RSS
Meet Mark Robinson, the Republican frontrunner in the North Carolina governor’s race accused of antisemitism
(JTA) — The Facebook post in early August condemning antisemitic flyers left around Raleigh might not have been surprising, coming from North Carolina’s lieutenant governor.
But for Lieutenant Gov. Mark Robinson, the statement marked something of a change in tone. After the Republican was elected to the state’s second-highest office in 2020, revelations emerged that he was the prolific author of Facebook posts downplaying the threat of Nazism, invoking antisemitic stereotypes and targeting other minority groups.
At the time, Robinson’s track record earned him criticism from local Jewish leaders and national commentators; the Republican Jewish Coalition called his comments “clearly antisemitic.” In response, Robinson did not publicly apologize for the posts but he said he would no longer make them. He met with a group of local Jewish leaders in 2021 and says he privately apologized to them.
Now, as Robinson runs for governor — and increasingly appears on track to become the Republican nominee next year — North Carolinians must decide whether Robinson has earned their trust. For some local Jews, that means taking him more seriously.
“Most of us find it hard to believe that he will be the candidate,” said Randall Kaplan, a board member of the Jewish Democratic Council of America who is also married to Rep. Kathy Manning, a Jewish Democrat who represents North Carolina in Congress. “I think most of us are in denial.”
Here’s what you need to know about Robinson, his contentious social media presence and his campaign to lead North Carolina.
He’s a political newcomer whose star is rising.
Robinson has risen rapidly in state politics in recent years after a life spent out of the spotlight. A native of Greensboro, his campaign website says he was the ninth of 10 children and that his alcoholic father abused his mother. He studied at the University of North Carolina Greensboro with hopes of becoming a history professor, has worked in furniture factories and also opened a daycare center with his wife. He filed for bankruptcy in 1998, 1999 and 2003.
Robinson’s improbable rise in the GOP began in early April 2018, when he spoke before the Greensboro City Council about preserving gun owners’ rights following the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, two months earlier in which 17 students and teachers were killed.
“I’m a law-abiding citizen who’s never shot anybody,” he said in the four-minute speech. “Every time we have one of these shootings, nobody wants to put the blame where it goes, which is at the shooter’s feet. You want to put it at my feet.”
The appearance went viral. Robinson went on in 2020 to win the lieutenant governor’s job with 51.6% of the vote against his Democratic opponent. He is also a National Rifle Association board member and speaker at events calling for gun rights, including the NRA’s annual meeting this past April.
Now, Robinson is the Republican frontrunner in the high-profile contest for governor. At a June rally in Greensboro, former President Donald Trump pledged to endorse Robinson, calling him “one of the great stars of the party.”
Other candidates on the Republican side include State Treasurer Dale Folwell, former Rep. Mark Walker, former State Senator Andy Wells and former healthcare executive Jesse Thomas.
Whoever wins the March 2024 primary will likely face the state’s Jewish attorney general, Josh Stein, who is so far running unopposed for the Democratic nomination.
Robinson would be North Carolina’s first Black governor, Stein its first Jewish one. Polls show them running a close race, though the election is more than a year away. Stein is winning the campaign funds battle to date: His campaign raised about $6 million this year through June, while Robinson’s campaign raised $2.2 million during the same period.
Stein has also seized upon some of Robinson’s comments. Robinson’s “brand of extremism is off the charts,” Stein told Charlotte radio station WFAE.
Robinson has a history of inflammatory comments referencing Jews and other groups.
Before his first political campaign in 2020, Robinson was an active and controversial Facebook user whose posts downplayed the need to discuss the Nazis’ evil.
“I am so sick of seeing and hearing people STILL talk about Nazis and Hitler and how evil and manipulative they were. NEWS FLASH PEOPLE, THE NAZIS (National Socialist) ARE GONE! We did away with them,” he declared in a 2017 post first uncovered by Jewish Insider, which has tracked Robinson’s comments since he took office.
“Marxist Socialist(s)” and communism pose the bigger threat and control the media, he maintained. “After all, who do you think has been pushing this Nazi boogeyman narrative all these years?”
Later that year, in another post, Robinson wrote, “Please STOP wasting my time, your time, and the time of your fellow conservatives talking about, and making mention of, the NAZIS who have been DEAD since 1945.”
