I can’t wait to see what no consequences he’ll face for this.
post
I doubt that Trump has ever read Shakespeare.
He'll deliver an EO tomorrow declaring 'Shylock' to be a superlative to 'Rabbi'.
Busting out the slur deep cuts
Apparently 'Shylock' and 'shyster' are etymologically unrelated. Shylock is a Jewish moneylender from Shakespeare, and not a particularly pleasant fellow. Shyster is from the Germanic word for shit, and also used to describe a disreputable person of any race or religion.
(Edit) Full quote from rally:
Think of that: no death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker. And in some cases, Shylocks and bad people.
I hate to give the guy a pass, but to be fair, I wasn't aware that was a slur (or even a word). If anything, it sounds more like a homophobic term.
Edit: yeah, actually that's a hard one to right a pass on.
If you know the word, then you know it's a slur. His history of antisemitic statements guarantees he knew what it meant.
In the context of bankers and borrowing, your read is that "shylock" here refers to gay people?
Edited comment weird. My original comment just had the quote from the article where Trump said he didn't know that was a slur. I replaced that quote with the full original Trump quote, with the edit (but left the original middle piece from my original comment)
I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but I don't think he's being antisemitic here. He's just the usual Trump: crass and uneducated.
Kind of like when he famously said "The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys who wear yarmulkes every day” in the 90's: he wasn't being an antisemite, just being a sleazebag.
Well, he's still a sleazebag. You don't make a racehorse out of a donkey.
That's definitely antisemitic. There's absolutely no ambiguity here.
He's been spewing antisemitism like this since at least 2015. (I didn't pay much attention to him before then)
It's not just ignorance when it's pointed out repeatedly over the years and you keep doing it.
The word is “Shylock”, just to save you a click.
I had no idea that was a slur, but it makes sense I guess.
For those unaware of the origin, It's a name of a Jewish moneylender character in The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare.
I have noticed it's kind of common for older people to say this and not know the origins or antisemitic connotations. If someone who was Trump's age but a little bit smarter said this, I would think maybe it was intentional but since he's such an idiot there's a decent chance he really didn't know ot was offensive. As much as I hate Trump and all he stands for, I can believe this one was truly accidental.
May well be, however he's calculating and manipulative. Wouldn't be at all surprised if it was deliberate.
This one is just super common with old people not thinking through that it might be offensive though. Pretty much all my older relatives use this one occasionally and none of them would be intentionally anti-semitic. Trump isn't a god of manipulation or anything, he's an idiot who has the wealth and charisma to make everyone think he's not an idiot. By ascribing this intelligence and intention to him, you're kind of falling into right wing propaganda by unknowingly accepting the false premises they are selling to all of us. Trump is an idiot who doesn't think things through when he says them. His advisors do think things through and do have a lot more intelligence and intention to their words and actions, but Trump himself does not.
I agree with you he definitely doesn't think things through. I also agree he's using a generational word. I personally think he's got anti social personality disorder and at the very least he's a documented dv abuser, they're manipulative. They can be thick as fuck, but with good manipulation skills
Any time you use a word for a racial/religious group that is not their own chosen preferred name (in this case "Jews" or "Hebrew"s) you're running a very high risk of stepping into slur territory. This isn't unique to older generations but they seem to have a harder time understanding it.
I remember flinching when hearing older generations (like Greatest Generation and Silent Generation) using terms like getting "gypped" and having someone "jew them out" of something. Took me longer to figure out the gypped connection, but using Jew as a verb? Wow.
When I was a kid, everyone was "fag". It was the go-to catchall insult. It's been hard to rewire my brain to stop doing that. So I kind of get it to an extent. If you never stop and think about these things they just seem normal.
I remember those days. I also remember when people would call things/people "gay" as kind of a generic thing, even if it was not remotely about something that was actually gay, even into the 90s. As a kid, I remember a common game was called "smear the queer"....I also remember a common insult was calling someone a "woman", and "throwing like a girl" and so on. What a world. I suppose this kind of thing still goes on a lot, probably most behind closed doors? My parents never had a lot of tolerance for any of it, but they were definitely in the minority on saying anything about it where I grew up (very rural). My mother especially didn't go in for that misogyny stuff.
I honestly think a lot of people are so resistant to any change at all that requires even the lowest amount of effort (simply not using certain words) and these are some that voted for Taco in the hopes their lazy asses could go back to not having to keep this behind closed doors any more. These are the people that howled about "PC" in the 90s, bitched about Obama "fundamentally changing" America, whined about wearing a mask and getting vaccinated, and screeched about "DEI" and "CRT" and people being "woke" and others getting "cancelled". Some of them are surely hateful, but I also think a lot of them are just really fucking lazy. Not saying a word or a phrase when it's obviously hurtful? A bridge too far.
But do you claim to be as smart as Trump claims to be ? Because it seems that smartest, biggest most beautiful brained leaders these days do not know Shakespearean references.
Why must it be the Nazi who are supporting Israel?
Because it's not about the Jews. It was never about the Jews. It was always about using a scapegoat that's enough of a minority to be bullied, but not enough of a minority that they practically don't exist.
Yep, but it's even more than that.
American Christian Zionism is not a pro-Jewish policy. It is about (a) getting rid of the Jews by getting them to all go back to the Holy Land, and more importantly, (b) triggering the "End Times," for which the Jews returning to the Holy Land is a prerequisite. American Christian Zionists do not give a flying fuck about Jews; they're just delusional racist death-cultists who think they're gonna get "Raptured."
Hey, according to their stupid death cult's myths, 144,000 Jews convert and are "saved", so....are they not merciful in their weird psychotic fantasies?
These people think they are the good ones, too. That's what so deranged. What they look forward to with much happiness, is having a front-row seat to eternal torture of others. That is so very sick and twisted. That's the mind of a person that would torture animals for fun. There is something wrong with this mindset. This kind of thing almost makes me wish for a world like Greg Bear's Queen of Angels where people like this are fixed.
That first one isn't just American christian zionism, it's the literal reason modern day Israel was created.
Because nationalist groups when they aren't pitted against each other have a lot in common. It's why Trump likes Bibi, Xi and Putin.
Wealthy German Zionists, negotiated Haavara with Hitler. Breaking solidarity and boycotts against his regime to emigrate to Palestine. Ostensibly to save German Jews. Though ultimately only those that were Zionist and wealthy got to take much advantage of it.
Post war Zionists manipulated international sympathies to make official claims to Palestine and seize control from the people who had actually lived there generations, displacing them. Much as Hitler had done to them. Initially there were many other places discussed to relocate many Jews after the war. It wasn't always just Palestine. But the nationalists demanded Palestine.
Nationalist are scum and always have been.
What was it? Something about being the "good guy" so long, you become the "bad guy"
we all know he’s never read a book in his life.
That's what I came to say, too. Not only does he not read, but he's not smart enough to remember the character nor understand the implications. We know he hasn't read a lick of Shakespeare. So where the fuck else would he know this term from other than antisemitism?
It's possible that one of his antisemitic speech writers wrote the line for him.
Possible, but if there's one thing that's been shown about Trump during his life in the media, it's that he has a near encyclopedic knowledge of all the racist slurs. He pulls out some real obscure ones, and that was even before he even ran for office.
Didnt his ex wife say he used to keep a copy of Mein Kampf that he himself said he liked to read because he admitted his speeches. Never read it, so it could be possible the term was learned from that
It was a collection of Hitler's speeches, not Mein Kampf.
all 27 comments