By Fresh off seeing their activist supporters violently attack the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, members of the Squad are again scrambling after their most ardent supporters have crossed another racist line as part of “protesting” Israel. This time, rather than continuing to propagate the Democratic antisemitism problem, the Democratic Socialists have launched a racist attack against Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the House Democrats.
Why does this flyer have a watermelon on it? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/ra7vMMlXMh
— Candidly Tiff (@tify330) November 16, 2023
The Daily Caller reports:
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a left-wing group that has zealously opposed Israel’s response to terrorist attacks against it on Oct. 7 by Hamas, having been accused of antisemitism in doing so by both Democratic and Republican elected officials. In an advertisement for a protest against Jeffries at his constituency office in Brooklyn for speaking at a pro-Israel rally in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, the DSA included the imagery of a watermelon — a fruit that has long been used as a racial invective against African-American men — which prompted a critical response from Jeffries.
“The watermelon has long been used as a dehumanizing racist trope by white supremacists in America,” wrote Andy Eicher, Jeffries’ communications director, in response to controversy over the flyer. “[T]he use of racially inflammatory imagery should come as no surprise given the role NYC-DSA and other gentrifiers have played in aggressively attacking Black elected officials.”
Next to the watermelon, the DSA’s post calls on attendees of their protest to “Make art outside Hakeem Jeffries’ Office.” The watermelon, itself, is drawn with crayons, suggesting that the DSA was encour
The DSA later defended its use of the watermelon imagery, claiming that it is a symbol of Palestinian liberation. “Watermelons, grown commonly in Palestine, have the same colors [as] the Palestinian flag — red, green, and black,” the DSA wrote on Twitter, now known as X, adding that “[e]ven facing years of violent repression, occupation, and apartheid, [the watermelon] was a way of saying: ‘we are still here, we still exist 🍉🍉.’”
This is not the first time the Squad’s allies have found themselves in hot water. The DSA not only has protested Israel’s response to the terrorist attacks on October 7, they also celebrated them, claiming it as some kind of “colonial resistance” and flashing Nazi flags during their rally to support Palestine.
Pro-Palestine demonstrator flashes swastika at anti-Israel protest in Times Square.
Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/wnpmbBQoEW
— AF Post (@AFpost) October 8, 2023
Noah Rothman at The National Review recently explained that it’s time to call the DSA for what seems obvious to anyone who is not a liberal or progressive: a hate group.
“Well-meaning liberals and progressives who take exception to some Israeli policies are often quick to assure their skeptics that Hamas’s actions are unrepresentative of the Palestinian people writ large or even the Gazans over whom the terrorist organization illegitimately rules. The DSA disagrees. To judge from its reaction to the multiaxial attack on Israeli civilians, culminating in acts of murder, rape, dismemberment, and torture so obscene it would have made the Roman Colosseum blush, the DSA’s members seem incapable of denouncing Hamas’s tactics. Perhaps that’s why we’ve seen so many DSA followers deliberately menace American Jews and supporters of Israel’s right to defend itself against an avowedly genocidal terrorist group.
Defenders of the DSA are likely to draw fine distinctions between the group’s more overzealous chapters and the national organization, but they never acknowledge the national organization’s failure to denounce or make examples of its more menacing elements. DSA’s proponents hide behind the noble intentions their enterprise retails — fairness and justice and peace — ignoring the mockery its conduct makes of the anodyne liberal sloganeering it uses to disguise its true designs. If the DSA’s members are at all troubled by the group’s conduct, they don’t show it.
The Democratic Socialists of America is a hate group. It’s not the sort of hate group that the industry that has been erected around anathematizing right-wing political activism would ever see as one, but the corruption of those institutions shouldn’t keep Americans with a functioning moral compass from rendering that obvious verdict. If the United States continues to regard the threat DSA poses to civil society as an esoteric feature of progressive politics, the country will be guilty of the charge with which the Democratic Socialists so often smear their detractors: complicity.”
So far “The Squad” and its supporters have not spoken out against their allies attacking the Democratic National Committee headquarters or deploying a racist trope against their party’s leadership.
[Read More: ‘It’s Worse Than Lois Lerner’]
