Progressives were called Communists in the 1950's, whenever the corrupt establishment wanted to shut someone up. It happened to our Pete Seeger, who was blacklisted by the media and the record companies for years. Back then anyone who sang songs against war and racism was a subversive in the eyes of the state, whether he was in the Communist Party or not.
Antisemitism is the new Communism. Our populist reformer, Joel Tyner, has been fighting a campaign against privatizing the city bus system, a move that would destroy jobs as well as eliminate many bus stops in the inner city of Poughkeepsie. Rather than looking at the economic racism of yet another privatization boondoggle, our local media prefers calling Tyner names, this time the amorphous charge of being an antisemite.
There were some heated words exchanged between Joel and some other Democratic members of the Dutchess County Legislator who refused to back him on saving the public bus service. Sad to say, there are Democrats in the county quite content to be junior partners in the Republican machine.
Now our media, as subservient to the establishment as some of our local Democrats, claim that the whole issue is antisemitism, not the rip off of public services from the Black community. It seems like the new era of slanderous innuendo is a lot like the old one, the McCarthy Era.
Joel is not an antisemite, and did not refer to anyone's religion when he criticized local Democrats. The charge is trash.
Fred Nagel