him as leader, as the President of the United States because the numbers don’t lie and if you don’t want to believe the Southern Poverty Law Center, believe the FBI cause they’ve got numbers too,” Przybyla added.
Przybyla returned later to remind viewers of the not-so-friendly origins of the phrase American First that Trump adopted as a campaign slogan.
But leaving that aside, what she said next was exactly the behavior that conservatives like Sean Davis and Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist or this space have tried to point out, which is how the liberal media have been promoters of abhorrent groups to extrapolate onto conservatives and Trump voters.
Przybyla pontificated:
Here’s the critical thing, okay? It's not just this fringe group — this fringe movement going mainstream, but it’s a pattern of delayed responses, so it’s not just, you know, not responding in that Thursday news conference until today. But there’s there's been several incidents of that, like when Richard Spencer did the kind of Hail Trump thing at the ball room and they had people doing the Nazi salute. It wasn't until The New York Times pushed him to denounce that. So, it’s this pattern of delayed response.
Time and again, NewsBusters has chronicled how the networks and CNN went to great lengths to make Spencer appear to be far more significant than he actual is in American life.
If the media were serious about eradicating white nationalism and its hateful beliefs, they would not be devoting so much attention to promoting Spencer and tying neo-Nazism to one of the dominant political philosophies that millions identify with (which, above all, values the power of the individual and roots for their success).
Here’s the relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on November 21:
MSNBC’s Hardball
February 21, 2017
7:11 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS MATTHEWS: This is tough one to talk about because there’s always a little bit of prejudice floating around in this country. We’re a country of many different ethnic groups and religions and we try to get along.
HEIDI PRZYBYLA: I think —
MATTHEWS: And when someone goes to a graveyard on a weekend down in St. Louis and starts knocking over gravestones, you go — wait a minute — something’s going bad here.
PRZYBYLA: Right. And that’s putting a magnifying glass for the whole country on this phenomenon of what was once a kind of right-wing, fringe, alt-right, white nationalist movement moving more into the mainstream, possibly gaining traction. And I don’t think that people are calling — just like that Jewish reporter — wasn’t calling Donald Trump anti-Semitic, but they’re asking him as leader, as the President of the United States because the numbers don’t lie and if you don’t want to believe the Southern Poverty Law Center, believe the FBI cause they’ve got numbers too.
(....)
MATTHEWS: But, politically, look at this. He played the racial card with the birther thing. He played the anti-Mexican, Central American card with the rapists thing. And the Muslim ban he was talking about —
PRZYBYLA: And it goes back to his campaign slogan too —
MATTHEWS: — he’s been playing the cards on the right.
PRZYBYLA: — this American First campaign slogan, which a lot of people, you know, point out — kinda the historical — the his —
MATTHEWS: But we know what that is. That’s 1940 — yeah.
PRZYBYLA: — history of that. Here’s the critical thing, okay? It's not just this fringe group — this fringe movement going mainstream, but it’s a pattern of delayed responses, so it’s not just, you know, not responding in that Thursday news conference until today.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
PRZYBYLA: But there’s there's been several incidents of that, like when Richard Spencer did the kind of Hail Trump thing at the ball room and they had people doing the Nazi salute. It wasn't until The New York Times pushed him to denounce that. So, it’s this pattern of delayed response.
