[Lekooks] Fwd: Gableman’s Taxpayer-Funded Smear Campaign is Wrong

[Gerald Flakas]

LCUUC is a supporter of SOPHIA, which is the Waukesha County branch of WISDOM.


-----Original Message-----
From: David Liners, State-Wide Director <davidliners at wisdomwisconsin.org>
To: Gerald Flakas <gerflak at aol.com>
Sent: Mon, Mar 21, 2022 1:47 pm
Subject: Gableman’s Taxpayer-Funded Smear Campaign is Wrong

 We must call out any effort to marginalize or demonize any of our fellow humans. 
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| The WISDOM Network includes Wisconsinites from 19 different religious denominations, including Unitarians, Christians, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists.  We have other members who are not part of specific religions, but who share our values.  
 

One of those values is respect for all people, with no exceptions.  That means we must call out any effort to marginalize or demonize any of our fellow humans because of their race, religion, conviction history, sexual identity, or gender.  

 

Sometimes such attacks are blatant and overt, but many times they are done through implication, or through “dog whistles.”   In that spirit, we must clearly condemn the recent “report” by Michael Gableman about the 2020 election in Wisconsin.  The report is short on facts but long on anti-Semitic and racist innuendo.

 

This report relies disturbingly on an anti-Semitic trope that casts Jewish people as a powerful enemy that secretly exerts control over our lives.  This harmful and unfortunately common line of thinking implies that any use of money by Jewish people is somehow evil. The Gableman report manages to mention Mark Zuckerberg 45 times, even though there is no reason to believe he did anything wrong.  For good measure, he manages to include mention of George Soros, who had no involvement in anything having to do with the reliability of the election’s results.  The objection that Gableman finds with Zuckerberg and Soros seems to be primarily with their Jewish identities.  Playing on tired clichés about Jews and money, Gableman’s taxpayer-funded “report” makes the outrageous claim that “Mark Zuckerberg bought the 2020 election for Biden with staggering funding”.

 

The report also assumes that African American people are not supposed to vote at the rates that white people do, and if African American voter turnout increases there must be some nefarious influence.   And, he ties these two prejudices together.

 

We are truly shocked and dismayed at the anti-Semitic dog whistles that Michael Gableman exhibited in his testimony on March 1 before the Assembly Campaigns and Elections Committee hearing and in subsequent public appearances, even on national TV.  We are outraged that this re-hash of stereotype, paranoia and bigotry was paid for with our tax dollars.  Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and other leaders of our state legislature need to accept their part of the responsibility for the unleashing of these dangerous attacks. 

 

In these days of increasing anti-Semitism, any quarter given to this kind of rhetoric is deeply dangerous, even more when it is cloaked in the “respectability” of a former State Supreme Court justice and the Speaker of the State Assembly.  

 

Anti-Semitism, like Islamophobia and anti-Black racism has real consequences: 
   
   - Only two months ago, a terrorist entered a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas and took the rabbi and three congregants hostage for eleven hours, under the delusion that a Jewish leader would have the power to change US policy. 
   - Closer to home, in the City of Kenosha there have been leaflets distributed widely that blame Jewish people for COVID-19. 
   - Bias continues to fuel absurd incarceration rates for African-American people. 
   - Anti-Muslim bias has made it hard for some of our local organizations to find rental housing for Afghan refugees.

To build the Beloved Community dreamed of by Dr. King, we must stand up against any effort to diminish any of our brothers and sisters.  It is especially urgent that we let political leaders know that we will not stand idly by while they invoke hateful narratives in a cynical effort to gain political advantage.

 

 
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