The House Homeland Security Committee convened on May 16, calling on a self-styled “Senior Advisor on Extremism” from nonprofit Human Rights First Amy Spitalnick for her expert testimony.
For a brief sampling of the kind of partisan actor Spitalnick is, her pre-written testimony was a predictable word salad of pro-Democracy™ talking points mixed with condemnation of White Supremacy™.
My name is Amy Spitalnick and I am a Senior Advisor on Extremism at Human Rights First, a nonpartisan organization committed to ensuring that the United States is a global leader on human rights. I am also the incoming CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a nearly 80- year old nonpartisan organization that serves as the national convener of Jewish coalitions to build a safe, just, and inclusive democracy.
I previously led Integrity First for America, the nonpartisan nonprofit that held accountable the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and hate groups responsible for the August 2017 violence in Charlottesville.
So the agenda she was there to promote was clear from the start.
“Have you studied Antifa?” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) began, after hilariously mispronouncing her name as “Spittleneck,” which clearly agitated her.
“I have not studied Antifa,” the witness replied. “To the extent left-wing violence exists, it tends to be focused on property damage and other acts along those lines while, on the right, for the most part, the violence tends to be manifesting in the sort of deadly acts of mass violence that we’ve been talking about here today. ”
Right. Inciting and fetishizing vigilante mob violence totally isn’t the Social Justice™ left’s bread and butter.
Kathy Griffin had it right from the start! pic.twitter.com/oL4rfIsTBh
— tRUMP Virus! 🐀 (@BidenVaccine) May 12, 2023
At one point, the hostile witness apparently began to smile off-camera, which prompted the rhetorical question from Greene: “Is this funny to you?”
“What’s not funny are the Black people and Hispanic people and Jewish people and Muslim people who have been murdered in synagogues, in church, in supermarkets, in mosques, by white supremacists,” the witness self-righteously replied, returning to her narrative.
The sneering condescension from these people toward Greene is, in my view, the manifestation of a passive-aggressive disgust with the fact that they are made to sit there and listen attentively to this woman whom they hold in such low regard — a country bumpkin elected by her fellow country bumpkins in North Georgia who doesn’t belong in the august halls of power.
Greene is not one of them, and unlike nearly all of her colleagues in the House, she has no ambitions to be.
It’s stuff like this that explains why 11 members of Greene’s own party from the establishment wing joined the Democrats to strip her of all her House committee assignments during the last session.
WATCH: @LeaderHoyer during debate on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA): "I urge my colleagues to look at this image."
Rep. Hoyer then walks image around House floor to be seen by other members.
Full video here: https://t.co/C3wOr1lJZi pic.twitter.com/j8G91hO49K
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 4, 2021
She is strikingly similar to Trump in that she has very little respect for the conventions that normally constrain politicians’ behavior. This deeply chafes the GOP leadership; Mitch McConnell at one point referred to her rhetoric as a “cancer” on the party.
Perhaps nothing has done more to facilitate corruption in Washington than so-called “decorum” which dictates that no member of Congress can ever under any circumstances impugn the character of their cherished colleagues or government bureaucrats.
Greene is a bit of an unlikely genius in that she straightforwardly exposes institutional hypocrisy, using plain language, in a relatable manner that’s most uncommon in the People’s Chamber.
She masterfully strips away all the pretentious legalize and speaks truth to power in plain English using a folksy kind of common sense that, again, largely does not exist in Congress in the same way that it does in rural North Georgia.
