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By Michael F. Brown / The Electronic Intifada
Congressman Randy Fine of Florida, who on 14 February tweeted that “Palestinian is a synonym for evil,” is finding the attention he craves for his bigoted outbursts with a different tweet targeting Muslims.
On 15 February, he declared, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
He made the incendiary post – a Randy Fine speciality – in response to a joking tweet from activist Nerdeen Kiswani, who heads Within Our Lifetime, a pro-Palestine community organization in New York City.
Kiswani had tweeted on 12 February: “Finally, New York City is coming to Islam. Dogs definitely have a place in society, just not as indoor pets. Like we’ve said all along, they are unclean.”
Kiswani’s post came in the context of New Yorkers expressing frustration with dog excrement littering sidewalks after recent heavy snowfall.
Fine saw the joke as an opportunity to promote his anti-Muslim hatred. Demonstrating why the US Congress is held in such low esteem as it expends time on frivolities rather than serious concerns, Fine introduced the so-called “Protecting Puppies from Sharia Act.”
Misidentifying Kiswani as an adviser to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a press release from Fine’s office stated, “This legislation would prohibit federal funds from being provided to any state or local government that bans dogs as pets. Islamic law cannot be forced on the United States of America. It is the right of all Americans to own a dog.”
Highlighting the bigotry at the heart of the overwrought legislation, Congressman Keith Self of Texas, a leader of the new Sharia-Free America Caucus, declared in the press release: “We love our dogs, but this isn’t just about pets – it’s the opening salvo against our way of life. First, they come for our dogs, then our daughters and wives, then they come for every freedom-loving American. Sharia has no place in America – keep your hands off our dogs and our liberties!”
All this from a joke. Casual bigotry – with softening puppies mixed in – is spot on in defining Fine’s brand of politics.
Pushback
Fine’s anti-Palestinian tweet got 2.3 million views, but the anti-Muslim one got 45.5 million views as of Tuesday afternoon. It also grabbed the attention of Democratic politicians.
Insulting Palestinians still is acceptable discourse, or not politically safe to condemn, for many American politicians – even following the Gaza genocide – but Fine’s Islamophobia is receiving pushback.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has failed to lead Democrats on Palestinian rights and the Gaza genocide, did manage to inveigh against Fine’s Islamophobia.
“Randy Fine is a disgrace to the United States Congress. He is an Islamophobic, disgusting and unrepentant bigot.”
Jeffries called on Republican leaders to hold Fine accountable, castigating “their casual acceptance of hateful and divisive language [that] enables this out-of-control behavior.”
As Republicans are unlikely to criticize a fellow Republican for bigotry, Jeffries declared, “accountability is coming to all of these sick extremists when the gavels change hands in November, if not sooner.” Mid-term US elections will be on 3 November this year.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, a leading 2028 presidential candidate, weighed in both substantively and with personal insult, tweeting, “Resign now, you racist slob.”
Newsom, in January, expressed concern about Israel’s use of double-tap bombing in Gaza, but agreed with the notoriously anti-Palestinian commentator Ben Shapiro that Israel is not carrying out a genocide.
Congressman Ro Khanna of California, a second possible candidate for the presidency in 2028, was another elected Democratic official to respond. “We must call this what it is. Disgusting bigotry. Fine must be censured. It’s about morality and decency, not politics.”
While Khanna has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, he also says he “respects” the views of genocide deniers.
He touts his opposition to chants such as “Globalize the intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” the latter of which he voted to condemn last year. As for the Palestinian-led, nonviolent boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian freedom and equal rights, he says, “I have never supported BDS.”
In other words, Khanna acknowledges the reality of the Gaza genocide, but also opposes the efforts of many of the people attempting to do something about it. He votes against those nonviolently chanting, but “respects” those denying the genocide.
Nevertheless, Khanna is regarded as one of the “stronger” American politicians on Palestinian rights. The concerns about his caution and stances against activists for Palestinian rights are well-placed, but his efforts against Israel lobby group AIPAC and its ugly allegations of a “blood libel” over well-documented assertions that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza are important.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a third possible presidential candidate, who has her own checkered record regarding Palestinian rights, has also criticized Fine’s tweet. After initiallyhesitating in her comments about the Gaza genocide, she has spoken out against it.
