The Socialist and anti-Semitic Roots of the Occupy Wall Street Movement

The Occupy Wall Street movement celebrated its one year anniversary this past September 17 2012. Its influence has waned and has all but vanished from the newspapers. Some characterized it as a grass roots protest against Wall Street bail outs and corporate corruption. Others, to the right of center, depicted it as a bunch of liberal moochers asking for handouts. It gained popularity among some notable celebrities, but that soon dissipated save for the hardest of leftists, once stories of violence and vandalism started hitting local airwaves in the Western and warmer climates. Oakland comes to mind. Allegations of anti-Semitism and Socialist undertones were dampened by most media. To most Americans it was simply brushed off as an out pouring of frustration and its darker elements a concoction of the right-wing as a means to discredit the movement as many had tried, and in many cases succeeded, to paint the Tea Party as an extreme element of the Republican party out of touch with mainstream America. Occupy Wall Street did after all embody the notion of "we are the 99%." Well just who are these 99%? A study by the Baruch College of Public Affairs found that 27.3% identified themselves as Democrats, 2.4% Republicans and a whopping 70% as "independents. Another study by Fordham University found 25% were Democrat, 2% Republican, 11% Socialist, 11% Green, 0% Tea Party, 12% other and 39% not affiliating with any political party These polls were taken earlier on before things really kicked into high gear and the media began to whitewash rampant anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, anti-Capitalism and anti just about everything. Surely, it started out as a grass roots effort and got hijacked by fringe elements, right? Wrong. First let's take a look at who started it all with Ad Busters, a left-wing, Canadian magazine that criticizes all things corporate and has had two major snafus with incidences involving perceived anti-semitism. It began over a steak dinner:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/clay-waters/2011/10/19/nytimes-credits-adbusters-mag-launching-ows-ignores-anti-jewish-article

Robert Halper is a retired Wall Street trader and the top single donor to the Canadian “anticorporate” magazine Adbusters, credited with launching the leftist sit-in. But Goodman didn’t mention the magazine’s incendiary anti-Israel past, like the paper’s notorious 2004 attack on neo-conservatives, “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?”
 Mr. Halper said he first heard about the plan for protests in June when he visited Kalle Lasn, the editor in chief of Adbusters, a Canadian anticorporate magazine, in Vancouver. Over a steak dinner, the two longtime friends discussed Mr. Lasn’s project, a plan to fill Wall Street with protesters as a way to galvanize anger on the political left into a revolutionary movement resembling the Arab Spring.

Here's a take by a blogger on how easy it was to find anti-Semites associated with Ad Busters:

http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/documenting-anti-semitism-at-adbusters.html

Shoot, finding anti-Semitism at Adbusters is like taking candy from a baby. Checking Moynihan's references gives you an idea, for example, 9/11 truther Kathleen Christison "Elliott Abrams, Dual Loyalist and Neocon Extraordinaire." And she's a fan of rabid anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon. See Kathleen Christison, "Gilad Atzmon on Jewish Identity Politics: Calling Out the Tribalists," at the hardline communist website Counterpunch and cross-posted to Aztmon's blog.
 And again, the fact that Occupy Wall Street gets the epic whitewash from MSM outlets is pretty astonishing. But it's an upside-down world, so you gotta keep fighting these criminal asshats.

And then there's this:

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/10/13/occupy-wall-street-kalle-lasn/

But Lasn also has defenders, including David Duke, who published this sympathetic essay by Jeff Gates on his website:
 Kalle Lasn, founding editor of Adbusters, is a graphic artist who eventually awoke to the harm he was doing as an advertising executive. An Estonian, he saw firsthand how the Soviets exerted virtual control by manipulating the mental environment. In March 2004, Lasn published an article in Adbusters pointing out that, whereas less than two percent of Americans are Jewish, 26 of the top 50 neoconservatives advocating war in Iraq are Jewish (52 percent).

Surely I must be just cherry picking comments here and there and leaping to wild conclusions. If only that were true. The truth is in fact much worse than it sounds. This is where we get to the root of the problem: virulent anti-Americanism mixed with leftist ideologies of neo-antisemitism and anti-Capitalism on US university campuses. The rates of anti-Semitism reports on campuses warranted a lengthy study by the College of William and Mary on this very problem:

http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1152&context=wmborj&sei-redir=1

The recent increase in campus Anti-Semitism has been closely associated with increasing anti-Zionist sentiments and with liberal or left-wing elements at many American universities.

And on page 13...

…many progressives have found common cause with Arab and Muslim anti-Zionists, however “illiberal” those groups may be, based on shared anti-American and anti-capitalist convictions along with the belief that Palestinian Arabs are the underdog in their conflict with Israel.

What this signifies is that anti-Semitism, sometimes masked as anti-Zionism, is likely a byproduct of leftist professors assault on capitalism and neo-conservatives, writ large. Jews are being singled out as the one minority group that is ok to dislike. Drunken comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nBe3bklRpw

Russia Today

Arun Gupta claiming that anti-semitism he has seen is from right wingers and they are just trying to fear monger.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/where-are-the-anti-semites-of-occupy-wall-street/2011/10/24/gIQAP89eDM_allComments.html?ctab=all_&

So Cohen admits that he doesn't know what OWS is about....yet he says it in not anti-Semitic. If he doesn't know what they are about, how can he be so sure?

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=290755

Nearly half of the students interviewed for the study – 43% – reported that anti-Semitism is a problem at their schools. The authors acknowledge this is a “shockingly high” level.