It's (Not) All Greek To Her

I have an ambivalent relationship to "kids these days!" thinking.

On the one hand, I'm a professor, so I'm constantly exposed to the "kids". And overwhelmingly, they're alright! Great, even! I have very little patience for the notion that the young people of today are some sort of uniform blob of incuriosity, intolerance, and preachiness. It just isn't my experience.

That said, I've always been a bit of a crotchety old man at heart. And it being age-appropriate to shout "get off my lawn!" is one of the few things that excite me about growing older.

So for someone with my proclivities, this story is outright dangerous in how much it pushes some of my confirmatory bias pleasure buttons regarding youthful idiot "activists" being idiots.

A 23-year-old woman has been arrested after she posted on social media about having gotten away with ripping down Greek flags at a New Jersey restaurant that she believed were Israeli.

The incident at Efi’s Gyro in Montclair, New Jersey, occurred March 11, but it wasn’t until Amber Matthews posted the video to TikTok on Oct. 15 that police were able to identify her. She was arrested on Tuesday and charged with bias intimidation and harassment.

In the video, Matthews, who went by the name “Ambamelia” on her now-removed TikTok account, can be heard berating employees about the “genocide” in Gaza. She posted the video with the text “The time I mistakenly thought the flag for Greek was for Israel and took the restaurants flag down OMG.”

Both Greece and Israel have blue and white flags.

Just to sum the above up, this lady:

1. Tore down flags at a random restaurant as a means of protesting "genocide" (which is bad enough on its own);
2. Didn't realize the flag she tore down was that of Greece (excuse me, "Greek") rather than Israel; and
3. Was only caught because she posted a TikTok video where she bragged about her idiotic crime burst.

It's too much.

Is it fair of me to tie this sort of stupidity to a particular generation? Of course not. After all, how many Boomer insurrectionists on January 6 got caught because they flaunted their treasonous jaunt on Facebook?

But when someone is this stupid, in this public of a fashion -- I'm sorry, I just can't help myself.

A Not So New Dawn

Digby looks on with alarm as the Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party continues to swell in strength. "These," she tells us "are the wages of austerity."

Well ... look. I'm not fan of austerity politics. But let's not be too quick to cast Golden Dawn or the Greeks who voted for them as victims. There's nothing inherent in austerity politics that makes people think "you know who I hate? Jews! And everyone else who isn't me!" That comes from a pre-existing cultural frame wherein hostility to Jews and other others is already built in. Deprivation brought on by austerity politics may bring that to the surface, but it was always present and remains a problem even when not living in austere times. The moral of the rise of Golden Dawn isn't "if you enact austerity politics, anti-Semitism will return in Europe." It's "anti-Semitism still is a serious problem in Europe, and the right trigger can bring back to the surface with all the violence and fury that attached to it in the mid-20th century."

78% of Jews are Very Confused

A Greek daily celebrates the Obama victory by labeling it "the end of the Jewish domination". Now, as one of the 78% of Jews who voted for President Obama, I can fairly definitively state that I was unaware that I was casting my ballot to end my "domination". But that's more a function of the mythological nature of that dominion than any misapprehension about what an Obama presidency will do.

The Jewish community will have the ear of President Obama, to be sure, but that's because American Jews are integral players in American progressive politics (it remains utterly bizarre to me the sentiment -- mostly from outside the US -- that Jews are predominantly conservative influences on American politics). And for his part, Barack Obama has shown a rare sensitivity to the concerns of Jews as Jews themselves express them (rather than how our interests are portrayed when they are sublimated within the "Judeo-Christian" worldview). That's fortunate, because what Jews want (as opposed to what outsiders -- both "friends" and enemies -- say we want) is freedom from persecution, just solutions to the conflicts which plague us and the Palestinians, and the right to participate as equals in the community of nations. If Barack Obama brings those dreams into fruition, it will be a great day not just for Jews, and not just for Palestinians, but for all persons who care about the equal dignity of all humankind.