As the House Judiciary Cmt'e holds a hearing in Manhattan this morning, one thing you may not have noticed 👀 but want to be paying attn to is not about violent crime numbers or partisan politics, but the racist & antisemitic language that's seeped in. Let me explain 🧵

More and more, we’ve heard prominent folks, including Members of Congress and their allies, refer to Manhattan’s elected Attorney General Alvin Bragg as “Soros funded” or “Soros owned”.

What does this even mean?

Bragg is the 1st African-American elected to this role & is responsible for enforcing #NYC laws. And Soros, a Jew from Hungary who survived the Holocaust as a child, has become a big funder – among many big dollar funders in our politics – of democracy/anti-communism + education.

Some context: The Big Apple is extraordinarily diverse, w/ nearly 25% Black, 30% Latino, & 15% Asian communities that has in the past years seen some very scary incidents of hate-fueled violence. Bragg’s historic election was because he was the candidate that a majority chose.

With the use of phrases such as “Soros funded Bragg”, we see a crystallization of a very real pattern: Racist and anti-Semitic dog-whistles have become more explicit, more extreme, and more regular.

The timing & the facts make it clear that this hearing is simply about trying to pivot, distract, & gloss over the real aim. Let me explain…

Painting the city as “as a crime-infested dystopia… [has] transparent and ugly political motives”, as @lbeisen & @AmesCG explained – not with the goal of having a productive and illuminating conversation about the horrors of violent crime. nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-ope…

This hearing aims to embarrass & undermine AG Bragg, & “efforts to meddle in the Bragg investigation are part of a worrying trend” to improperly politicize and misuse of Congress’ oversight authority. Congress shouldn't be interfering for political games. brennancenter.org/our-work/analy…

Above, my colleague @Martha_Kinsella wrote why “Congressional oversight is a powerful tool for accountability… [and] to safeguard democracy”… But, “it is not limitless.” We want our three branches of government to operate like three branches, not one.

And actual crime? Yes, it’s risen in Manhattan, as it has everywhere since 2019. But shootings and homicides have in fact fallen since Bragg himself took office. Read more from my colleagues about that here: nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-ope…

The legitimate oversight levers of Congress should not be used to misinform and scare the American people about crime, or to skew what is a nationwide trend into the fault of the first African-American Manhattan DA.

The strategy of using racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories is reprehensible to American values, off-putting to American voters, and unacceptable in our American discourse. 🇺🇸

Yet outright use of these tropes has deepened, among many reasons since the 2016 election of President Trump, and because of the former President’s willingness to entertain others’ use of them – and to use them himself.

Just one example of this is the anti-Asian rhetoric of repeated, demeaning and racially-laced language about his own former Cabinet member Elaine Chao. politico.com/news/2023/01/2…

Trump has also used dual loyalty conspiracies against American Jews at a Hannukah celebration, and other “overt appeals to racial animus”. washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…

And that has now seeped into the language used by leading and prominent Americans, and more mainstream Members of Congress, glossed over in media interviews, and explicitly used against AG Bragg (about both his indictment of Trump and crime in NYC).

As the @ADL explains, casting George Soros, a Holocaust survivor, as a puppet-master or as different than other donors “has the effect of mainstreaming antisemitic tropes”. That’s bad, friends. adl.org/resources/blog…

Even worse? In doing so, it “validate(s) the same hateful myths propagated by antisemites”, even when unintentionally done.
It is crucial that all Members of Congress fully reject this rhetoric.

https://twitter.com/JGreenblattADL/status/1195001558087426048

It *is* antisemitic, and not simply political criticism, to claim that George Soros is in control of an elected, African-American man. Using the puppet master trope against Jews directly pulls from a form of antisemitism that has a horrific history:

https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1197620911215648782

No American, let alone Member of Congress, should want to be “giving support, however unwittingly, to bona fide antisemites and extremists”. As the @ADL has explained, this is exactly what such discourse does.

The continued invocation of anti-Semitic themes in this discourse are both discouraging and frightful, and must be viewed as part of the larger story here ⤵️

https://twitter.com/ross_macfarlane/status/1641825498421673986

Using George Soros as a dog whistle in the mainstreaming of antisemitic tropes has been all too present around the globe these last few years….

https://twitter.com/JGreenblattADL/status/1292846884726484992

And we should care because this global disinformation encourages further antisemitism – and antisemitic violence which has been rising rapidly – against Jewish Americans.

https://twitter.com/egavactip/status/1638934149963845634

So as you watch today’s hearing, remember who we are – or at least, who we want to be – as Americans: folks who don’t stand for racism & anti-Semitism in our politics *or* our lives.