Y’all may remember when I wrote about Helen Thomas last year after she made statements about how Jews in Israel should “Go back to Poland. Go back to Germany.” Many people called her out as an anti-Semite, including myself. But in a recent interview in Playboy, the 90-year old journalist proves that those brief comments were, in fact, the tip of an iceberg of genuine tinfoil-hat-wearing-crazy ethnic hateration.
In the interview, Thomas says that Jews are “wonderful people” and that she’s “anti-Zionist, not anti-Jewish.” She criticizes the Israeli government’s policies, which is not necessarily anti-Semitic (I actually even agree with some of what she says in that regard). But then Thomas undermines every legitimate point she might have made about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a veritable festival of old-school paranoid anti-Semitism.
Here’s a taste:
PLAYBOY: Let’s get to something else you said more recently. In a speech in Detroit last December, you told an Arab group, “We are owned by the propagandists against the Arabs. There’s no question about that. Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question, in my opinion. They put their money where their mouth is. We’re being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.” Do you stand by that statement?
THOMAS: Yes, I do. I know it was horrendous, but I know it’s true. Tell me it’s not true and I’ll be happy to be contradicted. I’m just saying they’re using their power, and they have power in every direction.
PLAYBOY: That stereotype of Jewish control has been around for more than a century. Do you actually think there’s a secret Jewish conspiracy at work in this country?
THOMAS: Not a secret. It’s very open. What do you mean secret?
PLAYBOY: Well, for instance, explain the connection between Hollywood and what’s happening with the Palestinians.
THOMAS: Power over the White House, power over Congress.
PLAYBOY: By way of contributions?
THOMAS: Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies, which are funded by wealthy supporters, including those from Hollywood. Same thing with the financial markets. There’s total control.
PLAYBOY: In America you’re talking about a relatively small community. Jews make up roughly two percent of the U.S. population. On a worldwide level, the percentage is well under one percent. Those numbers don’t exactly spell domination.
THOMAS: I get where you’re leading with this. You know damn well the power they have. It isn’t the two percent. It’s real power when you own the White House, when you own these other places in terms of your political persuasion. Of course they have power. You don’t deny that. You’re Jewish, aren’t you?
PLAYBOY: Yes.
THOMAS: That’s what I thought. Well, you know damn well they have power.
The idea that Jews are a malevolent band of conspirators who secretly rule the world is propaganda that has been used for over 1,000 years as an excuse to disenfranchise, exile, and kill us, especially in Europe. The Holocaust, after all, was predicated on Hitler’s belief that rich Jews were deliberately destroying the German economy, even though German Jews were the most patriotic and assimilated in Europe; his propaganda was successful because it was merely fanning the flames of ethnic hatred that had been present in Europe for centuries. That kind of paranoid conspiracy theory has always been the excuse the non-Jewish majority uses to validate their attacks on the Jewish minority—and it’s been around for centuries before the state of Israel was even thought of, so it’s clearly not based in objections to Israeli policy. When Helen Thomas was a girl, my great-grandfather fled pogroms in Europe caused specifically by the type of anti-Semitic paranoia that she still believes today.
That’s why, despite the fact that she’s had a brilliant, barrier-breaking career and done a great deal for women in journalism, I feel absolutely no sympathy for Helen Thomas when I read this:
PLAYBOY: When people write your obituary——
THOMAS: [Eyes suddenly fill with tears] Oh, I know what they’re going to say: “anti-Semite.”
PLAYBOY: That has to bother you after all your years of hard work.
THOMAS: [Starts to cry] I’m a reporter.
PLAYBOY: What’s making you emotional?
THOMAS: I’m a reporter. [sobs] I know damn well what they’re going to say because they have their print, they have their ink. They don’t give a damn about the truth. They have to have it their way, and they’ll be writing my obituary.
“They”, of course, means Jews. In her paranoia, Helen Thomas thinks that we’re out to get her, and since we control the media, we’ll make sure her anti-Semitism is mentioned in the lede of her obituary. And you know what? I have no problem with that. It’s a shame when bigotry undermines someone’s stellar achievements. It’s a shame to die with people’s last impressions being that you’re a raving bigot. Unfortunately, that’s the price you pay for being a raving bigot, regardless of who runs the media.
