News Brief: ADL, Corporate Media, Dem Elites Manufacture “Antisemitism” Scandal to Discipline Mamdani
Citations Needed | July 1, 2025 | Transcript
[Music]
Nima Shirazi: Welcome to a Citations Needed News Brief. I am Nima Shirazi.
Adam Johnson: I’m Adam Johnson.
Nima: You can follow Citations Needed on Twitter and Bluesky @citationspod, Facebook Citations Needed, and become a supporter of the show through Patreon.com/CitationsNeededPodcast. All your support through Patreon is so incredibly appreciated, as we are 100% listener funded. We do these News Briefs in between our regularly scheduled full-length episodes of Citations Needed.
And today, Adam, we wanted to talk even more about the dizzying level of Islamophobic, racist, bad-faith, absurd attacks on Democratic mayoral candidate Zohan Mamdani, since he has won the primary election to become the Democratic candidate for the mayor of New York City, that general election is, of course, in November. And so now we are being subject to constant, round-the-clock attacks on him, not only from the Right, which would be predictable, kind of gross racist, Islamophobic attacks on the first Muslim candidate for mayor of New York City, for someone who is outspoken about his belief that colonialism and imperialism and apartheid and genocide are bad. And so we have seen these attacks, obviously bad-faith and gross, from the Right. But what we really want to talk about today, Adam, is where we’re also seeing these attacks kind of smuggled in from a more centrist/liberal media set that actually does more damage, in a way, than the frontal assault, the more obvious attacks from the Right.
Adam: Yeah, so the word Islamophobia, which I typically prefer the term “anti-Muslim racism,” because that’s kind of what it is. But I think it’s appropriate here, because this largely hinges on a spooky Arabic word that’s associated with Palestinian uprisings, violent or non-violent, of previous years, in the ’80s and the 2000s which is the word intifada, which we will get into as kind of this supposedly inherently antisemitic word.
Nima: The bogeyman of Arabic language existing.
Adam: Right. And I wrote a piece for In These Times that just came out, where I document how the exploitation of this word and the broader image, that it’s somehow a call for, like, open season on Jewish people, which, again, Mamdani has made clear multiple times, is not something he supports. What he doesn’t want to do is condemn an Arabic word, and doesn’t want to go down the path which I’ll get into of the condemnation game, what we call the ADL’s condemnation game.
Now the Anti-Defamation League, which we talked about on this show many, many times, is not a civil-rights organization, it is a pro-Israel lobby. We know that because over the last two years, they’ve kind of ceased even faking like they care about other forms of discrimination. All they do is vehemently defend Israel. The Anti-Defamation League, run by Jonathan Greenblatt, has a permanent perch at MSNBC, where they just casually accuse people of being antisemitic, most recently, Hasan Piker and Mehdi Hasan. He said they were ‘blaming the Jews’ for, you know, every bad thing in the world, which is not at all, of course, what they said, the ADL, as a matter of course, routinely conflates criticism, meaningful criticism, of Israel, with antisemitism, to the point where, when you read their so-called antisemitism reports, it’s almost dizzying, where you’re trying to keep up with what is antisemitic, what is not. Mari Cohen at Jewish Currents has documented how they fudge these numbers, all to sort of paint a picture that Israel has to commit genocide in Gaza and has to bomb Iran and has to do all these things because they are under siege by a global conspiracy of leftists and Islamists to, I guess, kill every Jew on Earth, rather than, again, a leftwing critique, which is what Mamdani represents, of Israel and apartheid.
And because Mamdani has refused to toe the line on Israel, because, let’s be clear here. Okay, yes, he’s being attacked vis-a-vis Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism. That is the vehicle, that is the conduit. But had he won the primary and he spouted the sort of liberal Zionist pablum about two-state solution and Israel’s right to defend itself, if he had sort of checked off the AIPAC boxes, he would be doing photo shoots in Vanity Fair right now with Hillary Clinton.
Nima: Right, right. If he just Hakeem Jeffries-d himself.
Adam: If he just Hakeem Jeffries-d himself, he’d be fine. But he did not. In fact, he’s refused to budge on anything. And we’ll talk about why I think that’s the right course of action. Because we learned something from the Jeremy Corbyn ginned-up antisemitism scandal, is that, the one thing you really shouldn’t do with extortionists is give in, because once you give in to extortionists, they’ll just keep extorting you. There’s no way of kind of winning.
