Bigoted congressional candidate doesn’t think all Palestinians are bad

Michael F. Brown Power Suits 30 October 2020

Florida congressional candidate Laura Loomer has called political dirty trickster Roger Stone her “political mentor.”

via Gab

Laura Loomer, a self-described “proud Islamophobe” who has employed anti-Semitic rhetoric to assert she’s “a Jew who actually admits that globalist Marxist Jews run the media,” is the Republican congressional candidate for Florida’s 21st district. If victorious, President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort would be in her congressional district.

Unsurprisingly, Trump went on the record as a fan of Loomer following her primary victory in August. He then voted for her in the general election.

A one-time journalist for ultra right-wing media outlets such as The Rebel Media, Project Veritas and InfoWars, Loomer is on record openly hoping for the deaths of migrants and grotesquely claiming that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar wants another 11 September attack.

Loomer has run a racist ad inveighing against Black Lives Matter and Palestinians. It compares BLM’s support for the Palestinian struggle for freedom to the Nazis’ genocidal attacks on Jews.

The ad has been trumpeted by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a bigot and QAnon supporter, who is expected to win a seat in the US Congress. Greene is a friend of Loomer.

The local Sun Sentinel recently editorialized that Loomer “has accomplished nothing but promote her identity as an active volcano of Islamophobic bigotry and conspiracy theories.”

The newspaper added that “She has been a mouthpiece for InfoWars’ Alex Jones, the notorious fabricator of internet trash who peddled a baseless claim that the 2014 massacre of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax and the grieving parents were actors.”

Loomer once confided to Jones and his audience that her life is “ruined” because of social media banning that resulted from her repeated hate-mongering – amid insistent calls from liberals and some on the left that social media companies crack down on hate speech.

Ironically, however, these calls for censorship have smoothed the way for Silicon Valley giants to limit academic discourse about Palestinian rights.

She has spoken of her admiration for Roger Stone, the right-wing lobbyist and convicted felon who recently told Jones that Trump should introduce martial law if he loses the November election. Loomer has described Stone as her “political mentor.”

Anti-Palestinian racism

Loomer’s Democratic opponent, Lois Frankel, who is favored in polls, opposes the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and its call for equal rights for Palestinians, an end to occupation and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. While Frankel opposes such Palestinian-led efforts to secure freedom nonviolently, she is more measured in her racism than Loomer in expressing her hostility to Palestinian rights.

Frankel’s racism, unlike Loomer’s, is conveyed in forms that sadly remain socially acceptable today.

Loomer is open in voicing her own bigotry.

In a 2018 interview, she declared that not all Palestinians in Gaza are terrorists because some of them are Christian.

She also said in the same interview that Gaza is part of Israel before tying herself in a knot to explain what she meant.
Loomer’s raging against Palestinians comes as no surprise. As previously reported by The Electronic Intifada, she has participated in demonstrations with Meir Weinstein, head of the violent Jewish Defense League of Canada, and white supremacist Faith Goldy.

White nationalism and hyperbole

Loomer has happily posed for a photo with white nationalist Richard Spencer knowing full well who Spencer is.

Earlier this month she said to Alex Jones: “Let me just be the first to say, ‘I support the Proud Boys.’”

She is friends with Gavin McInnes, the founder of the Proud Boys, an organization designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

McInnes once released a video called “10 things I hate about Jews” which later was changed to “10 things I hate about Israel.”

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, McInnes claimed that Jews have a “whiny paranoid fear of Nazis.”

That anti-Semitic video can apparently no longer be found at YouTube. A separate video in which he says “I’m becoming anti-Semitic” can be seen at YouTube.

McInnes has also said, “Palestinians are stupid. Muslims are stupid. And the only thing they really respect is violence and being tough.”

Loomer’s friendship with McInnes is apparently based on white supremacy and shared anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim sentiment.

Her speech is frequently hyperbolic and disconnected from reality.

In August, she said Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is a communist. Biden is a lot of things, having voted for the second war with Iraq and been funded by Big Pharma, but a communist he is not.

Nor are there any communists in the US Congress despite the claims of Loomer.

In the midst of a devastating pandemic, she demagogically asserted in an interview with Tamar Yonah on Israel News Talk Radio, “You could effectively say that here in America, even during the time of Hitler, Jewish people were still able to have services” and “the synagogues weren’t even shut down this long under Hitler.”