The only question remaining is why Fox didn’t hire her.
I think the poetic justice to this is that damn rights her accomplishments will be someone people won’t care about. For those who are new to the game, so to speak, all they will know of her is this crap. It won’t go away.
@mm – indeed!
Well, gee. Seems if there’s one thing we Jews can always count on, it’s being nigh literally demonized to all get out and blamed for anything and everything. Le plus ca change…
Helen Thomas can kiss my Jewish ass. And boo-hoo about what people will say in her obit. Here’s a thought: if you don’t want people to say you were a nasty mean hateful bigot after you die, don’t be a nasty mean hateful bigot in your life.
The Israeli Lobby does have alot of power over Congress, as Walt and Mearsheimer have documented. They’ve wiped out the careers of several congressmen and congresswomen who they have deemed to be too pro-arab. (And keep in mind that for these groups any attempt at evenhandedness qualifies as “pro-arab”)
Still, I haven’t got a clue Thomas talking about when she talks about Zionist control of “the world financial markets”. That is more like clinical paranoia. I wonder why the interviewer didn’t try to push her to elaborate, and back up her statements. That would have been a better response than tacit acquiescence.
@MonkeyShines: Yes, the Israel Lobby is powerful. So are other religious/ethnic lobbies. The evangelical Christian lobby is extremely powerful and commands billions of dollars from various “family values” foundations and lobbying organizations. They are a major player in Congressional elections and voting. Even on a national level, John McCain chose an obviously unqualified, unintelligent running mate from that faction simply to appeal to its voters. The Miami Cuban lobby is so powerful in the swing state of Florida that no politician has dared to cross them for years, especially since the 2000 election. So is the LDS lobby out west—they spent $25 million to help defeat Prop 8 in California, and you can’t do anything in Utah politics without their okay.
And yet, you don’t hear anyone saying that those interest groups are a “secret conspiracy” or “own Congress/the White House” (particularly the Obama White House, whose current occupant has been bashed plenty of times by AIPAC and the WJC). You only hear that about Jews, and those stereotypes about Jewish conspiracies have been around for WAY longer than the State of Israel and the Israel Lobby have.
Saying Jews control world financial markets is an ancient bit of anti-Semitism—if you’re unfamiliar with it, just look it up. As I said above, it’s a conspiracy theory that’s been used as a pretext for anti-Jewish laws and violence since the Middle Ages. It was part of the paranoia that led Ferdinand and Isabella to expel Jews from Spain in 1492. It was part of Hitler’s paranoia that led to the Holocaust. As the only Jew in my college dorm freshman year, I was asked about it more than once—some of the nice Christian girls I lived with thought we all had secret Swiss bank accounts. There’s nothing “clinical” about Helen Thomas’s embracing it. She’s just buying into the same hateful ethnic stereotypes that millions before her have. If the reporter would have asked her to further explain it, there’s nothing logical she could have said because it’s verifiably untrue and based only in ethnic hatred—which is the case with most bigotry.
i spent some time thinking about what galled me about the interview. It’s this-the assumption that a group of people spread over the planet can have one unity of purpose and mind in the cultural, economic, political and financial spheres.
There’s enough trying to discern singular purpose and mind of a people in single geographical location, time and space.
It doesn’t make sense to me.
@Mackey: the assumption that a group of people spread over the planet can have one unity of purpose and mind in the cultural, economic, political and financial spheres.
And that they’re all secretly dangerous and malevolent and a threat to the majority. When the truth is, the majority has historically used every kind of injustice and brutality to harm and destroy us for being outsiders.
Has she gone senile? Or was she always like this? The part in the interview where she breaks down and says “I’m a reporter” made me wonder.
@MonkeyShines: What does that mean, the “Israeli [sic] lobby” has “wiped out” careers? Does that mean that voters in the districts of those congresspeople voted them out? Does it mean that Jews stay informed regarding issues of interest to us and vote accordingly? Do you really think that Jews march in lockstep about Israel?
And Walt and Mearshimer have been pretty thoroughly discredited.