He has also targeted other groups, including LGBTQ people, Muslims and others. “Note to liberals; I’ll accept ‘Gay Pride’ when you accept ‘White Pride,’” he wrote in 2014, according to screenshots posted by the liberal news site Talking Points Memo. Another post read, “I believe that homosexuality is a sin and that those people who are ‘proudly coming out of the closet’ are standing in open rebellion against God.”
In 2018, he railed on Facebook that the hit superhero movie “Black Panther” was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic marxist.” Invoking an antisemitic trope about Jewish pursuit of money and using a Yiddish slur for Black people, Robinson, who is Black, wrote that the film was “only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.” The following year, the News and Observer in Raleigh reported that he responded affirmatively to a far-right religious leader who invoked an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
After national news organizations called attention to Robinson’s posts after his election, he said they would not continue.
“When I made those posts as a private citizen, I was speaking directly to issues that I’m passionate about,” he said upon taking office. “As a public servant, I have to put those opinions behind me and do what’s right for everyone in North Carolina.”
The CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matt Brooks, said at the time he was not satisfied with Robinson’s response. “His refusal to apologize is troubling and unacceptable to us,” Brooks said.
As lieutenant governor, Robinson has tried to play it straighter.
While Robinson has not issued a public apology, he met with Jewish leaders from Greensboro shortly after taking office to discuss their concerns about his posts. Marilyn Chandler, CEO of the Greensboro Jewish Federation, helped to organize and participated in the virtual meeting, which included Jewish participants as well as Robinson and members of his staff.
During the meeting, Chandler and other Jewish leaders expressed their deep concerns about antisemitic remarks Robinson had made on social media prior to becoming lieutenant governor. He shared a press statement addressing these issues, though it is unclear if the statement has been released publicly.
Mike Lonergan, communications director for Robinson’s campaign for governor, told JTA that Robinson “met with dozens of rabbis and Jewish leaders from across NC” after taking office, and that he “expressed remorse, and communicated a desire to learn more about the Jewish community in an effort to understand how he can better serve them as an elected official.”
After speaking with several rabbis across the state, JTA was unable to independently confirm additional meetings Robinson had with Jewish leaders beyond the one in Greensboro.
Robinson also addressed his contentious Facebook posts and said he apologized for them in his memoir. The book, titled “We Are The Majority: The Life and Passions of a Patriot,” was published in September 2022.
“It came off the wrong way,” he wrote, according to a photo of the book’s text shared by Lonergan. “When people called me and asked about it, that’s what I told them. And I apologized to them. It’s the only time I’ve ever apologized for anything I put on Facebook. It did come out wrong. I knew the truth of what I was trying to say, but I should have chosen different words.”
His social media presence of late has taken on a different character. Recently, on his official page as lieutenant governor, Robinson has appeared to make a point of condemning antisemitism publicly — including the flyers in Raleigh. Adopting a pro-Israel outlook that is de rigueur among Republicans, he has also called out recent criticism of Israel by Democrats.
“Democrat Congresswoman Jayapal labeling Israel a ‘racist state’ is unjust and plain wrong,” he wrote on Facebook in response to comments made in July by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, an influential Democrat from Washington who later walked the statement back. “These harmful antisemitic comments are not representative of our nation’s values. We stand firmly with Israel, our steadfast ally.”
But Robinson has not entirely avoided hot-button issues or the controversy that can accompany them. His tenure as second-in-command has included a campaign against what he sees as left-wing political indoctrination in schools. In March 2021, he formed the Fairness and Accountability in the Classroom for Teachers and Students, or FACTS, task force, and in an August press conference, he said he was combating teachers who put “undue pressure on young minds to accept their way of thinking.”
Earlier this summer, he went viral after speaking at a conference held by Moms for Liberty, the conservative group that is fueling book bans in school districts across the United States.
“Whether you’re talking about Adolf Hitler, whether you’re talking about Chairman Mao, whether you’re talking about Stalin, whether you’re talking about Pol Pot, whether you’re talking about [Fidel] Castro in Cuba, or whether you’re talking about a dozen other despots all around the globe, it is time for us to get back and start reading some of those quotes. It’s time for us to start teaching our children some of those quotes,” he said. “It’s time for us to start teaching our children about the dirty, despicable, awful things that those communist and socialist despots did in our history.”