She tweeted in response to Fine: “This is genuinely one of the most disgusting statements I have ever seen issued by an American official. It should not stop shocking us that the Republican Party openly embraces this. Fine should be censured and stripped of committees. To ignore this is to accept and normalize it.”
Fine, as he often does, redirected to a recent faux pas by Ocasio-Cortez at the Munich “security” conference where on 13 February she wrongly put Venezuela south of the equator. Her missteps were met with delight by critics on the right, including President Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, journalist Max Blumenthal leveled a far more relevant criticism at Ocasio-Cortez, noting her presence alongside “NATO securitocrats” in Munich, while former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene – at one time best known for simultaneously holding anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic sentiments alongside a pro-Israel viewpoint – was the same week learning about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
Asked at the Munich conference whether the 2028 Democratic presidential candidate “should re-evaluate military aid to Israel,” Ocasio-Cortez stated: “To me this isn’t just about a presidential election.”
The New York congresswoman, who may run for president in 2028 or for the US Senate, then added: “Personally, I think that the United States has an obligation to uphold its own laws, particularly the Leahy laws.”
The Leahy laws, named for Senator Patrick Leahy, prohibit both the US defense department and the state department from distributing funds to “units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.”
Ocasio-Cortez then criticized unconditional aid as contributing to the Gaza genocide. “I think that, personally, the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense. I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza, and I think that we have thousands of women and children dead … that was completely avoidable.”
Loomer interviews Fine
Fine took exception to Ocasio-Cortez’s Gaza genocide remarks during an interview with Laura Loomer, a right-wing reactionary with a podcast, who occasionally has the ear of President Trump.
“Look, it’s insane Laura, AOC goes to Germany where the Holocaust happened, and makes a libel against Israel, claiming they committed a genocide in Gaza, then flies home from her debacle, which it was over there, and then says my comment saying ‘we’re going to take your dogs away’ is the most disgusting thing she’s ever heard.”
Ocasio-Cortez abbreviates her name as AOC, but it is also employed by people uninterested in saying her whole name or unable or unwilling to pronounce it.
Tom Gross, described by Fox News as an expert on international affairs, claimed that “AOC has flown all the way to Munich – infamous as the city in which Hitler staged his Nazi Beer Hall Putsch that marked the beginning of the road to the Holocaust – in order to smear the Jewish people further with a phony genocide allegation.”
This is anti-Semitism from Gross. The Jewish people are not responsible for the Gaza genocide and Ocasio-Cortez was not making such a claim.
Her argument is against the policies of the government of Israel. This effort to conflate Israel’s government with the Jewish people by those seeking to cast critics of Israel as anti-Semites is unseemly and bigotry in its own right.
In fact, Germany should have been cited by Ocasio-Cortez for repeatedly being on the wrong side of extermination campaigns and genocides – whether in Tanganyika, Namibia, Europe or Gaza.
Already the second largest weapons exporter to Israel – with only the US sending a larger supply of arms – Germany has just signed a formal cooperation agreement with Israel’s military. The same military is carrying out a genocide in Gaza.
In the lead-in to the Fine interview, Loomer made the sort of ugly comment that once scared off politicians, but now seems to attract some Republicans. “Everybody who watches my show knows how I feel about this: I don’t think that it should be legal for Muslims to serve or hold elected office in America. I just don’t. This is a Christian country. We have Judeo-Christian values.”
Loomer, a failed congressional candidate, then goes on in typical outrageous form to claim Muslims hold an ideology calling for “the mass murder of all Christians or Jews.”
Randy Fine was content to be there for the interview with the demagogic Loomer.
That Democrats are having trouble beating such bigots in the Republican Party speaks to a national turn to the right politically, but also to the craven politics of most Democratic officials unwilling to stand up to Israel in the midst of a genocide. And those who do – like Khanna – too often prove to be extremely cautious lest they be seen as disrespectful to genocide deniers.
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