So let’s recap the last three or four days where this really kind of took off. We had talked about in the previous Patreon News Brief about how this was sort of beginning, right, the last two weeks of the primary campaign. This whole, you know, boogie-boogie intifada. Will you condemn? Will you condemn? Will you condemn? Will you condemn? Will you condemn? game that is now taking off far greater, it’s reached greater promise, because after he won, he became a real threat, because he’s the de facto odds-on favorite to be the mayor of New York, and obviously positioning himself to rise the ranks of the Democratic Party more broadly, whether it be Senate or House or what have you.
Nima: Well, because the position of New York mayor is one of the highest-level local official elected positions in the country. You know, it’s a huge city. It’s New York. And so there’s a, there’s a kind of national platform for New York mayors, which is why, obviously there is this attention. It’s not just a local election, but it speaks to far more, broader narratives and tropes in our politics.
Adam: Yeah, so let’s recap, over the weekend, what happened here, which is that all of a sudden, after he won the election, he was inundated with this, Will you condemn the term ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ right? Which the anchors who asked the question, or the journalists who asked the question, always phrase it as this kind of smol beans, quote-unquote, Jewish New Yorkers are feeling unsafe, right? There’s this kind of squishy framing that, I have no opinion on the term. I’m just relaying the messages of this platonic Jewish voter. I mean literally, the ABC anchor will talk about, Jonathan Karl, does say, “some say,” and there’s no polling to this effect, there’s no polling that this is a huge priority for so-called Jewish voters. Obviously, there are some for whom it is. But this is just, again, echoing the line of Zionist organizations as representing the platonic vision of so-called Jewish New Yorkers, or the sort of platonic opinion, which we talked about in the previous News Brief.
And so we’re getting a lot of this kind of squishy, identity-based, standpoint epistemology to launder a line which is not concerned with objective reality, which is, is the term itself, per se, antisemitic? Now again, people are welcome to feel what they want to feel. That is, you know, well, within their rights, I suppose. But there’s something to be said for objective reality, especially when you compare the sort of selective concern, right, even if you sort of buy the premise that the phrase is sort of uniquely provocative or inciting against Jewish people in the country. The shows echoing the sentiment, which we’re going to talk about, namely, ABC News’s This Week, CNN’s State of the Union, which is another Sunday show, and NBC’s Meet the Press.
Let’s be very, very clear here, all three of these shows, in 89 episodes each, and 632 days of genocide in Gaza, have not once, not once ever platformed a single Palestinian guest, not once. Palestinian or Palestinian American, not once. In 89 times three, for 632 days. So their heart bleeds for these alleged Jewish New Yorkers. But in the event where over 100,000 people in Palestine have been killed, the number’s probably much higher than that. Tens of thousands of children maimed, tens of thousands of people starving. Not once did they ever ask, ever ask, a Palestinian or Palestinian American how that made them feel. They never cared about their feelings. But suddenly, again, a purely meta-scandal, right? Because, again, Mamdani never said the word ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ and we’ll get into this. This is part of the way these meta-scandals work, which is he never actually said it.
Nima: And to be clear here, for those who may be unfamiliar with that phrase, it is a, you know, liberatory phrase used by, you know, anti-apartheid, anti-colonial, pro-Palestinian advocates and activists. And intifada is an Arabic word that means shaking off or resistance, right, a resistance to oppression to decades and decades now, over 100 years of Zionist colonization in Palestine. So intifada means an uprising, right? It means a shaking off that oppression, and it has been used in, you know, the first and second Intifada in Palestine against Israeli control, against Israeli violence, against Israeli occupation and apartheid. It is both used when there are mass non-violent resistance actions, BDS, and also when there are more anti-colonial violent actions. That is also kind of part of what it means for there to be an intifada. But when we hear about that in the American press, the fact that the term is an Arabic word kind of does all the work itself, right? It’s like saying the Ground Zero mosque. It’s total, kind of, you know, associative spookiness based on this foreign, sounding-scary word, and so that’s kind of where all of this comes from. At no point will an anchor on one of these Sunday shows, of course, talk about what intifada actually means, and of course, will not put it in context, decades and decades of Israeli oppression of Palestinians.
