To the editor:

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is the last person who should be controlling the narrative about antisemitism on American college campuses. In her 2016 campaign, she placed Facebook ads pushing the racist belief of replacement theory, which suggests that white Americans are purposely being replaced by minorities and migrants. (In Charlottesville, white supremacists chanted “Jews will not replace us” while holding torches like an old-school, pitchfork-wielding mob.) In 2022, she endorsed Carl Paladino for Congress, even though he had praised Hitler as “inspirational” as recently as 2021.

In her early years in Congress, Rep. Stefanik mostly avoided publicly addressing any Jewish holiday or day or remembrance, looking both uninformed and afraid of upsetting her base; instead, she stuck to the white-Christian basics: posting on social media about Christmas, Easter, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Now, as she and other white MAGA politicians use MLK as a kind of shield, she’s using Jewish Holidays to hide her true values–power, control and money.

You can be sure that when she posts about Passover on Facebook or tweets fake outrage about antisemitism on yet another Ivy League campus, she does not care about the actual Jewish students who attend those colleges. She cares only about what talking about them can do for her profile.

Democrats in her district and beyond can’t keep falling for her tactics. Allowing her to control the narrative about antisemitism is ludicrous, dangerous, and a distraction from the many years she has governed ineffectively, without any legislation to show for it. (Though she happily takes credit for money from the bills she voted against, once the funding starts rolling into her district.)

Sara Schaff

Plattsburgh

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Sources

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1. https://www.newsweek.com/elise-stefanik-replacement-theory-ads-criticized-buffalo-shooting-1706744

2. https://www.businessinsider.com/carl-paladino-running-again-stefanik-endorsement-hitler-leadership-quote-radio-2022-6?op=1

3. https://projects.propublica.org/represent/members/S001196-elise-stefanik/bills-sponsored/117

4. https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/stefanik-latest-republican-tout-funding-voted-rcna143366