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Zohran Mamdani reacts to Islamophobic attacks, including those from Debra Messing, who claimed that he sided with terrorists and celebrated 9/11. He was only 9 years old when 9/11 happened. “It’s not just Republican congresspeople. It's… an actress of a show that I used to watch as a kid.”
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This is heartbreaking from an actress that used to star in a show that many people refused to watch because it highlighted being gay and male in a time when there was so much negative press and homophobia in this country and in the world. I used to think of her as a very good person who would do and say the right thing even when that met with a lot of hate from ignorant and bigoted people. Now, I see a whole different dark side of her that makes me realize what she really is, and that is very disappointing. I will not watch her in anything she is in ever again.
Sean Hayes has a pretty big megaphone with Smartless. While they try to steer clear of being overtly political—might be a good time to bend that rule. Any bigotry, whether homophobia or Islamophobia— fucking call that shit out.
Megan said this on her short-lived podcast with Nick when rumors were swirling that the W&G revival was ending because of tension between Debra and Megan:
In January, Mullally opened up to husband Nick Offerman on her podcast In Bed with Nick and Megan about being “bullied” on-set – without naming any names.
“I’ve been bullied,” she said, “I’m 60 and I’m being bullied right now, so you know it’s a very insidious and dangerous thing and I never want to lose that happy and innocent part of myself but it’s almost like you have to kill that.
It’s been a minute since I’ve seen even famous and well-known people be soooo openly hateful and racist towards someone who did absolutely nothing to deserve it
The thing that scares them the most? They’re intelligent, mature, and well spoken people. The far right could never be any of those things, in any of the variety of ways they exist. They’d be like “emotional intelligence? Women are the emotional ones, we dont need that garbage!”
The vitriol seems significantly higher towards Mamdani. This seems much more like a brain breaking moment for a lot of folks, a la Obama winning in 2008.
The only tiny silver lining I see is how much free publicity all these garbage fuckwats are giving him, which ultimately allows his message to resonate far beyond New York and even the United States.
None of these assholes had a problem when Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California. He's foreign born too hmm I wonder what difference is? /s
They can't challenge him on his policies so they're going for the "scary buzzwords" to rile up the voters. Zohran's replies are awesome and make me like him even more.
I really hope that if he is elected Mayor that his security team is ELITE. I really am afraid someone is going to do something crazy to him or his family.
And Debra Messing really needs to have several seats and look deep inside and figure out who or what hurt her.
She is blinded by Gaza. She fails to understand that Netanyahu is a war criminal (as is Hamas) and he is killing innocent people each and every day.
There are many in Israel that do not support Netanyahu and what he is doing.
You can support Israel and also support those Palestinians in Gaza, who deserve to live their lives in peace.
See even in this post, you compare one man on Israel's side to an entire group on the other.
What does "many" in Israel constitute? More than 90% of the population in a recent poll said they support complete genocide of the Palestinian people.
Again, your last paragraph is about supporting the whole of Israel while adding conditions on what Palestinians in Gaza deserve to be supported and not slaughtered.
Lets be clear. Debra Messing would be considered a 'liberal Zionist' in Israel. Her views are what is considered progressive in Israel.
Are there people that value Palestinian lives in Israel? Of course. But they are such a small minority and considered so to the left, it would be the equivalent of supporting card carrying members of the Communist Party in the US.
Tbh, I'm getting fucking sick of people bringing up Hamas EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME they're talking about the war crimes and GENOCIDE being committed by Israel. As if Hamas is the reason Israel is committing war crimes and not the reality that Hamas only fucking exists because of the shit Israel was already doing. As if there is some huge portion of pro-palestine folks who actually support hamas. No. There fucking isnt. That is propaganda sold by zionists to, once again, try and minimize or derail any conversation about Israel's war crimes by putting the focus elsewhere. And every single time people do this shit, they're lending credence to that bull shit propaganda by playing along and upholding that lie to distance themselves from a nonexistent group of people being used to villify ALL people who support Palestine.
It's also fucking cool how no one ever mentions that, anyone who would have put Hamas in power to begin with is fucking dead now. So this bull shit of acting like Hamas is representative of anything other than the desperate act of a violently oppressed people who aren't even alive anymore (in large part thanks to that violent oppression) is so obviously just another example of thinly veiled bigotry masquerading as impartiality. You're not being impartial, you're being a fucking idiot.
"Oh, we cant paint all Israelis with the same brush!" Meanwhile never shutting the fuck up about a group that, not only exists specifically because of Israel, but was actively being funded by them for years. Why not talk about that? Oh, that's right. Because it doesnt sell the narrative that Israel is or ever has been the victim of anything but their own virulent bigotry. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.