Adam: Well, that’s why they do this some say, like, you know, this mopey, Will Jewish New Yorkers feel unsafe? It’s like, Look man, like, I get it. And some of these things can be ambiguous, but like, I’m from Texas, right? Half of my family thinks the 2020 election was stolen, right? The other half thinks Obama is a Muslim. Am I supposed to indulge that? It’s hard to differentiate between legitimate fears of antisemitism in what is just, like, white people being racist towards Muslims? How do you sort of differentiate that? And there’s no effort to differentiate those two sentiments. Is it possible that some people are just scared of Muslim people and Muslim-sounding words?
Nima: Vibes and reality are completely conflated so that they can attack Mamdani.
Adam: Pretty much. And there’s no effort to really differentiate those two things. And so we’re going to talk about the anatomy of a meta-scandal, which is how you sort of gin up a scandal where there really isn’t one. So the ADL worked very hard. I’m sure they’ve had lots of researchers and interns mining everything Mamdani has ever said and posted online to find something antisemitic. So they couldn’t find something antisemitic. So what you do when you don’t have someone who’s actually said something antisemitic and is, in fact, again, endorsed by the highest-ranking Jewish official in New York. Every poll shows him polling a strong second amongst Jewish New Yorkers. You have to kind of invent something. So what you do is you just pose to them hypotheticals or statements other people made, and do the Will You Condemn game. And the Will You Condemn game, again, is reserved only for anti-Zionist and/or Muslim candidates. This is not something that Republicans are ever subject to. It’s not something that Zionist candidates are ever subject to. People who want to shovel billions of dollars to Israel are never told to condemn the genocidal statements, the actual genocidal statements made by people actually committing genocide.
Nima: And actual genocidal videos posted by Israeli soldiers in Gaza.
Adam: Never meant to condemn any of that. You know, Yoav Gallant saying, They’re human animals. We’re gonna, you know, they’re actually starving them. There’s actually children who are skin and bones that actually exist in the third dimension, in actual reality, actually, right now, actually in Gaza, never meant to condemn the actual genocide going on. But one must condemn theoretical, possible, potential, meta-genocides that may, may happen in the future, okay?
Nima: Based on what people post on Twitter.
Adam: Right. So there’s this question in the Bulwark podcast. You know, Do you condemn the term ‘Globalize the Intifada?’ Mamdani doesn’t take the bait. Says, he gives a very nuanced answer. Says, Look, I get why people may find that offensive, or maybe sort of unsettled by that, but here’s what the word actually means, and I’m sympathetic to their concerns, but I’m not going to condemn the word that basically means resistance in Arabic, because to do that would condemn resistance, and I’m not going to do that. And then that turns into a, every single Jake Tapper has Brad Lander on last Thursday, asked him three questions. Every single question, all three questions are about the alleged antisemitism of Mamdani, repeatedly says, Will he condemn ‘Globalize the Intifada?’ Lander, who’s out there doing yeoman’s work, says, Look, it’s not my cup of tea. I find, you know, many of my friends find it offensive. But you know, Mamdani’s not an antisemite. He’s going to work for New York. We just disagree on this issue. Mamdani himself goes on Meet the Press Sunday, asked two different questions about this, grilled repeatedly over and over again.
This now turns into a game of popcorn, right? Which is called racism popcorn where, once it goes through the propaganda machine, the demagoguery machine, the Islamophobia machine, it comes out the other end, where now you have several different elected Democratic officials saying that Mamdani has promoted attacks on Jewish people or calls for violence against Jewish people, which, of course, he never said. And we’re going to get into those statements in a second.
But there’s a template for this, to be clear. It was the December 2023 university president show trials in Congress where, if you recall, there was all these headlines about university presidents being evasive or not opposing calls for genocide against Jewish students. And I’m going to read you some of those headlines here. Okay. Quote,
The leaders of Harvard, M.I.T. and Penn appeared to evade questions about whether students should be disciplined if they call for the genocide of Jews.
Unquote. That’s from the New York Times. This is from Jewish Insider, quote,
Calling for genocide of Jews doesn’t violate school policy, university presidents tell Congress.
Unquote.
“‘It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: calls for genocide are monstrous,’ White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement,” read one Washington Post subheadline.
Now what’s important to be clear is the way this started was that Elise Stefanik, who’s a Republican from New York, asked them this question. If you recall the original question was, she said the word intifada meant genocide against Jewish people. And the university presidents balked at this characterization. This thing got spun as, they would not ban genocide against, calls for genocide against Jewish students. Now what they said was, if it translated into direct, targeted intimidation or violence, of course, they would ban it. But violence against calling for violence against any group falls into a legal gray area of what the universities can police or not police.
