Thread by @AGHamilton29

So the left had quite the week excusing antisemitism and smearing Jews. This MSNBC hit was another example of it. I'll go through the details in the thread that follows, but it's unfortunate so many people chose to add on to the smear with attacks such as these.

So what happened?

Maddow did a segment where she claimed Trump's nominee to the second circuit was essentially a white supremacist. She based it on a law-review article he wrote in 2010 that ethnonationalism is consistent with principles of liberal democracy.

Maddow took several random quotes from the article and insisted it was essentially “a highbrow argument for racial purity in the nation-state”.

Clearly she assumed, seemingly rightly, none of her viewers would read the article.

The actual article from Menashi, whose family are middle eastern Jews, was a defense of Israel. Specifically he was countering arguments that Israel identifying as a Jewish state is inconsistent with claims that it is a liberal Democracy.

Of course if Maddow had identified that the central stated purpose of the paper was to argue about acceptance of a Jewish state, it would make the attempt to frame it as a a defense of white nationalism look ridiculous so she just left it out of the whole segment.

Anyways, Menashi argues succesful nations need to have some unifying purpose. Maddow only uses quotes that refer to race and ethnicity, but Menashi specifically says those are just a few of many potential things that can unite people, including history, geography, economics etc.

As you can see, the actual argument he is making doesn't even remotely resemble Maddow's portrayal, which is hardly a surprise. She does this all the time. Other people should know better.

Ed Whelan has a good debunking of the smear in National Review: nationalreview.com/bench-memos/ra…

Sorry, skipped a thought here. He is arguing that it's fine for Israel to organize over that aspect of shared identity as long as they respect the rights central to a liberal democracy because it is no different than other nations organized around other shared traits.

Of course the bigger problem is Maddow's segment was viewed by millions. It was then amplified by thousands of others.

A few publications on the right and people like me can point out the truth, but millions will believe the smear. How does Menashi get his reputation back?

FWIW here is the summary from the actual law-review article. It takes 15 seconds to read, then go ahead and compare it to the argument Maddow tried to portray him as making.