Topic: WorldNetDaily
Vladimir Putin isn't the only unsavory person WorldNetDaily columnist Scott Lively has been defending lately. His Sept. 22 column is an open letter to Gab's Andrew Torba:
Dear Brother Andrew. I am a Hebraic-oriented evangelical Christian attorney, pastor and historian who has devoted my entire adult life in Christ to Christian social, cultural and political activism. I bought your book "Christian Nationalism" to support the mission of Gab Social and want to offer you some constructive criticism.
At the outset, I want to commend you for your courage and vision in taking on the powers and principalities of the present age by working to break the chains of censorship and suppression of free speech, particularly of the biblically informed views that so powerfully contradict the secular humanist dogma of our Marxist would-be masters. They are the true enemies of "Judeo-Christian" civilization, and of course I choose that phrase intentionally to respectfully contradict your well-intentioned but misguided representation of its meaning and purpose relative to our national identity and heritage.
I will also add that I am both a member of Gab and a vehement defender of your right to address the distinctions between Judaism and Christianity. I do not consider you an anti-Semite and in fact believe that the secularized ethnic Jews working to destroy your work are actually far more anti-Semitic than they claim you are in that they deny and/or defy the Torah, whereas you worship and revere its Author.
What defines a "Semite" (Shemite) if not Yahweh-worship? It certainly can't be an ethnic connection to Shem (or Abraham or even Jacob), which virtually all humanity now shares because of genetic diffusion over millennia. No, it must be the practice of true Judaism, whose terms are defined by the Torah and Tanach (Old Testament Scripture), NOT the Talmud (commentaries on the Scripture by various Hebrew scholars with widely divergent views, values and validity).
Lively may not consider Torba to be anti-Semitic, but everyone else does. Media Matters reports that Torba has reposted claims that Jews are “subversive”; that they’re in control of the government, media, and financial institutions; and that they’re Christ killers. He also reposted a conspiracy theory blaming Jews for “white genocide” and praise of Gab for offering “differing opinions” on the Holocaust. The ADL notes that Torba reposted statements agreeing that "the nation of Israel is not in rebellion against God" and that "Talmudic zionists want to crush the Gentiles." And as one might expect, Gab itself has become a cesspool of anti-Semitism and far-right conspiracy theories.
Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, got in trouble for hiring Torba as a consultant. And when Torba reposed an article from a Jewish newspaper in Pittsburgh noting detailing the anti-Semitism directed toward a Jewish state representative on Gab, users then directed their hate toward the newspaper itself(with a bonus reposting by Torba of an article headlined "Federal Reserve: A Private Jewish Bank Strangling America").
So, yes, Torba is quite the anti-Semite. Livey doesn't address any of this, of course; instead, he quibbles with things Torba wrote in his self-published "Christian Nationalism" book, which has been called "a radically caustic if ambiguously plotted attempt to formalize and add some discipline to the nascent Christian nationalist movement." At one point, Torba and co-author Andrew Isker call Judaism a "false religion." Rather than calling that out, Lively held out his version of an olive branch to someone he's already admitted he largely agrees with:
I don't expect you to change your theology based on one letter from me, but I do hope you will reconsider your gratuitous exclusionary rhetoric regarding our spiritual cousins in the House of Judah, treating at least the many who share our cultural values and all-important Creationist paradigm with the same basic respect and camaraderie you show to atheists in the MAGA and conservative movements. And I offer my assistance in making this necessary course correction if you care to accept it.
If Lively can't see that Torba is a raging anti-Semite, there's little hope of his attempt at "course correction" succeeding.