People who viewed a clip of the speech without the condemnatory final sentence blasted Robinson for endorsing the views of history’s worst dictators. Stein’s campaign said in a press release that Robinson “promotes reading of quotes from global dictators.” The full video of the speech, however, showed that Robinson was not endorsing the dictators’ views.
Jewish groups are voicing concern — though Robinson has Jewish supporters, too.
In July, the North Carolina Jewish Clergy Association, the Democratic Majority for Israel and six North Carolina Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to state Republican leaders asking them to strongly condemn Robinson’s remarks.
“His inflammatory statements invoke harmful stereotypes and conspiracy theories, downplay the Holocaust, and denigrate entire groups of human beings,” the letter said. “They are not just deeply troubling, but downright dangerous.”
To date, none of the people who received the letter have publicly responded to it. Manning, a signatory on the letter, said she remained concerned about Robinson.
“The fact that we have a gubernatorial candidate in the state of North Carolina who makes antisemitic comments, who veers on Holocaust denial, is very frightening,” Manning, co-chair of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, told JTA.
For Rabbi Barbara Thiede, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the danger of Robinson’s rise comes from his potential to inspire extremists to take action. She said she thought some of her fellow Jews may not be adequately concerned by the possibility that he could become governor.
“They may not appreciate the danger that Robinson and others like him pose to their safety,” Thiede said. “Speech is not unrelated to action, even if one person is doing the speaking and the next is taking up the weapon — whatever that may be.”
Not all North Carolina Jews oppose Robinson’s candidacy. Jeremy Stephenson, a Charlotte attorney who previously ran as a Republican for local school board and served for two years as general counsel of the Mecklenburg County Republican Party, said he plans to vote for Robinson in the primary.
Stephenson dismisses the “hyperventilation from the left” about the candidate and told JTA that he isn’t worried about “isolated Facebook posts which are then blasted in paid social media from the Dems.”
“The Jewish Republicans I know are strongly in favor of Robinson, particularly in contrast with Stein,” Stephenson said. “I think Josh Stein has far more antisemitic friends on the left who he has been unwilling to distance himself from, and will accept donations from, in running for governor.”
Stephenson said he believes Robinson’s embrace of religion in the public sphere would have benefits for Jews in the state. “I think that Robinson in many ways will embolden more people to be more comfortable expressing their religious beliefs,” he said. “And that includes Jews.”
While it’s clear that Robinson’s past comments will draw more attention in the coming months, as the primary season heats up, it’s unclear how much North Carolina Jews will hear that chatter in their synagogues.
At Temple of Israel in Wilmington, the oldest Jewish congregation in the state, Rabbi Emily Losben-Ostrov said she’s keenly aware of the diverse viewpoints in her congregation, which she characterizes as “purple.”
Losben-Ostrov serves on the steering committee of the Jewish Clergy Association, which authorized the letter about Robinson. At the same time, she said she talks about Jewish values but not about any single politician or political party from the bimah.
“I want the synagogue to be a place for unity and for escaping some of the difficulties of the things that divide us,” she said, adding, “It’s a dual job I need to do. One is to stand up to hate and two is to also keep our community connected.”
—
The post Meet Mark Robinson, the Republican frontrunner in the North Carolina governor’s race accused of antisemitism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Iran Holds Trilateral Talks With China, Russia Amid Ongoing Nuclear Negotiations With US
Illustrative: Chinese Foreign Minister Wag Yi stands with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazeem Gharibabadi before a meeting regarding the Iranian nuclear issue at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025 in Beijing, China. Photo: Pool via REUTERS
Iran held trilateral consultations with China and Russia on Thursday to discuss ongoing nuclear negotiations with the United States, as a fifth round of talks between Tehran and Washington ended with no deal yet in sight.
Iranian, Chinese, and Russian officials met to “coordinate their positions ahead” of the upcoming International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) hearing on Iran’s nuclear program, set to begin on June 9.
The UN’s nuclear watchdog, which has long sought to maintain access to the Islamic Republic to monitor and inspect the country’s nuclear program, is preparing to release its quarterly report on Tehran’s activities ahead of the upcoming board meeting.