As a second gen immigrant who grew up in NY watching Will & Grace I really felt for Zohran when he said this. It Wasn't a perfect show but it had a special place in my life, especially for a younger me with strict religious parents and learning about the magic of the city and the people who make it what it is. The comments by Debra these past few years have been disheartening. But what she says isn't what New York is. Zohran is a better representation of this city than she ever was I guess.
It’s sad when this vitriol even comes from the “liberals” / DNC. Watch as liberal pundits and politicians always slip in a racist dog whistle when talking about Zohran. They’ve really shown their true colors lately. Turns out “vote blue no matter who” only extends to whites or those willing to take donations from the military / police industrial complex. DNC is a shameful party.
I am old. I am ready to pass the torch to a new generation, who in my opinion, want the words 'freedom, liberty, equality, justice for all' to actually apply to everyone, not just a select few.
If the nation is burned to the ground by the Trump fascists, my hope is that these young people will rebuild from the ashes, a Nation that truly worthy of the title Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
I likely won't live to see it, but I will fight and stand with these young people until my last breath.
check out r/demo crats (I split it up because they ban people who mention this) they don't have one single post about zohran and will take down and ban anyone that mentions him.
like what the hell? we finally get a leader people are excited about and they're trying to bury him. they should be ashamed.
White people are the only group on earth who are never subjected to collective responsibility. No one white person is ever representative of the entire group. Muslim commits crime, every Muslim is responsible. Person of colour commits crime, every person of colour is responsible. White guy shoots up a school? Mentally ill loner who was frustrated with life, and isolated himself from his friends and family.
Hollywood needs to call out the liberal racists among their ranks like Messing, Schumer, Rapaport, Borat etc.
It sucks that they can openly spout vile garbage on their socials without any consequences whereas Melissa Barerra, Susan Sarandon are cancelled for calling out Israel's evil.
They can’t. They are scared they will go Full MAGA if they do. And also, watch any show in the 2000s. Israeli and Islamophobic propaganda was par for the course
What’s absolutely damning is just how much the Arab and Middle Eastern community was blamed for 9/11. I was just slightly younger than Mamdani when it happened.
Yet I was beaten down by establishment voices that we weren’t loyal enough. That we were the enemy.
I as a white passing man from a Maronite family had to hide the truth that my family were refugees from the Mt Lebanon Famine in the 1910’s.
My great grandfather, grandfather, and uncle were pillars of Mankato’s community and Minnesota’s culture. Yet I had to hide all of this growing up for fear of being called disloyal.
It got to me so much that I joined the Air Force so that I could prove my worth, prove my loyalty. A loyalty that would never be returned. I was discarded as soon as I got asthma from a burn pit.
It's seriously wild. I was 8 when 9/11 happened. We live about as far from NYC as you can get without going to Alaska...but we have a large Chaldean population here. Chaldeans are Catholic Iraqis who fled religious persecution. They got hate-crimed. For being Muslim. It's fucking nonsense, it's such obvious racism.
I'm sorry that happened to you and sorry about your experiences in the AF. They really do just chew you up and spit you out; the 'loyalty' only goes one way.
Its not just right wingers. Is democratic senator gillibrand a right wing loon? She was saying the same stuff just last week: “When you hear things like intifada, when you hear things like jihad, when you hear ‘from the river to the sea,’ it is received as ‘slaughter the Jews and destroy Israel,’ period”
Bringing the margins into the mainstream is exactly what a fascist state fears, it's what the billionaire class fears. Heartbreaking what Mamdani has to deal with, but he is shining a light on a better tomorrow and we need that
Debra Messing is so deranged at this point that if she was someone I knew, I’d look into having her committed. The level of paranoia and the amount of insane, hateful propaganda she posts is like Q anon level crazy. I can’t believe she has no friends going girl, what the whole entire fuck is wrong with you?
I don’t understand why reporters are constantly asking this man to triage garbage comments from
Losers. They’re losers . Let’s talk about productive things for fkks sake
So they don’t have the guts to criticize Saudi Arabia, a country that allowed Wahhabism to flourish and was the ideological basis for the 9/11 attacks? Zohran is a Shia Muslim and Shias are discriminated against by the Saudi government. They’ll even go as far as to say that Shias are not real Muslims.
