Juno News - September 01, 2020


Is it anti-Semitic to criticize George Soros？


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

201.70197

Word Count

1,035

Sentence Count

1

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 so a tweet by conservative member of parliament carrilyn findley was brought up to me as problematic
00:00:12.840 and a number of jewish organizations and individuals went off about how this was
00:00:17.700 promoting or sharing anti-semitism she's since issued an apology but as someone who's worked
00:00:22.700 in the field and as a visible jew i was asked to give my take for true north and i'm going to tell
00:00:28.860 you right now why i don't think that the video and the tweet that was shared was anti-semitic so
00:00:33.160 here's the tweet itself the reason why a number of people took issue with this is because it
00:00:38.660 mentions george soros and soros is often accused of using his money to control things politically
00:00:43.740 or economically now why is that bad well it's bad because that's a trope that people have used
00:00:49.520 against jews for thousands of years that they're you know they have influence or control there's
00:00:53.940 some world domination plan these type of things you might have heard of them before so the question
00:00:57.820 is when you accuse one jew of this are you accusing him or her because they're jewish or are you
00:01:03.280 accusing them as the actions of human being are you accusing george soros the man or george soros the
00:01:09.320 jew now if his control that you're accusing him of is being exercised because he has a lot of money
00:01:14.380 again does he have a lot of money because he's a jew or does he have a lot of money because he's simply
00:01:19.140 a person who happens to have a lot of money the second issue that i have with this accusation of
00:01:24.100 anti-semitism is that the tweet that she shared was in and of itself simply a commentary of george
00:01:29.220 soros and his connections that was not anti-semitism so simply talking about facts is not anti-semitism
00:01:34.940 it's the account that she shared it from and the other sort of issues that come along with that such
00:01:40.260 as potentially offensive or hateful content from these accounts now this could be problematic you're
00:01:46.400 right if you're a government official and you're giving platform to someone who has previously expressed
00:01:51.280 anti-semitic or hateful views now that would be a thing to get worked up over but now did this
00:01:57.340 account so you can see here here's the tweet there's actually two layers there is the video
00:02:01.360 originating from an account called mayday matrix and the video re-shared that was retweeted by this
00:02:06.320 person david here so the um first issue is the person who shared the original video now that's
00:02:15.220 problematic because they've posted some other anti-semitic things or hateful things on their website and
00:02:20.560 there's definitely a lot of discussion to have about why some of the theories and things that
00:02:24.300 they've posted are anti-semitic the second layer is the person that she shared it from so again david
00:02:29.900 the person that she shared it from i actually reached out to david as part of my due diligence
00:02:34.060 as a member of the media and here at true north we're all about doing due diligence and covering
00:02:38.680 some of the stories that the mainstream media does not cover making sure that we cover all our bases
00:02:42.160 and so i'm getting at all sides of the story especially when i'm talking about something like
00:02:46.600 anti-semitism which has the possibility of damaging and seriously hurting someone's reputation
00:02:51.140 so i should know for sure whether they are sharing these things and what their intention is and now
00:02:56.380 there's a difference between sharing things maliciously or sharing things ignorantly david after
00:03:02.340 our conversation seemed to be a patriot not an anti-semite he should probably pay a bit more
00:03:07.920 attention to the things that he's uh retweeting because he's obviously gotten lumped in with this
00:03:12.200 whole thing unintentionally um but being patriotic and supporting a canada first agenda is is not
00:03:18.460 anti-semitic of course now ultimately we need to consider people's intentions if we're going to
00:03:24.220 make the very serious charge of anti-semitism especially in the climate that we live in today
00:03:29.520 you're going to need to determine whether or not the intent was malicious or ignorant now if the case
00:03:34.720 doesn't seem to be malicious intent even the jewish orgs that came up with them i mean they seem to have
00:03:40.660 some difficulty specifying what the issue was with the tweets specifically what what was it about the
00:03:46.600 george soros tweets that was problematic because the criticism was about the video but her apology
00:03:51.880 which we've got here um seemed to be about the person that she was sharing it from so so again a bit of
00:03:56.100 confusion seems to happen there so this seems like it was more of an opportunity to reach out for
00:04:01.560 education saying you know listen um mp finley what you tweeted sounds problematic or it could
00:04:06.780 definitely sound problematic to a jewish canadian now instead of throwing around the charge of
00:04:11.220 anti-semitism what we're going to do is see if uh you know maybe there's some opportunity for
00:04:15.500 education um now if there is malicious intent obviously that's a very very different thing if
00:04:21.680 what you've tweeted you're saying no i you know screw these jews they control the world and i hate
00:04:25.320 them that's obviously very very different than what we're talking about here and you know you're
00:04:29.400 just a jerk if you do that but if it's unintentional calling someone names like anti-semite is not
00:04:34.400 going to make them want to change their behavior or be receptive to education and in fact it might
00:04:38.820 flip things around and cause them to become an anti-semite because they didn't have any
00:04:43.340 ill intention or malicious will to begin with so in a nutshell that's sort of what we can think about
00:04:49.500 these uh videos but i'm happy to discuss more on twitter or in the comments so shoot me a tweet
00:04:55.400 at sam ashkenazi other than that like i said i am sam ashkenazi for true north i hope you found this
00:05:00.560 video educational and you'll definitely stay tuned to more great content from true north so again
00:05:05.060 have yourself a great evening and take care thank you so so much