But the initial confusion, and the initial way this was kind of smuggled in, was this assertion, again, very contested assertion, right, we’ll be generous and say it’s contested, that the word intifada per se is a call for genocide against all Jews throughout the world, which, again, most Palestinian and Arabic scholars would say is absolutely not true. They contested that premise. And then there, and then that turned into these headlines. Calls for genocide, University presidents refused to condemn or say they’ll ban calls for genocide. What’s important to take away here is that there was never actually a call from any campus protesters to genocide any Jewish students. This was not an actual chant. It wasn’t a slogan. It wasn’t anything any protest leader said. It was entirely manufactured. It was all smoke, no fire. And so if this playbook looks familiar, that’s because that’s exactly what’s happening to Mamdani right now.
Nima: Exactly. Because it never matters that a lot of the campus protesters were themselves Jewish. It doesn’t matter that people working on Mamdani’s campaign in an official and unofficial volunteer capacity, that his number one co-endorser is Jewish. This, of course, doesn’t matter, right? This just turns into the Will You Condemn game that only goes one way, of course.
Adam: Yeah, everything’s phrased in this mopey sectarian way. And to be clear, this is the same playbook. Because what they want to do is they want to vomit it out the other end. This is, which we’ll get into, is that suddenly, by virtue of a game of racism popcorn, what starts as a hypothetical term that he never said, again, he never said Globalize the Intifada, right, has now gone through the demagoguery sausage machine and come out the other end with, He’s calling for violence against Jewish people.
Nima: Because it’s effectively the same thing as saying that the phrase Black Lives Matter means that you want to genocide all white people.
Adam: Which a lot of people believe. So I guess we’re supposed to indulge that, too. Let’s listen to these quotes here from sitting, this is actual Democrat senators and representatives. So this has now come out the other end of the sausage machine.
Nima: So here we have, on June 26, 2025, New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand was on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC, the NPR station, and there was a call-in question that repeated all of this kind of ADL pablum, this nonsense about Mamdani and the alleged threat to Jewish New Yorkers, and Brian Lehrer actually gave Gillibrand an out before she actually answers the question. Lehrer says, you know, There’s a lot packed into that question, a lot of assumptions. I’m not going to fact check everything here. We don’t really have time, but there’s a lot of things that may not be true in there. Just want to make sure that you can kind of separate the truth from the lies here. And this is what Gillibrand said.
[Begin clip]
Kristen Gillibrand: The global intifada is a statement that means destroy and destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. So these are the kinds of things that if Mr. Mamdani is elected our mayor, we’ll need to assure all New Yorkers that he will protect all Jews and protect houses of worship and protect funding for not-for-profits that meet the needs of these communities. Those are the things he’ll have to do as our mayor.
Brian Lehrer: He would certainly say that he has committed to protecting all Jews in New York as mayor of New York. Do you dispute? Do you, do you doubt that?
Kristen Gillibrand: Well, one of the issues I did talk to him yesterday, was exactly this issue, and he has agreed to work with me on this and to protect all residents. So this is something I care deeply about, and so I will be an advocate on these issues.
[End clip]
Adam: Here, Senator Gillibrand claims that he, quote, “condones global jihad,” unquote. Again, never did that. Never condoned it.
Nima: Well, and instantly you see the conflation of now two scary Arabic words, jihad and intifada, right? So now they’re being used interchangeably, because, you know, we already know that jihad is so scary, you know, by kind of a matter of like, Western definition. And so she uses that interchangeably with the term intifada, which has explicit pro-Palestinian connotations.
Adam: Right. So they’re all just boogie-boogie Muslims. So she has since said she misspoke. She did not apologize, but she said, she clarified that she misspoke when she said he condoned global jihad. Yeah, because it’s libelous and untrue. Next up is Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, who went on CNN and just, again, casually lied and casually libeled Mamdani, saying the following.
[Begin clip]
Eric Swalwell: And frankly, stylistically, and I’m not a socialist, and I don’t associate myself with what he has said about the Jewish people.
[End clip]
Adam: Okay, again, he never said anything about the Jewish people. That’s just something that was made up and lied about through a game of racism popcorn.
Nima: Totally conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism, conflating Zionism with Judaism. This is, I mean, just straight-up ADL playbook shit.
