Michael Moore's Idiotic Apologia for Anti-Semites

Every few years, Michael Moore washes up on some beach and spouts noxious, ill-informed diatribes till the tides carry him back to the briny deep. This month, the littoral is odoriferous with Mr. Moore’s contention that campus protestors chanting “We are Hamas!” “Global Intifada!” “From the River to the Sea!” and “Zionists Deserve to Die” cannot possibly be antisemitic:

“98% of [the protesters] are not saying anything that’s antisemitic because they don’t believe in antisemitism, in part, because the Palestinian people are Semites.”

Normally, you’d have to hire a bathyscaphe to witness intelligence that far below sea level—but Michael Moore brings the insights of the abyss up to terra firma. Contra Mr. Moore’s perception, the term “Semitic” was invented in 1781 by a German orientalist to describe a set of languages. The notion of “Semites” or “Semitic peoples” was a 19th century construct of German race theorists. It is not entirely coincidence that the development of this classification coincided chronologically and geographically with the rise of phrenology.

Germans were honest enough in that time to speak of “Judenhass” (“Jew-hatred”), but in 1879, Wilhelm Marr thought Judenhass would sell better if rebranded with a “scientific-sounding” term; he settled on “antisemitismus.”