@Lindsay: There’s no evidence that she suffers from dementia or any kind of mental illness, and throughout the rest of the Playboy interview, she speaks lucidly, candidly, and with humor about many aspects of her life and career. She doesn’t seem to be befuddled or confused and seems to have good clarity and recall on other topics. And remember, she’s always been an emotional, assertive, outspoken person in public—that was one of the hallmarks of her career as a journalist—so this seems pretty consistent with her usual behavior, IMO.
Personally, I think she’s probably always been this way. In the days before YouTube and internet and the 24-hour news cycle, you could be a bigot and get away with it much more easily because you didn’t leave any evidence. For example, no one knew the depths of Nixon’s Jew-hating (and Billy Graham’s) until his White House tapes were made public, but he was clearly into the same paranoid conspiracies that Thomas is. My guess is she’s always been an anti-Semite, but she’s only been caught out now. And maybe she’s more willing to be open about it in this interview because now she has nothing to lose.
Becky Sharper, none of those other lobbies you have mentioned are lobbying to use US tax dollars to commit genocide. Stop dragging America into it! Also, these other groups are not censoring American citizens and getting them fired for expressing contrary opinions about a foreign country. THAT is where the resentment comes from. Racists like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck can be on the air but Rick Sanchez and Helen Thomas can’t?
Look what happened to Rachel Corrie and how they shut down the NY play about her life.
Americans don’t like being censored.
It seemed to me that the “they” in the second block quote was referring to the “people” who will write her “obituary” and probably not to “the Jews.” And she is also probably correct on that point.
Boogienights comment deconstructed:
I hate Israel’s government therefore I hate all Jews everywhere because everyone knows they all think alike and conspire together to destroy the world through genocide!
People should be able to be raving anti-Semites if they want! People are bigots about other groups, so why can’t people be bigots about Jews? If Jews complain about it, well, they should just STFU because this is America and we shit on everyone! It’s our right to shit on minorities and if you object when we shit on you, you’re censoring us!
Thanks for that. Always good to hear from the pro-Jew-bashing crowd. Also, you need to look up both “censor” and “genocide”, because you are misusing both.
@Bellacoker: That’s possible, although throughout the interview she tends to use “they” a lot to refer to Jews. The only other “they” I can think of that she might mean in that context would be “reporters”, which could be the antecedent to “they”.
But the whole “they have their ink” and “they have to have their way” sounds to me like she’s just being paranoid about the Jews she believes control the media and got her fired…although I suppose she could be paranoid about the other reporters in general, although I’m not sure why.
Oh dear, but I do think I’m going to throw my two cents in here about the religious/ethnic lobby. I think the concerns people have (including me) are that our foreign policy is dictated by a disproportionately small group of people (in relation to population) that wield incredible power – I’m thinking of AIPAC and the Cuban lobby (sorry, I don’t specifically know any of their groups). I can’t say I’m a huge fan of fundamentalist Christians, but they are more representative of our population and one could argue that it would make sense that they wield more power (again, not that I want them too). Same goes for LDS in Utah. Of course, they couldn’t wield that power if Congress didn’t let them, so I think it’s kind of weird to blame the lobbyists themselves rather than the political system that begets them. Except of course those who lobby for things I’m against ethically like the pro cock-fighting lobby. Then they’re just assholes.
@BeckySharper and @Lindsay: There is a chance she’s slightly senile. At 90, it’s pretty hard to be entirely lucid. That being said, the hate-filled version of senility is usually an exaggerated (or merely filter-free) version of pre-senile shit.
@martha: Completely agree about the hate-filled version of senility usually being a glimpse of what was there all along. Any kind of deterioration means you lose the ability to self-edit and then you tend to start spouting stuff you’ve been thinking all along. Then again, when you see bigots ranting their bigotry, they always look/sound kind of crazy because what they’re saying is illogical and hateful.
The other way that I think age might play into this is that people of Helen Thomas’s generation were raised in an atmosphere of casual racism, anti-Semitism…the -isms were pretty much the norm. I see this in my family members that age ALL the time. I think it’s highly likely that she was raised with a lot of anti-Semitic stereotypes and she absorbed them, as people do, and still holds them.