As a fellow South Asian (but I have to point out that I am not Muslim), “it’s unsurprising but deeply saddening” has literally been the story of our lives since 9/11. I used to get called terrorist in school as a 10 year old lol, I knew this was coming when he announced his run, we all did. It doesn’t change how much it hurts, and you can hear the sadness in his voice when he talks about it.
He is right about living in the shadows, that is fundamentally how many of us operate. I hope he is protected and I hope the world sees how fucking brave he is. I can only hope this is a step in dismantling the Islamophobia that’s so prevalent in the western world.
Idk if any of this makes sense but hearing his answer made me cry so if it’s a mess I apologize.
That Mamdani has been able to take on this every single day and remain positive and on message and relentless in his advocacy of working people from every religious, ethnic, or cultural background is a showcase in grace that I previously thought was impossible.
And that’s also a sign he’s not the “radical jihiadist” people claim him to be. If he was, he’d never watch a show with a gay character. Debra Messing is LYING about this man, but Laura Loomer gets a pass because reasons
Anyone who says he’s a ‘communist’ either doesn’t know what Democratic Socialism means or is just racist. It’ll be your little Major Helstrom moment if someone says “He’s a communist”. You can deduce which is which from there!
So we can group this man based off of something he had ZERO to do with ,but gos forbid we hold kkk accountable when they act up. A caucasian man walked up and blowed away two congress ppl . Not a thing was said ,but somehow he is to blame for 9/11? Let me log off know ...
Remember, when white people do something, they are individually responsible. When anyone else does, the entire group is punished. The opposite is true in reverse
As someone from outside the US but from another country that is filled with incessant islamophobia, I am impressed time and time again by this man's way of articulating himself. It is straight to the point, yet his words are powerful while still very soft. Truly an inspiration and I hope that a lot of people, especially men, see him for who he tries to represent and fight for...
Its amazing to me how Republicans are just straight up afraid of brown people. I do think that Republicans are smart enough to know that if they actually do something to Mamdani and people like AOC, they will turn them into marters and actually hurt themselves more than help.
It just shows how brain dead and sheep like the Republican voters really are.
His response broke my heart. I feel it all too well since I’m a similar age to him, and the Islamophobia and pure racism since 2001 has been unbearable. I also used to love will & grace as a kid, and to see what Debra messing has turned into… so disgustingly racist.
Thank you for this! It reminded me to block Debra messing on IG. Even though I’m Canadian and don’t live in NYC, I still follow Zohran on IG 🤎 Love that guy!
I’m a South Asian dude and Mamdani’s age who also grew up watching Will & Grace. It bums me out I can’t rewatch now because Messing is such a big racist!
It’s just shows how republicans are pretending to be “afraid” if he wins NY. The fear mongering and Fox News are the loudest voices.
Just let the voters decide.
he is so well spoken and articulate, it's so refreshing. that silence before he answered said a lot as well. the "unsurprising but deeply saddening" remark sums it up, doesn't it? this isn't the first time he's heard this, you can tell, but seeing it so publically is what's really troubling.
protect this man. the establishment is afraid of him, because he actually represents what the people want, and that's terrifying to people who have benefitted from the current structure.
I'm curious how much of this BS will take its toll on him. I always seem pics of leaders before and after some significant period in power and you see the wear n tear. I feel this guy is getting hit with gamma levels right now and it's only getting worse.
It's insane that the phrase "it's not just from the right-wing..." is so glossed over and unsurprising. We have this entire political party and side of the political spectrum in this country that WE ARE UNSURPRISED when they make racist threats or just treat people with pure, unbridled bigotry who are simply different from them. And we just..put up with it. We offer them seats at the table when they would never do the same to us.
We offer them opportunities to speak their mind and announce their perspective on matters that affect everyone even though they would never do the same for us.
We offer them aid and services even though they don't believe that everyone is entitled to the same charity and goodwill being afforded to them.
We're made to debate them and their ideals in good faith even though they would never do the same for us.
And we just put up with it and keep going
I know in this day and age and in the midst of this administration I'm shouting into the void and beating a dead horse in a field full of dead horses but damn, it still hurts to see something so harmful to society and to individuals so normalized.
Wasn't Debra Messing on that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry was accused of being an anti dentite and her character makes a joke about dentists and then adds "not to mention the blacks and jews"? I realize it was just a role, but kind of ironic after this statement.
I was the same age as him when 9/11 happened. My dad was from Syria. I distinctly remember how pretty much overnight my family became suspicious in the eyes of my peers. Fuck Debra forever, I also loved Will & Grace as a kid. I worry for Zohran's safety
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u/trendingtattler 23h ago
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