In a post on X, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, Kazem Gharibabadi, confirmed that the three countries held high-level consultations to discuss Tehran’s nuclear program and the country’s ongoing negotiations with Washington, as well as broader regional developments.
“Given the upcoming BRICS summit as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the coming months, in separate meetings with the ambassadors of Russia and China, we reviewed the development and strengthening of cooperation within the framework of these two important groups of countries,” the Iranian diplomat said.
Tehran became a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a Eurasian security and political group, in 2023 and also joined the BRICS group in 2024 — a bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa that positions itself as an alternative to economic institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Following Thursday’s discussions, Russian Permanent Representative to the International Organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, described the talks as highly productive, noting that they helped the three countries closely coordinate their positions.
“Met today with my dear colleagues – Permanent Representatives of China and Iran – to compare notes on the eve of the forthcoming IAEA Board of Governors session. This trilateral format proves to be very useful. It helps coordinate closely our positions,” the Russian diplomat wrote in a post on X.
In an interview with Russian media on Friday, Ulyanov reiterated Moscow’s offer to mediate the indirect talks between Tehran and Washington.
“The Russian Federation has repeatedly stated its readiness to assist Iran and the United States in reaching an agreement on nuclear issues,” the Russian diplomat said. “But for this to happen, both Tehran and Washington need to make such a request. So far, there has been no such request.”
Both Moscow and Beijing, permanent members of the UN Security Council, are also parties to a now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal that had imposed temporary limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanction relief.
On Wednesday, ahead of the trilateral meeting, Tehran reaffirmed its stance that it will not give up its right to enrich uranium under any nuclear agreement.
“Continuing enrichment in Iran is an uncompromising principle,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, said in a statement.
However, Reuters reported that Tehran may pause uranium enrichment if Washington releases frozen Iranian funds and recognizes the country’s right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes under a “political deal” that could pave the way for a broader nuclear agreement.
The two adversaries concluded their fifth round of nuclear talks in Rome last week, with the Omani mediator describing the negotiations as having made limited progress toward resolving the decades-long dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program.
So far, diplomatic efforts have stalled over Iran’s demand to maintain its domestic uranium enrichment program — a condition the White House has firmly rejected.
“We have one very, very clear red line, and that is enrichment. We cannot allow even 1 percent of an enrichment capability,” US Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, said last week.
Since taking office, US President Donald Trump has sought to curtail Tehran’s potential to develop a nuclear weapon that could spark a regional arms race and pose a threat to Israel.
Meanwhile, Iran seeks to have Western sanctions on its oil-dependent economy lifted, while maintaining its nuclear enrichment program — which the country insists is solely for civilian purposes.
As part of the Trump administration’s “”maximum pressure” campaign against Iran — which aims to cut the country’s crude exports to zero and prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon — Washington has been targeting Tehran’s oil industry with mounting sanctions.
During Thursday’s meeting, Iran and Russia also agreed to substantially deepen their military and economic cooperation in response to ongoing US sanctions targeting both nations.
Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to fund the construction of a new nuclear power plant in Iran as part of a broader energy agreement that also includes a major gas deal between the two countries.
Earlier this year, Moscow and Tehran signed a 20-year strategic partnership to strengthen cooperation in various fields, including security services, military exercises, warship port visits, and joint officer training.
The post Iran Holds Trilateral Talks With China, Russia Amid Ongoing Nuclear Negotiations With US first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
‘Only One Solution’: Pro-Hamas Dartmouth College Group Occupies Building, Injures Staff
Pro-Hamas activists at Dartmouth College strike a pose inside the anteroom of the Parkhurst Hall administrative building. They had just commandeered the area. Photo: New Deal Coalition via Instagram, Inc.
A pro-Hamas group at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire which calls itself the “New Deal Coalition” (NDC) commandeered the anteroom of the Parkhurst Hall administrative building on Wednesday but limited the demonstration to business hours, as its members went home when it was shuttered at 6pm.
Before leaving the building, however, the group contributed to injuries sustained by a member of President Sian Beilock’s staff and an officer of the school’s Department of Safety and Security officer, according to The Dartmouth, the college’s official campus newspaper.