Adam: And now we have a third example, which is the most just completely made-up, completely false, and I think, overtly defamatory and libelous. This is from representative Laura Gillen of New York, again, also a Democrat, right? Not the sort of cartoon racist Republicans, also a Democrat. Let’s listen to what she said a few days ago.
[Begin clip]
Laura Gillen: New York City is the home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. How can someone who traffics in that kind of speech represent that constituency effectively? Hiis comments are really disturbing. His comments about intifada, calls for violence against Jewish people, it’s really inappropriate for someone like that to lead the city of New York.
[End clip]
Adam: Again, I hate to repeat ourselves, but he never said that. He certainly never said he was calling for violence against Jewish people. But again, everything, everything’s just sort of, again, racism popcorn, once it comes out the other end. And this is part of the ADL’s game. You just whiff a bunch of smoke, and then you look back and you say, like, Wait, where’s the actual fire? And then you go back and you look at his comments on Bulwark podcast about the term Globalize the Intifada, which were incredibly thoughtful and nuanced and empathetic, have somehow become him calling for violence against Jewish people and global jihad.
This is part of the way the ADL playbook of creating a meta-scandal works. Again, it worked for university presidents. That whole disciplining exercise had tremendous payoff, as anyone who follows this knows, it ended up being by the end of 2024, some 3,100 students have been detained or arrested for their protest activity around Gaza. Thousands more faced harsh university discipline, including suspension, expulsion and loss of degree. And of course, it culminated with the Trump administration seizing on this moral panic by arresting and deporting some 300 Gaza activists as of June 2024, including, prominently, Mahmoud Khalil, who spent over three months in prison and missed the birth of his son because of his engagement in this Gaza protest activity, which then somehow morphed into supporting Hamas or whatever.
Nima: And you see the real-world implications of this, of course, because, yes, Trump will say that Mamdani is, you know, a 100% communist and, you know, say whatever bullshit. You’ll see Republican Representative Andy Ogles call Zohran, quote-unquote, “little muhammad” and call him antisemitic and socialist and communist and insist that he get deported, actually going so far as to call for denaturalization proceedings. These have real-world implications, and so as we’ve said, seeing this from the Right, seeing the kind of racist, anti-Muslim Right spew this kind of invective, is almost obvious. I mean, it’s disgusting, but it’s obvious.
Adam: Well, in some sense, it gives the cover, because Laura Gillen, before she said that he quote, “call[ed] for violence against Jewish people,” she linked to an article about the Republicans’ racism against Mamdani and denounced it and said we can’t–
Nima: And then just did a racism.
Adam: And then did it, like, hours later, went on and just made up shit about him. So again, this sort of rightwing cartoon racism, in many ways, provides a kind of cover for the softer, more sophisticated form of ADL liberal racism.
Nima: So here’s one more example from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Representative from New York, who went on ABC’s This Week this past weekend, June 29, and Jonathan Karl, the This Week anchor, teed up the conversation like this.
[Begin clip]
Jonathan Karl: You mentioned the diversity of your district, including a lot of Jewish constituents. Mamdani has made comments that some have said veered towards antisemitism. His initial statement after October 7, he criticized the Israeli government, but didn’t criticize Hamas. He defended the use of the word ‘globalized,’ or the phrase ‘globalized intifada,’ and he even said that the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu should be arrested, or he would, if he were mayor, he would arrest Netanyahu if he visited New York City. Do these things concern you?
Hakeem Jeffries: Globalizing the intifada, by way of example, is not an acceptable phrase, and he’s going to have to clarify his position on that as he moves forward. With respect to the Jewish communities that I represent, I think our nominee is going to have to convince folks that he is prepared to aggressively address the rise in antisemitism in the city of New York, which has been an unacceptable development. And any mayor, whether you’re a Democratic mayor, Republican mayor, an Independent mayor, has got to commit to the safety and wellbeing of all of the people of the city of New York, and when there are moments of crisis and a rise in anti-Jewish hate, that’s a threshold.
[End clip]
Adam: Now, of course, this has nothing to do with antisemitism. It’s because he doesn’t toe the line on the nation-state of Israel. And let’s parse this Karl question here, because it actually is wonderful. First off, he claims that Mamdani wanting to arrest Netanyahu, without mentioning the fact that he has a warrant for his arrest by the International Criminal Court, which is recognized by 125 countries, right? He sort of doesn’t note that fact, this is just some lefty, radical notion that Mamdani came up with in the middle of the night while he was staying up late in bed seething with antisemitism.
