Writing about GFP reminded me: what explains the silence of its resident professional anti-semite detector, Sarah Darer Littman?
/For years, Littman filled the Greenwich Free Press’s letters columns with angry rants against what she claimed to be Trump’s and other Republicans’ anti-semitism and Islamaphobia, all while claiming the moral authority to do so because of her own family’s history as victims of the Holocaust. This was one of her typical screeds from back in the day:
The Time Is Now For Moral Courage - Politicians Can’t Be Bystanders To Hate Speech
Growing up, I was profoundly influenced by my father’s stories of growing up in the Bronx fearing the hate-filled rhetoric of Father Charles Coughlin’s radio broadcasts. Like his modern day counterpart, Donald Trump, Coughlin was a bona fide media star, with millions of listeners. “When we get through with the Jews in America,” Coughlin spewed, “They’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.” In December 1938, thousands of Coughlin’s followers took to the streets of New York City, chanting, “Send Jews back where they came from in leaky boats!”
I also remember the deep emotion my father expressed when we found out the method by which his grandparents, who’d remained in Ukraine when my grandfather emigrated to the U.S., were murdered by the Nazis during WWII. Our family knows from personal experience the real consequences of hateful rhetoric.
That is why I am so deeply appalled that the party my father supported is aiding and abetting hate speech. That is why I was so disgusted with former Congressman Rob Simmons’ answer to WPLR’s Chaz and AJ when they posed the question: “Donald Trump calls for a temporary ban on Muslims until our legislators can figure things out — is that nutty?” [blah blah blah]
And another (of dozens):
Sarah Littman: GOP speaks up too late – The party of Lincoln died long ago
As a sensitive girl growing up in a family impacted by the Holocaust, I often evaluated people by deciding if they would hide me or turn me in if another such demagogue arose ….
Since 9/11, I’ve become increasingly horrified and disillusioned, as I’ve watched the political rhetoric in this country become religiously and racially charged, while people who should know better stayed silent. Indeed, to my shocked dismay, people like Pamela Geller have been vocal perpetrators of the same kind of rhetoric that was employed against my own family with such awful consequences sixty years ago.
Littman could always be counted on to denounce what she felt was “hate speech” by Republican politicians, and demand that members of that party stand up and speak against it. She was right to do so, but we haven’t heard from her recently on her own Democrats embracing hate and anti-semitism — has she not noticed what they’re saying and what they’re doing, or does she merely lack the moral courage to buck the Progressive mob?
Just wondering.