Name: Analysis | Dark-money group smears Valerie Plame with ‘white supremacist’ label
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Analysis | Dark-money group smears Valerie Plame with ‘white supremacist’ label

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This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoCommentGift ShareValerie Plame is a “disgraced racist millionaire. Is she running for Congress to represent New Mexicans or white supremacists?” — New ad via dark-money group Alliance to Combat Extremism Fund, May 19, 2020Has there ever been an attack ad as negative as this one? It literally has swastikas superimposed over Plame’s eyes, with images of her alleged “white supremacists friends” marching in Charlottesville as it declares, “Keep your hate out of New Mexico.”A group called the has entered the Democratic congressional primary in New Mexico with an ad so off-the-charts that even the candidate it is presumably seeking to help has denounced it. In a tweet, attorney Teresa Leger Fernandez, one of Plame’s key opponents, called it “extremely offensive and sexist.”There is an extremely offensive and sexist video going around about another candidate in this race. This type of vilification has no place in our politics and I strongly condemn this video. My life’s work and my campaign has been about love, not hate.— Teresa Leger Fernandez (@TeresaForNM)Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D) is running for Senate, opening up a strongly Democratic district. One of the top contenders in the June 2 primary is Plame, a former CIA operative who gained fame after her name was revealed to reporters during the controversy over the George W. Bush administration’s claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As readers may recall, in 2019 we slapped Plame when her initial campaign ad overstated the case against one administration official.AdvertisementBut this ad is really beyond the pale. It’s an interesting example of how a mountain can be made out of a molehill.ACE President Ian Sugar said the group, which is not required to disclose its donors, is “dedicated to combating extremism in our politics, fighting hate in our society, and rebuilding trust in our democracy.” He said that “we have not been involved in political activity like this before,” but “Valerie Plame poses a real unique threat — combining bigotry with celebrity.”Sugar acknowledged “it’s a hard-hitting ad, for sure.” He provided a point-by-point defense of every word in the ad. But it mostly adds up to a bad Twitter day.It all started when Plame tweeted out a link to an article posted on the Unz Review, a website that it provides a forum for “alternative perspectives,” which happens to include anti-Semitic diatribes. The , by Philip Giraldi, was titled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars” and the tweet showed a photo of commentator Bill Kristol. The article listed Jews it called “conduits for the false information that led to a war [with Iraq] that has spread and effectively destroyed much of the Middle East.” It also asserted that “Jewish groups and deep pocket individual donors not only control the politicians, they own and run the media and entertainment industries" and suggested Jewish commentators should be identified as Jewish when they appear on television, akin to “a warning label on a bottle of rat poison.”AdvertisementPlame’s tweet spawned Twitter outrage, and Plame initially pushed back, telling people to “calm down, retweets don’t imply endorsements. Yes, very provocative, but thoughtful. Many neocon hawks ARE Jewish.” (It wasn’t really a retweet, though.) She kept tweeting, defending herself as being “of Jewish decent [sic],” urging followers to “read the whole article and try, just for a moment, put aside your biases for a moment.”Eventually, at some point during the day, Plame apparently read the whole article herself. “OK folks, look, I messed up. I skimmed this piece, zeroed in on the neocon criticism, and shared it without seeing and considering the rest,” she tweeted about an article she had previously called “thoughtful.” She added: “Apologies all. There is so much there that’s problematic AF and I should have recognized it sooner.”Plame further tweeted: “I’m not perfect and make mistakes. This was a doozy. All I can do is admit them, try to be better, and read more thoroughly next time. Ugh.”AdvertisementWell, just about everyone has bad days on Twitter, but this was an especially spectacular flameout. It didn’t help that Twitter users found tweeting other articles by Giraldi that had appeared in the Unz Review in 2014 and 2015. One article touted a 9/11 conspiracy theory about “dancing Israelis” — Mossad agents who supposedly had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center. In 2017, Plame also suggested that then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer should apologize to “other rich Jews” besides Sheldon Adelson.The Unz Review was founded by businessman Ron Unz, who the Anti-Defamation League said in 2014 has a Jewish background and . In 2018, the ADL that Unz has “embraced hardcore anti-Semitism,” including creating an online library of free anti-Semitic texts.