“And I think it’s appalling that the Jewish interest in the Congress are denying us our civil rights in our ability to boycott,” Senator Mike Gravel told The Intercept.

It’s a blatantly antisemitic line on a mostly blatant antisemitic line that no one commented on.

The former Alaska senator has died and the media is rushing out its eulogies, describing him as unconventional. That’s certainly one way of putting it. Speaking ill of the dead is tacky, but so is pretending that a leftist radical bigot embodied the best of America.

That’s the take from leftist publications like The Nation.

The media spits on conservatives in life and in death. And it glamorizes and rehabilitates the most extreme lefties. It tears down the statues of American heroes on the thinnest of pretexts, but celebrates racists. Even present day ones.

Gravel was Bernie Sanders back when that particular socialist was still obscure. Even when Sanders was a known name, Gravel was being touted as a leftist alternative to Sanders. In his Intercept interview, he called for turning over US bases to the UN, get rid of all the nuclear weapons, befriend Venezuela’s dictator and go after Israel.

None of this was remarkable from a guy who went to Iran and palled around with Holocaust deniers. 

During his lifetime, leftists kept on denying Gravel’s extremism and antisemitism. Lines like this were awkwardly waved away.

Mike Gravel, the former Alaska Senator who sort of stole the show at the last debate, did a very odd college radio interview Friday evening with University of Chicago freshman Alex Beinstein for his show Tomorrow with Alex Beinstein… the conversation moves on to tax policy and Gravel’s plan for a “fair tax.”

GRAVEL: Get a hold of Professor Larry Kotlikoff. A Polish Jew, OK. Brilliant, brilliant.

BEINSTEIN: What does it have to do with anything that he’s a Polish Jew? Why do you mention he was a Polish Jew? Just curious.

GRAVEL: Why’d I mention it? Because you’re making such an issue over Israel. So maybe you’d believe somebody you might have some confidence in from a racial point of view. You don’t seem to believe anything else.

Then there’s Gravel’s support for Lyndon LaRouche. And Venezuela. 

In 2019, as Maduro was butchering and starving his people, the Gravel Institute tweeted, “At this crucial moment, Sen. Mike Gravel stands with the people of Venezuela against American imperialism.”

It just gets worse from there.

New York Young Communist League November 4 2020.

“The Day After w Senator Gravel & Arun Chaudhary” panelists included Senator Mike Gravel, Arun Chaudhary (former Obama White House) , Piper Winkler, and Ian Miller, Ben Bath, Justine Medina and Prasanna Shah of the Young Communist League USA, .

Not surprising for a guy who while in office was championing legislative exchanges with the USSR.