Nima: I’m just gonna arrest Netanyahu. Wow. No one’s ever thought of that before, right? There’s literally an arrest warrant out on him.
Adam: Right, and so there’s this, how, saying he’s going to fulfill an ICC arrest warrant, how that categorizes it as, quote, “antisemitism” is completely beyond me. How, for example, criticizing the Israeli government after October 7, which, again, in retrospect, we can all agree, I think any moral person would look at Gaza today, which is a fucking moonscape, has tens of thousands of child amputees, over 100,000, probably much more, deaths, completely ruined, lives shattered, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, leading genocide. scholars all call it a genocide, and say that that was somehow the wrong reaction. Of course, everybody knew the history of the way Israel mows the lawn. Everyone knows how many people they killed in 2014, when nobody died on the Israeli side–killed 1,500 people, 523 children–that they would have done this. This was obviously what they were going to do. Can look at that in retrospect and somehow see this as unfair to the smol beans Israelis. He didn’t criticize Hamas. Again, what utility it would have been for him to criticize Hamas, other than to provide cover for the subsequent genocide, is beyond me.
But obviously, in retrospect, criticizing Israel and telling Israel to, you know, not an indiscriminately bomb, which, at that point they had, they had killed over 1,000 people, when he did release the statement, obviously, is the right position. It’s the morally correct position. But all this is sort of just assumed, asserted ideologically, to be, Oh, this is a form of antisemitism. What the fuck are you talking about? What does this term even fucking mean anymore? I have no idea what this means. It’s just constantly conflating anti-Zionism, or forget anti-Zionism, just criticism of Israel, with this racial hatred of Jewish people. And this is exactly the sandbox the ADL wants to play in, because they can do that. It just this torrent of bullshit. You can’t even remember where it even started. Like, what do you, what? How is saying you’re gonna arrest Netanyahu a form of fucking antiJewish racism? What are you talking about? Again, 125 countries on Earth recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction there. His crimes against humanity are well-documented. They’re out in the open.
Nima: Because it means anything that you do to constrain Israeli violence is per se antisemitism, right? Anything you do that criticizes the Israeli government, a government, a colonial government, set up, propped up, armed and defended by the United States, a government, if you say anything, condemning that violence, condemning, as you said, Adam, that every one who could be taken seriously on this issue is calling what has been happening for now 21 months a fucking genocide. If you say anything about that, it is by definition of this kind of media and ADL approach, antisemitic hate speech, anti-Jewish racism.
Adam: It’s totally racism, obviously, that’s only thing that could possibly motivate this. So the ADL is trying a new approach. They’re not getting, I don’t maybe they’re not getting as much traction as they want out of the Will you condemn? Will you condemn this? theoretical phrase, or this phrase that other people have said. They are now moving on to, they’re doing a version of Bernie Bro, which is they, last Friday, they pulled a bunch of tweets from people who ostensibly support Mamdani on Twitter. They wrote an article about it, released a press release, and did a tweet thread demanding that the mayoral candidates, which obviously they meant Mamdani, because he’s the only one that the candidates, the tweets in question are supporting, that they, quote, “call out” the antisemitism of these supporters. So now we’re doing a version of Bernie Bro, where a person running for office is morally responsible for calling out the social media posts of random supporters that may or may not be real, or may or may not be, you know, I don’t know, real humans, that they have no association with, right? They have no, he doesn’t know these people. They’re not in his campaign.
Nima: These are not people in this campaign. These are not–
Adam: I emailed, for the In These Times article, I emailed the ADL, asking them if this was a criteria they had ever used, ever, before June 27, 2025. I wrote, quote,
This appears to be a new criteria for the ADL who has not previously demanded any candidate for office denounce random social media posts from people they have no association with. Can the ADL cite previous examples where they have demanded politicians or candidates, namely pro-Israel candidates or Republicans, “call out” Islamophobic or anti-Muslim or otherwise racist tweets from social media accounts for which they have no association or affliation?
Unquote. The ADL responded, saying they had, quote, “plenty of examples,” and then later followed up that afternoon saying the following, quote,
Hi Adam,
You may attribute this to an ADL Spokesperson:
ADL has a long record of calling out elected leaders, candidates, and public officials across the political spectrum. We believe all public officials have a responsibility to speak out when their inner circles, campaigns, staff members and/or candidacies are championed by the rhetoric of individuals promoting hate, antisemitism, racism or other forms of bigotry, even if those individuals are not officially affiliated with their office or campaigns.
