Anti-Semitism or sarcasm? Labor Division official fired over misunderstood Fb feedback

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Lower than three weeks into his new job, a Texas conservative has been pressured out after Bloomberg dug via his Fb historical past and claimed to have detected the whiff of anti-Semitism from three years in the past.

Leif Olson clocked in for his first day on the job on the Labor Division’s Wage and Hour Division on August 12, after being cleared for the place by the White Home. Lower than three weeks later, Olson handed in his resignation.

The rationale? A journalist at Bloomberg Legislation dug via his Fb historical past and unearthed some supposedly anti-Semitic feedback he made in 2016. The journalist known as his employer and, in keeping with the information website, Olson resigned lower than 4 hours later.

What did Olson really say? Beneath a sarcastic put up describing then-Home Speaker Paul Ryan’s “emasculating” major victory over right-wing challenger Paul Nehlen, one commenter known as Ryan a “neo-con.”

Olson responded that “neo-cons are all Higher East Facet Zionists who don’t golf on Saturday if you realize what I imply.”

“That’s what I meant,” the commenter replied. “He’s a Jew. Everybody is aware of that.”

“It should be true as a result of I’ve by no means seen the Lamestream Media report it, and you realize they defend their very own.” 

Cropped out of the Bloomberg screenshot was one other consumer complimenting Olson for talking “sarcasm like a primary language,” which might have made clear the character and tone of his feedback.

Though Bloomberg reporter Benjamin Penn described the story as a “SCOOP,” Olson mentioned he was clearly mocking the commenter’s personal anti-Semitism. Ryan shouldn’t be Jewish however Catholic, and has talked brazenly about his religion earlier than.

“It was sarcastic criticism of the alt-right’s conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic positions,” Olson mentioned, in an interview following his resignation. 

Because the mud settled, Conservative commenters known as out Penn for what they noticed as a hatchet-job on Olson. Certainly, Penn recognized Olson’s actual “crime” in a subsequent tweet, stating that he had been employed to supervise the drafting of wage-hour rules favorable to the enterprise neighborhood. 

“They’re now down one adviser,” he quipped.

Screenshots of Olson’s change are nonetheless out there on his Fb web page, introduced in an album entitled “Welcome, Bloomberg readers.” Additional photographs on this album present that the mocking tone of Olson’s unique put up was in reality geared toward right-wing media shops like Breitbart, which had predicted a landslide major loss for the institution Republican.

Throwing its weight behind Penn’s accusation was the Anti-Defamation League, which declared that the put up was “clearly anti-Semitic.” 

The ADL later walked this again, nonetheless, saying in an announcement that “we recognize Mr. Olson’s clarification that he supposed to be sarcastic together with his posts, and settle for his clarification of the content material in query.”

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Scrabble or anti-Semitism? Norwegian ‘Jewish pig’ cartoon courts controversy

The mere accusation of anti-Semitism, nonetheless unfounded, was evidently too scorching for the Division of Labor to deal with, and the previous official is probably going now on the way in which again to Texas. 

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