“In the past, I have also carelessly retweeted articles from this same site, the Unz Review, without closely examining content and authors,” Plame said in a few days after the tweet, when she announced she had resigned from the Ploughshares Fund, a group that seeks to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. “Now that I have, I am horrified and ashamed. The white supremacist and anti-Semitic propaganda espoused by this website is disgusting and I strongly condemn it.”AdvertisementShe added: “Actions have consequences, and while I have been honored to serve on the board of the Ploughshares Fund, to avoid distracting from their mission, I have resigned. I take full responsibility for my thoughtless and hurtful actions, and there are no excuses for what I did.”Since this incident, Plame, has emphasized her Jewish roots — she says her great-grandfather was a rabbi in Ukraine — and that she attends a reform synagogue in Santa Fe. (There is about whether she is a member, as she told an Israeli journalist, but it’s been confirmed that she attended High Holiday services in 2018 and 2019.)The ACE Fund ad takes this one-day flap and turns it into something more sinister. It cites the fact that the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, for the tweet (before complaining that she “cucked”) and that former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke also hailed the tweet.Valerie Plame tells truth Jewish role in nsane wars for Israel. Attacked she stood firm. Then (((non-existent))) J power made her apologize! — David Duke (@DrDavidDuke)Plame, of course, apologized for the tweet. She can’t control how others responded to it.AdvertisementThen, further upping the ante, the ad says, “Valerie Plame promoted the bigotry of a website so racist it even smears Mexicans for having a taste for sexually abusing children.” This refers to on the Unz Review, but Plame never tweeted about that. Apparently, according to the ACE Fund, any article on this website can now be associated with Plame.Sugar said the use of the phrase “white supremacists friends” is justified because Plame has accepted — and not returned — from a former GOP member of Congress, Pete McCloskey Jr., who won fame in 1972 for challenging President Richard M. Nixon for the Republican nomination on an antiwar platform. McCloskey supposedly referenced the “so-called Holocaust” and said “I don’t know whether you’re right or wrong about the Holocaust” during a May 2000 to the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a now-much-diminished group that promotes Holocaust denial, .McCloskey has denied he is an anti-Semite. In a 2006 interview, he called IHR a “bunch of nuts” and said the speech transcript was inaccurate. He recalled “being booed” when he talked about the Holocaust. “Of course the Holocaust existed,” . “But I will go and speak to any group.”AdvertisementUpdate: There is . “I came because I respect the thesis of this organization – the thesis being that there should be a reexamination of whatever governments say or politicians say or political entities say. I was in politics for fifteen years, and I think you should start with the assumption: never trust a politician,” McCloskey says, noting: “Earlier here today I listened to speeches about the courage of men in France, Britain, Germany, and New Zealand who have spoken out against the commonly accepted concept of what occurred during the Second World War in the so-called Holocaust.” Much of the speech, titled “Machinations of the Anti-Defamation League,” is actually an attack on the ADL. There is no booing.“You are doing something worse than criticizing the government of the United States; you’re threatening the security of the state of Israel," McCloskey concluded to applause. "And the Jewish community is dedicated to preserve that state, and to destroy those who speak against it. Good luck.” (We have removed a reference in this fact check to a prominent reporter he had watched the speech and found no such wording.)Heather Colburn, a spokesman for the Plame campaign, did not respond directly to a question about McCloskey’s donations. “This campaign is funded by people who want someone in Congress who will stand up and fight for access to quality health care and an economy that works for everyone. These attacks are the work of people who are desperate to elect their candidate and who will do whatever it takes to win," she said. "They will continue to perpetuate these extreme and disgusting attacks because it is all they have. New Mexicans should stand up and speak out about these groups, their hate speech and the candidates they support.”Plame certainly demonstrated terrible judgment in tweeting an article with anti-Semitic language, especially if, as she claims, she did not fully read the article. She briefly defended herself, but then within hours, she apologized. She also had tweeted a few other articles from a clearly anti-Semitic website. One could imagine an ad crafted around these events that asks New Mexicans whether they want a member of Congress who is so sloppy about her sources of information.AdvertisementBut instead, this ad uses lurid images and words to smear Plame as a white supremacist — or at least claim she is willing to represent them in Congress. There is no evidence that is the case, especially given her quick effort to disassociate herself from her tweets and her strong language condemning white supremacism. We swung back and forth between Three and Four Pinocchios — given that, even though Plame apologized, she did tweet an anti-Semitic article — but the Nazi symbol superimposed on her eyes tipped us to Four.()Send us facts to check by filling out Sign up for The Fact Checker The Fact Checker is a verified CommentsGift ArticleTOP STORIESThe BriefingDon’t miss reporting and analysis from the Hill and the White House.Try a different topic or to save your preferences

This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoCommentGift ShareValerie Plame is a “disgraced racist millionaire. Is she running for Congress to represent New Mexicans or white supremacists?” — New ad via dark-money group Alliance to Combat Extremism Fund, May 19, 2020Has there ever been an attack ad as negative as this one? It literally has swastikas superimposed over Plame’s eyes, with images of her alleged “white supremacists friends” marching in Charlottesville as it declares, “Keep your hate out of New Mexico.”A group called the has entered the Democratic congressional primary in...

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Editor and chief writer of The Washington Post's Fact Checker since 2011. Glenn.Kessler@washpost.com

Analysis | Dark-money group smears Valerie Plame with ‘white supremacist’ label

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