This is not a new standard. We have done this since our organization’s founding in 1913. Here are some notable examples:
In 2016, ADL called on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump to “make unequivocally clear” that he rejected support from David Duke and other white supremacists after Duke praised Trump’s candidacy.
Unquote. And they would go on to list examples from 2021 and 2022.
“In 2024, Jonathan Greenblatt called out the alarming behavior and rhetoric of former Congressman Matt Gaetz when he was being considered for Attorney General.
Earlier this year ADL condemned the decision to give Oath Keeper’s founder Stewart Rhodes VIP seating at a Pro-Trump rally in Las Vegas.”
They would go on to say, quote,
To be clear, our statement addresses a range of rhetoric and endorsements surrounding the recent New York City Democratic primary elections for various offices. Some of these endorsements and online attacks trafficked in antisemitic tropes or conspiracies. Jonathan Greenblatt posted a video on Friday evening explaining that during this race and the larger campaign season, ADL will be sticking by our principles and we will call out antisemitism when we see it.
Unquote. To which I replied, quote,
Forgive me but none of these examples call on a candidate or politician to disavow random social media posts. Can you please point me to the ones that do?
Unquote. So the ADL, I asked, Have you ever called on candidates to denounce random social-media posts that have nothing to do with the candidacy? Social media has been around for, you know, 20 years, I don’t think they’ve ever done it before. Not 1913, but around for 20 years. They never got back, because the ADL has never done this before. They’ve never called on any other candidate, until Mamdani, to distance themselves or to disavow or, quote-unquote, “call out” random social-media posts that are ostensibly supportive. This is the Bernie Bro standard, but the ADL did not do it with Bernie Sanders. This is a totally new standard.
And the reason why this standard was invented out of whole cloth, again, is because, as I explain in my article and explain here, is because they don’t actually have Mamdani saying anything antisemitic or offensive or racist toward Jewish people. So they have to keep trawling different examples that vaguely associate him with it so they can sort of ding him on it, because they want to keep ginning up this so-called antisemitism scandal. Again, it’s part of the playbook they used against university presidents a year-and-a-half ago. They’re trying to do it with Mamdani. And that’s why they had to invent this standard, because they have nothing. They don’t have anything of substance, so they have to just find random tweets and be like, Do you condemn? Do you condemn? Do you condemn? Do you condemn?
And so when I asked them and they got back, and I said, Do you have any other examples?, they can’t find any examples. Referencing telling Trump to condemn David Duke, well, David Duke is the most prominent white nationalist in the country. So, not a random social-media post. So this is a new standard they invented for Democratic candidate Mamdani 10 minutes ago. Again, they’ve never done it before. This is a standard they just invented, by their own implicit admission, because they can’t find any examples of them doing it for anyone else. So that’s it. That pretty much gives the game away, I think.
Nima: This does one other thing, too, Adam, which is it conflates calls for universal human rights and equality, under the law, with violence against Jewish people. So it’s not only kind of going the one way of saying, you know, intifada is a scary word, and that should be conflated with antisemitism. It is also discrediting the notion, which Mamdani has been incredibly clear about in every response to these absurd questions, that he is calling for universal human rights, for equality for everyone who lives in Israel-Palestine and elsewhere, right? That is what is animating his campaign. That is why he is talking about affordability. That is why he is talking about how we take care of people in our own societies. That is why he’s talking about housing and transportation and employment and green spaces and cutting red tape. And all of that stuff is bound up in this idea of equity, of fairness, of justice, and by condemning that, right, by kind of saying that, Oh, well, when you say universal human rights, I guess you don’t mean that Israel should be a Jewish and democratic state. What you are doing is you are then discrediting the idea of human rights, of equality of justice itself.
