Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Peretz--Not Only Racist Toward Palestinians!

New Republic owner Marty Peretz's racism toward Palestinians is well documented, particularly by our own former writer Matt Duss. See this example:

I actually believe that Arabs are feigning outrage when they protest what they call American (or Israeli) "atrocities." They are not shocked at all by what in truth must seem to them not atrocious at all. It is routine in their cultures. That comparison shouldn't comfort us as Americans. We have higher standards of civilization than they do. But the mutilation of bodies and beheadings of people picked up at random in Iraq does not scandalize the people of Iraq unless victims are believers in their own sect or members of their own clan. And the truth is that we are less and less shocked by the mass death-happenings in the world of Islam. Yes, that's the bitter truth. Frankly, even I--cynic that I am--was shocked in the beginning by the sectarian bloodshed in Iraq. But I am no longer surprised. And neither are you.

And Matt has many more examples here.

But now, Peretz is expanding his game, attacking other brown people as well, particularly the Mexicans. This is what he had to say yesterday about Mexicans:

Well, I am extremely pessimistic about Mexican-American relations, not because the U.S. had done anything specifically wrong to our southern neighbor but because a (now not quite so) wealthy country has as its abutter a Latin society with all of its characteristic deficiencies: congenital corruption, authoritarian government, anarchic politics, near-tropical work habits, stifling social mores, Catholic dogma with the usual unacknowledged compromises, an anarchic counter-culture and increasingly violent modes of conflict. Then, there is the Mexican diaspora in America, hard-working and patriotic but mired in its untold numbers of illegals, about whom no one can talk with candor.

Marty, what about the fact that everyone is lazy? Aren't there some stereotypes from Speedy Gonzalez cartoons you could throw in there too? One could take apart Peretz's stereotypes, but why bother. He's a racist, but a rich racist who owns what used to be one of America's greatest progressive magazines, so he has a soapbox from which to spout hate.

H/t to Lindsay