On Wednesday, the Minnesota 7th Congressional District Republican Facebook page administrator(s) or editor(s) posted a link to a Free Beacon article about the Public Interest Legal Foundation's efforts to defend voter ID laws in three state.
The MN07 GOP CD Facebook page admin or editor went where no Free Beacon author ever went: calling financier George Soros a "Nazi National Socialist who funds the takeover of the Democrat Party by Socialists."
Bluestem first looked at the Facebook page on Tuesday in Minnesota 7th Congressional District Republican Party Facebook page warns fans about cilantro. It's hard to know whether this page--apparently the official Facebook page for the district's Republicans--is satire, extremism, or simple ignorance.
We'd tweeted the screenshot above, and former state legislator Jeremy Kalin responded:
@sallyjos not comedy but tragedy when an official unit of the MN GOP calls a Jew a Nazi. See this, @Ethan1818?
— Jeremy Kalin (@JeremyKalin) August 5, 2015
When we attempted to revisit the Facebook post later today, the link rolled over to this:
In So Glenn Beck Calls George Soros a Nazi Collaborator? Marty Peretz Said It First, an op-ed piece by J.J. Goldberg published in The Forward, a Jewish publication, looked at accusations some on the right were making about Soros:
If you haven’t been following it: Glenn Beck devoted three evenings on his Fox News program last week, November 9, 10 and 11, to a three-part, three-hour documentary about George Soros. It’s titled “The Puppetmaster.” It purports to prove that Soros is the mastermind of a far-reaching plot to destroy the American economy and bring down the government. It’s a pretty shocking display of ignorance, innuendo, outright lies and not-too-subtle anti-Semitism. But as I’ve tried to piece together my take on it, I keep finding new and more surprising twists.
Right now I’m going to look at Beck’s inference that Soros’s teenage survival in Nazi-occupied Hungary made him a sort of Nazi collaborator, and I’ll compare Beck’s presentation of the thesis with Marty Peretz’s version of same from 2007. . . .
The Anti-Defamation League issued a statement calling the [Beck] accusation — specifically the intent to “hold a young boy responsible for what was going on around him during the Holocaust as part of a larger effort to denigrate the man” — “horrific” and “repugnant,” along with “inappropriate,” “offensive” and “over the top.” The head of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, Elan Steinberg, called the description — particularly the made-up part about “helping send the Jews to the death camps” — “a particularly monstrous lie.” . . .
It's worth noting that the MN07 GOP Party Facebook admin/editor went beyond Glenn Beck to call Soros an out and out Nazi. It's about as ill-informed as those who called Pope Benedict a Nazi for joining Hitler Youth at 14 (it was compulsory).
Tonight on Facebook, Kalin posted the screenshot along with this headnote:
Earlier today, the Minnesota 7th Congressional District Republican Party posted the following link and commentary on their Facebook page, calling a holocaust survivor a "Nazi" simply because they disagree with his politics.
This is despicable. I say this not as a former Democratic elected official but as an American, and as a Jew.
Clearly someone realized their error because the post has been removed. But all Minnesotans - particularly Minnesota Jews - deserve an apology. Enough already.
Ht to Sally Jo Sorensen and thanks to the Jewish Community Relations Council for responding as well.
Sadly, this isn't the only loose use of language on the page.
Farrakan, eff-bombs and the N-word
On Tuesday, a Facebook reader from Missouri and the admin had this exchange in the comments section about a Breitbart.com article about Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakan that the MN07 Republican Party Facebook account had published to its page:
One is left to wonder why the use of the "F***Bomb" isn't acceptable for young folks, while derogatory words for African-Americans and women aren't among the "really bad words." We don't hear this sort of language from our Republican friends (and our Republicans parents didn't talk like that when we were small). It's not "political correctness." It's good manners, or so we were taught with a bar of soap.
Heck, the worst our Republican state representative has been able to come up with is calling U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a "bedwetter," an intraparty squabble which doesn't exactly violate Godwin's Law:
We don't think whomever is in charge of the off-the-rails CD7 GOP party Facebook represents Minnesota Republicans, but the page is an issue which the congressional district and state party should address as it takes back the social media asset.
Photos: Facebook screengrabs.
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