Adam: Well, every time they ask him that question, which Stephen Colbert did, Do you support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state? It’s like, Well, do you support Lebanon’s right to exist as a Christian state? Do I support Syria’s right to exist as an Alawite state? Do I support Iraq’s right to exist as a Shia state? No, we oppose sectarianism. We want equal rights for everybody. I’m a leftist. Of course that’s what I support. Of course I’m not gonna support an ethno-supremacist state, you fucking idiot. That’s a sort of boilerplate leftist answer. And it is perceived as being discriminatory when it’s incredibly consistent. And again, he does the reverse, the liberal Reverse UNO card, where he says, I support equal rights in Israel and Palestine. And it’s like, Well, how you can, then it’s incumbent upon the person to sort of argue against equal rights, to say, Well, no, actually, we need a tiered-rights system, XYZ. And so now Hakeem Jeffries, Gillibrand, Daniel Goldman, another representative who posts one of these kind of menacing statements. They always do this line of, We’re going to talk to him. We’re going to kind of call him in and talk to him and sort him out. Right? There’s always this kind of Mafia-like–
Nima: He doesn’t really get it. Maybe he doesn’t get it.
Adam: Yeah, we just need to talk to him more. Even though he’s explained himself in this position a million times, there’s nothing more for him to explain. He’s explained his position. He’s been clear about it. But they keep doing this, like, We’re going to talk to him. What they’re saying is, we’re going to keep doing this. We’re going to keep bringing this up. We’re going to keep having media anchors ask the stupid fucking question, because we can manufacture it as a meta-scandal whenever we want, until he toes the line, not on condemning any phrase, because that’s not going to be sufficient. He needs to toe the line on, he needs to take the trip to Israel, you know, sort of do the like, I was wrong, you know, two-state solution, you know, blah, blah, blah. They want all these different candidates to be versions of Cory Booker and Hakeem Jeffries really is what they want. And that’s why there’s a sort of, like, vague, menacing mafia language, like, We’re gonna talk to him and straighten them out. He doesn’t understand. We’re gonna make him understand. We’re gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse. And that’s why they keep saying that, even though he’s already explained himself.
Because people keep saying, Well, what else is there to explain? He’s like, you know, why do they keep saying we’re going to talk to him and have him clarify his position? He’s clarified his position. Because they don’t care about his position on a term. They don’t care a shit about that. That’s got nothing to do with anything. What they care about is his position on policy and propping up the various axioms of Zionism with respect to unequal rights in Palestine and Israel, with respect to apartheid and with respect to the inherently, supposedly inherent, defensive nature of Israel’s so-called war in Gaza, right? They didn’t spout the ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ line, because it’s not really about Mamdani. I mean it is, because they want to deflate his his rise in the party and discipline him. But it’s very much about the 10 Mamdani wannabes after him. The message needs to be sent that your life will be supremely easier as a politician if you just accept the ‘Israel has a right to defend itself,’ two-state solution liberal sort of bromides.
Nima: If he is successful without caving, that is absolutely terrifying precedent to the party leadership, for sure.
Adam: Because it’s about sending a message, and not just to wannabe Mamdani politicians, but anyone who works, wants to work in politics, or anyone who wants to work in liberal media, anybody wants to work in establishment media, whatever it is, that your life will be magnitudes easier if you just fucking toe the line. And he, to his credit, thus far, is not budging on that.
Nima: So we will continue, of course, to follow this, to track this. There are a few months left before the New York mayoral election in November, and so we’ll see what happens with this. How many times we hear that Jeffries and Gillibrand are gonna, you know, keep talking to him. We’re gonna straighten him out. And, of course, we will continue to track the media’s complicity in the Will You Condemn game here, from Kristen Welker to Jonathan Karl to Jake Tapper and elsewhere, on these kind of major, major media network shows that really do drive a certain kind of narrative.
And so thanks, everyone, for listening to this Citations Needed News Brief. As we’ve said, you can follow the show on Twitter and Bluesky @citationspod, Facebook Citations Needed, and become a supporter of the show. We are 100% listener funded. We are able to keep doing the show because of the generous support of listeners like you. We don’t run ads, we don’t have corporate sponsors, we don’t get nonprofit grant money. We are able to do this because of our amazing listeners, and you can support the show through Patreon.com/CitationsNeededPodcast. We will be back very soon with more full-length episodes of Citations Needed. So stay tuned for that, but until then, thank you all for listening and supporting the show.
I’m Nima Shirazi.
Adam: I’m Adam Johnson.
Nima: Citations Needed’s senior producer is Florence Barrau-Adams. Our producer is Julianne Tveten. Production assistant is Trendel Lightburn. The newsletter is by Marco Cartolano. The music is by Grandaddy. Thanks again for listening, everyone. We’ll catch you next time.
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This Citations Needed News Brief was released on Tuesday, July 1, 2025.