College deans Anne Hudak and Eric Ramsey have since vowed to hold the group, which included non-students, accountable.
“While Dartmouth remains committed to dialogue, we want to be absolutely clear: there cannot and will not be any tolerance for the type of escalation we saw on our campus today,” the officials said in a statement quoted by The Dartmouth.
During the unauthorized demonstration, the agitators shouted “free, free Palestine,” words shouted only recently by another anti-Israel activist who allegedly murdered two Israeli diplomats outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC.
The following day, the group at Dartmouth defended the behavior, arguing that it is a legitimate response to the college’s rejection of a proposal — inspired by the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — to divest from armaments and aerospace manufacturers which sell to Israel and its recent announcement of a new think tank, the Davidson Institute for Global Security, which it claims is linked to the Jewish state.
“We took this escalated action — one deployed several times in Dartmouth’s history to protest against apartheid — because Dartmouth funded, US-backed Israel has been escalating its genocidal assault on Palestine,” the group wrote. “In an effort to ‘dialogue,’ a group of students, staff, and faculty, and alumni spent months drafting extensively researched 55-page divestment proposal … How did the college respond? They rejected divestment on every single criteria and, the day after, announced that they are reinvesting in colonial genocide with the launch of the Davidson Institute for Global Security.”
The statement concluded with an ambiguous threat and an evocation of the memory of the Holocaust.
“So long as you fund actively imperialistic violence, we will continue to hold you accountable,” it said. “There is only one solution! Intifada! Revolution!”
Last week, Dartmouth College’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR) unanimously rejected a proposal urging the school to adopt the BDS movement against Israel.
“By a vote of nine to zero, the [ACIR] at Dartmouth College finds that the divestment proposal submitted by Dartmouth Divest for Palestine and dated Feb. 18, 2025, does not meet criteria, laid out in the Dartmouth Board of Trustees’ Statement on Investment and Social Responsibility and in ACIR’s charge, that must be satisfied for the proposal to undergo further review,” the committee said in a report explaining its decision. “ACIR recommends not to advance the proposal.”
A copy of the document reviewed by The Algemeiner shows that the committee evaluated the BDS proposal, submitted by the Dartmouth Divest for Palestine (DDP) group, based on five criteria regarding the college’s divestment history, capacity to address controversial issues through discourse and learning, and campus unity. It concluded that DDP “partially” met one of them by demonstrating that Dartmouth has divested from a country or industry in the past to establish its moral credibility on pressing cultural and geopolitical issues but noted that its analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lacks nuance, betraying the group’s “lack of engagement with counter arguments.”
ACIR added that DDP also does not account for the sheer divisiveness of BDS — which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination — and its potential to “degrade” rather than facilitate “additional dialogue on campus.”
It continued, “The proposal includes no compelling evidence on the level of support for divestment among students, among faculty, among staff, and among alumni. Moreover, the proposal is silent on the matter of how divestment can be treated as a consensus position in the face of what is almost certainly deep opposition to it among some members of the Dartmouth community.”
NDC is one of many campus groups which staged an end of year action aimed at coercing college officials into adopting anti-Israel policies.
At Yale University, a pro-Hamas group moved to cap off the year with a hunger strike, choosing to starve themselves inside an administrative building in lieu of establishing an illegal encampment.
Yale administrators refused to meet with the students for a discussion of their demands that the university’s endowment be divested of any ties to Israel, as well as companies that do business with it, according to the Yale Daily News. On the fourth day of the demonstration, Yale student affairs dean Melanie Boyd briefly approached the students at the site of their demonstration, Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, advising them to leave the space because “the administration does not intend to hold any additional meetings.”
The group ended the hunger strike after just ten days, citing “deteriorating health conditions.”
In New York City, pro-Hamas students clashed with police during an unauthorized demonstration at City University of New York, Brooklyn College, continuing a series of days in which law enforcement has been deployed to quell extremist disturbances.
As seen in footage captured by “FreedomNews.TV,” students rocked officers with blow after blow to obstruct their being arrested for trespassing, prompting as many as six others to rush in to help with detaining one person at a time. The melees were unlike any seen on a US college campus this semester.
