New York, NY – A liberal Democratic activist group is being accused of antisemitism for mocking the names of two Jewish politicians, House candidate Dan Goldman and state Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz.
“The jerk buying a House seat with inherited money is ‘Goldman’ … the IDC-adjacent Assembly member is ‘DINOwitz.’ Who came up with these names, Dickens?” a member of No IDC NY wrote in a since-deleted tweet on Saturday.
The left-wing group was formed to defeat former members of the Independent Democratic Conference in the state Senate, who had a partnership with Republicans that helped keep the GOP in power.
The IDC disbanded in 2018 when Democrats won the majority in the Senate, and most members of the conference lost in primaries to more progressive Democrats.
The blowback to No IDC NY’s tweet was swift, with prominent Democrats accusing the group of dabbling in antisemitism, including by trotting out a trope involving money and power.
“A tweet dripping with Antisemitism,” tweeted Bronx Congressman Ritchie Torres. “The normalization of Antisemitism is a sign of how poisonous our politics has become.”
Dinowitz, a Bronx legislator, responded with his own statement on Twitter, saying, “I’ve been the target of antisemitic attacks from both the far right and the far left.”
“This tweet from an extremist, anonymous account selectively singles out two Jewish politicians and is disgusting. It’s a classic display of antisemitism and should be condemned,” he wrote.
During an interview Sunday night, Dinowitz added: “Antisemitism these days seems is becoming acceptable. Aside from being antisemitic, making fun of people’s names is juvenile.”
A campaign spokesman for Goldman, the House Democrats’ lawyer during the first impeachment proceeding of former President Donald Trump — who narrowly won the Democratic primary for 10th Congressional District seat last week — declined comment. Goldman is an heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. jeans fortune.
No IDC NY took down the offending tweet following complaints and apologized on Sunday.
“The steering committee of No IDC NY has suspended the social media account manager who sent this tweet,” a member of the group wrote on Twitter, in response to Torres’ post.
“We’re sorry, no antisemitism was intended and we took this down when folks expressed concerns it could be taken the wrong way,” a rep from No IDC NY added.
“It was a joke about the names that certainly would have been better not made, e.g. DINO stands for Dem in name only, and was not supposed to be riffing off their Jewishness, we do not tolerate antisemitism.”
