White House Disinvited Cartoonist Over Anti-Semitism – But Kept Others Who Promoted Similar Ideas
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Benjamin Gladstone July 11, 2019
Cartoonist Ben Garrison said earlier this week that he was disinvited from a White House “social media summit” expected to include several of the internet’s most notorious trolls and “alt-right”-adjacent provocateurs.
Garrison received harsh criticism for a drawing of Jewish financiers George Soros and the Rothschild family controlling the U.S. government like puppets, using a common anti-Semitic trope.
But several other attendees have also attacked Soros, who is also a philanthropist and major Democratic donor, in ways that some have described as reflecting anti-Semitic tropes about Jews being behind immigration efforts to harm white Americans.
Invitee Bill Mitchell accused Soros of “seditious conspiracy against the United States” and suggested that Soros be imprisoned “as an enemy of the United States.” And Rep. Matt Gaetz falsely accused Soros of funding a “caravan” of Central American migrants.
Several other elected Republican officials, like President Trump, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, have utilized anti-Semitic tropes in their criticisms of Soros.
Other attendees have given platforms to outright white nationalists, or have appeared on their channels, according to Media Matters for America. Pro-Trump memester “Carpe Donktum” has promoted white nationalist Stefan Molyneux, Dennis Prager’s “PragerU” YouTube page has featured videos by anti-Semitic comedian Owen Benjamin, and Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center has linked to articles from white nationalist websites. And Gaetz himself has repeatedly associated with far-right troll Charles C. Johnson, who once wrote that he did not believe six million Jews died in the Holocaust.
Benjamin Gladstone is an intern at the Forward. Contact him by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @bensgladstone
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