J Street, Walt and Mearsheimer, and Jewish Martyrdom

Jon Chait, making sense:

The Nation's Eric Alterman recently wrote that, in the United States, "right-wing Jewish organizations and neoconservative pundits dominate nearly all Middle East discussion." This is a pretty radical claim, one I don't agree with--recent cover stories in both Time and Newsweek have reflected the J Street line -- but one for which you could produce at least some evidence. The sum total of the evidence he did produce was three blog posts appearing in, respectively, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, and Commentary. Alterman, perhaps using hyperbole to compensate for the lack of evidence, called the authors "Thought Police." You may recall that the term "Thought Police" was coined by George Orwell's "1984" to describe a breed of futuristic secret police that would exceed even the draconian methods employed by Stalin and Hitler. Apparently Alterman believes equivalent powers are now wielded by a handful of Zionist bloggers. I'm trying to imagine what Alterman would say if fascism really does come to America. Perhaps he'll think to himself, while hanging from his thumbs in some dungeon, "Well, this is pretty bad, but not as bad as when I was criticized by Commentary online."