Reportedly, the aim of the group was to establish a pro-Hamas encampment on the East Quad section of campus, which they called a “Liberated Zone,” and several reports said that it attempted to block the entrance to the Tanger Hillel House after being prevented from doing so. FreedomNews captured several more fights between protesters and officers which were filmed in front of the Hillel building, where Jewish students socialize and seek support from their community.
“Tanger Hillel at Brooklyn College is appalled by the anti-Israel protest and encampment that took place on May 8, 2025 and violated campus policies and feared deeply troubling antisemitic rhetoric, including chants of ‘Say it loud, say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here,’ and banners with inverted red triangles, a symbol widely recognized as a call for violence,” Tanger Hillel told The Algemeiner in a statement following the incident. “Targeting Hillel, the Jewish student center, is not a peaceful protest. It is harassment, intimidation, and an antisemitic act of aggression.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Only One Solution’: Pro-Hamas Dartmouth College Group Occupies Building, Injures Staff first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Democratic Socialists of America Distances Itself From Caucus Group That Applauded DC Jewish Museum Shooting
Elias Rodriguez, 30, from Chicago, taken into custody by police for allegedly shooting two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, on May 21, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) national organization has distanced itself from remarks made by one of its caucus groups which celebrated the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC last week.
“Democratic Socialists of America seek to democratically transform our society and reject vigilante violence. We condemn the murder of Israeli embassy workers. Any statement otherwise is not the stance of DSA,” DSA posted on X/Twitter on Wednesday.
The post came one day after the DSA’s Liberation Caucus publicly praised Elias Rodriguez, a 31-year-old far-left and anti-Israel activist who has been charged with gunning down two Israeli embassy officials as they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in the US capital.
The caucus announced that it signed onto a statement by left-wing activist group Unity of Fields which defended Rodriguez’s actions as a “legitimate act of resistance against the Zionist state and its genocidal campaign in Gaza” and called for the alleged murderer’s immediate release.
Rodriguez was charged last Thursday in US federal court with two counts of first-degree murder. He is accused of fatally shooting Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, a young couple about to become engaged to be married, as they left an event for young professionals and diplomatic staff hosted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC). According to video of the attack and an affidavit filed by US federal authorities supporting the criminal charges, Rodriguez yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police and told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
“Excellent statement that we are proud to add our name to. Free Elias Rodriguez and all political prisoners,” the DSA liberation caucus said on social media of Unity of Fields’ note.
The liberation caucus’s comments sparked immediate backlash, with critics accusing the group of both supporting antisemitic violence and further marginalizing the Palestinian cause.
“DSA types literally think murderers, if they kill *the right people*, deserve no consequences. Socialism is a pro-killing ideology on so many levels, and they seem almost proud of it,” Reason reporter Liz Wolfe wrote.
Following the main DSA organization’s statement condemning the DC murders, the liberation caucus posted, “Liberation is not all of DSA. DSA is comprised of many different ideological tendencies, we are just one. Right wing news outlets and individuals have chosen to take the statement we signed to portray the entire organization as holding our views – this is wrong.”
DSA, one of the country’s premier leftist political advocacy organizations, has mobilized in recent years to elect anti-Israel members to the US Congress. Influential lawmakers such as US Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Greg Casar (D-TX), and Cori Bush (D-MO) are all current members of the socialist organization. Others such as Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Summer Lee (D-PA) are former members.
The organization also counts rising star and aspiring New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani among its ranks. Mamdani has made his anti-Israel activism a centerpiece of his mayoral campaign, accusing the Jewish state of committing “genocide” in Gaza and arguing that it does not offer “equal rights” to all of its citizens.
DSA has ramped up its anti-Israel rhetoric during the Gaza war. On Oct. 7, 2023, the organization issued a statement saying that Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel that day was “a direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime.” The organization also encouraged its followers to attend an Oct. 8 “All Out for Palestine” event in Manhattan.
In January 2024, DSA issued a statement calling for an “end to diplomatic and military support of Israel.” Then in April, the organization’s international committee, DSA IC, issued a missive defending Iran’s right to “self-defense” against Israel. Iranian leaders regularly call for the Jewish state’s destruction, and Tehran has long provided Hamas with weapons and funding.
The post Democratic Socialists of America Distances Itself From Caucus Group That Applauded DC Jewish Museum Shooting first appeared on Algemeiner.com.