The US has myriad problems, but to compare the closing of houses of worship during a pandemic, as a means to protect lives, to Adolf Hitler’s Germany is sickening.

Democrats, she suggests a moment later, are “godless people.”

First, this is untrue. Second, even if it were true, who cares?

Atheists and agnostics have the same rights as anyone else to participate in a properly functioning democracy that doesn’t try to lift believers over non-believers.

Yet Loomer clearly hates Muslim believers, even having called for Muslim immigrant drivers to be banned by Lyft and Uber.

During the interview with Yonah, she stated: “We have jihadists in Congress who are supporting BDS and calling for the eradication of Israel.” Loomer presumably has the only two Muslim women in Congress – Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar – in mind when she makes such bigoted references to “jihadists in Congress.”

In fact, nobody in Congress is a jihadist or calling for the eradication of Israel. It’s challenging simply to find someone in Congress calling for equal rights in the region.

Tlaib does call out apartheid between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and supports a future in which Palestinians and Jews live as equals in one state. This, of course, is no more the “eradication” of Israel than ending apartheid in South Africa or Jim Crow in the American South.

Omar, for her part, believes in the two-state solution.

The Florida Republican attacked both Tlaib and Omar in announcing her endorsement by a small right-wing Hindu and Hindu-promoting political action committee that claims to be non-partisan. Loomer argued she would be “taking on Marxist jihadists like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who are destroying our nation from within.”

The long-time bigot falsely associated them with “Islamic terror.”

Moving on in her interview with Yonah, Loomer notes, “There’s a lot of anti-Israel sentiment. The Democrats don’t even support Israel any more.”

This is untrue as an examination of the Democratic platform makes plain.

That document leans over backwards to protect Israel as a Jewish state – meaning second-class citizenship for Palestinians – and to undercut Palestinian efforts to secure freedom and equal rights through BDS. In contrast, what is true is that grassroots Democrats are increasingly supportive of taking action against Israeli policies violating Palestinian human rights.

“Putting the Jews on trial”

Loomer has blasted Frankel for signing a letter condemning possible Israeli annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank – or as Loomer put it “Judea and Samaria.”

“It’s what President Trump said: The Democrat Party is the party of Jew haters and Israel haters. And I don’t understand why any Jew would ever vote Democrat.”

Loomer then added, “I like to say with my election it’s going to be the first time in US history where a Republican Jewish woman goes up against a Democrat Jewish woman. So we’re putting the Jews on trial here in District 21 in Florida.” This is explosive and potentially dangerous anti-Jewish rhetoric.

If this wasn’t enough, Loomer then said the November vote is for a candidate backing Jewish “survival and their preservation – that’s me” or a candidate “who supports a party that is endorsing BLM which has an anti-Zionist, anti-Israel message.”

Congressional Democrats do tend to support Black Lives Matter, but they are generally not “anti-Zionist” and do not have an “anti-Israel message.” Time and again, the vast majority of Democrats in Washington choose Israeli militarism over standing for Palestinian rights and freedom.

Loomer is likely to lose in November, but it’s not certain. If victorious, she almost certainly would be joining Marjorie Taylor Greene in Washington.

They would by no means be the first racists to serve in that body, but they would be among the most openly bigoted to serve in the 21st century and would put a younger face on the hatred coursing through the Trump-led Republican Party.

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Comments

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I do not think they mean what she thinks they mean? replied on

" Marxist jihadists like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib"

Er what? Marxist Jihadists? Clearly Loomer doesn't realise that these words are mutually contradictory.

Marxism famously considers religion "the opium of the people" and is godless in the sense of being atheist.

Jihadis are dedicated to one specific Islamic religion and explictly oppose the Marxist ideology aiming for a religious state where Islmic pinciples are applied on all subjects.

"Loomer has blasted Frankel for signing a letter condemning possible Israeli annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank – or as Loomer put it “Judea and Samaria.”"

In fairness, that is what Israel calls the West Bank too. So it is not just her words but also it is not the name most used outside Israel and pro-Israeli circles either.

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Moebius replied on

She is disgusting human being and i think people should not waste too much time about her because there is nothing smart to hear, she is typical Zionist terrorist sympathiser and her whinning and smear attacking on others clearly show that.

Michael F. Brown

Michael F. Brown is an independent journalist. His work and views have appeared in The International Herald Tribune, TheNation.com, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The News & Observer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Post and elsewhere.