As part of my “Is Raf OK” series of essays, there have been cases where I avoid using what looks like “clear cut” footage from hearings and committee meetings of the U.S. Congress. This post is to give more of an explanation why this choice was made.
Specific footage that has been avoided:
Senator Hawley’s grilling of the Secretary of Homeland Security over the behavior of a single employee of the DHS.
Representative Stefanik’s hearing in early December in which she asks the presidents of prominent universities (Harvard, MIT, etc.) whether calls for genocide against Jews violates the respective institution’s code of conduct
There are multiple aspects to what is going on. Let’s examine this from a few angles: Messenger; Message; Context.
Messenger
Senator Hawley sought to stymie the 2020 Presidential election. Footage of Hawley running from January 6 protesters that earlier he had supported with a raised fist brought laughs to a hearing. and as Missouri Attorney General filed a lawsuit to end the Affordable Care Act. He often calls for more a more isolationist America and has recently spoken out against funding for Ukraine.
Representative Stefanik has a powerful position (as of this writing) as chair of the House Republican Conference, succeeding Liz Cheney (who opposed Trump). Stefanik has supported the recently ousted Representative Santos. She also has promoted crazy “pedo-grifter” ideas of QAnon and voting fraud ideas.
So how did Elise Stefanik go from praising the democratic process to standing on the House floor in the aftermath of the Capitol riot and voting to object to the Electoral College results? How did she go from saying that one particular Republican candidate was “disqualifying themselves with untruthful statements” in 2015 to feeding vague conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden on Steve Bannon’s podcast in 2021? Her evolution mirrors the transformation of her party, while her rise within its ranks is a fall from the modern, millennial conservatism she once was on track to define.
https://time.com/6046674/elise-stefanik-liz-cheney-republican/
…she accused President Joe Biden of working with pedophiles to help his party politically by denying Americans baby formula
…
In a Facebook ad last fall, Stefanik accused Democrats of staging a “permanent election insurrection by granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.”
That rhetoric plays to Trump’s false allegations of election fraud in his 2020 defeat. And it borrows from the “great replacement” theory, which is cited in what appear to be Gendron’s writings. That conspiracy theory generally holds that a Jewish-led cabal of liberals is trying to take power by replacing white voters with nonwhites by any means necessary, including immigration and inter-racial marriage.
Both are Trump supporters and use similar methods. MAGA is part of their platform.
Message
As discussed earlier, Senator Hawley will bash Federal agencies either because: 1) It gets him TV time; 2) He is OK wasting limited committee time on the extra-curricular activity of a single DHS employee (out of over a hundred thousand); or 3) His real agenda is to weaken Federal institutions (a long standing goal of the American Right).
Representative Stefanik’s hearing is more challenging. Concrete events at these universities are problematic. Deeply. Asking university leadership to show leadership is reasonable. But she is playing both sides:
She is willing to reference Great Replacement tropes in other contexts.
She is a Trump supporter who won’t condemn right wing American violence or antisemitism.
There is no reason to believe she is a beacon of justice who would hold such hearings if it were Muslims being abused on campus.
Bashing “the elites” — which includes elite universities — would be done on any pretext. Antisemitism is the pretext this week.
Context
To my eyes, Representative Stefanik’s hearing is the most problematic, primarily because the university presidents failed so abjectly. To my eyes, that hearing isn’t about antisemitism. It is about university leadership being captured by uninspiring, inarticulate leaders handcuffed by political correctness.
That is a message worth knowing. Representative Stefanik deserves, perhaps, some credit for bringing this to our attention. We already knew it (based on campus events).
This is a work in progress as of 2023-12-07