Where’s the Contradiction

By Noah Rothman

Friday, July 10, 2026

 

Here’s a revealing admission from progressive commentator Emma Vigeland, a co-host of The Majority Report:

 

 “You know, I’ve said this before,” she confessed during an interview with Vox.com’s Astead Herndon, “I don’t really care if, say, like, Bernie Sanders or AOC go home, and they’re a secret Nazi, but they vote for the right things.”

 

As defenses of the disgraced Graham Platner go, it’s slim pickings out there, so maybe you have to take what you can get.

 

What Vigeland is saying is that a  politician’s character doesn’t really matter as long as he robotically pulls all the right levers in office. Maybe, in observance of their policy priorities, she’s discovered new wells of sympathy for the Republican voters who looked past the “fascist campaign” that Donald Trump ran in 2024.

 

Still, when it comes to her preferred Israel policies, Vigeland seems to think that she’s articulating a contradictory philosophy. She’s not.

 

If Vigeland had her way, she would have a U.S. government that would not only cut off all financial and military support for Israel but impose economic sanctions on it as well. But beyond that, she also argues that Jerusalem should surrender its nuclear arsenal. “We should denuclearize across the board, and Israel shouldn’t have one,” she said. “Neither should Iran.” Of course, Iran has resisted denuclearization, and Israel, given its history, would as well. That policy would have to be coercive.

 

So, in other words, disarm the Jews.

 

She also backs a so-called one-state solution, in which the Israeli state would incorporate the Palestinian territories — adding about 5.5 million Arabs to the 2 million Arabs in Israel (about 21 percent of the population already, all of whom enjoy the full rights of citizenship), presumably with the aim of neutralizing Israel’s character as a Jewish state. This, she argues, is the only way to force Israel to abandon the “apartheid” policies she insists pertain inside Israel (they don’t).

 

So, in simpler terms, strip the Jews of their right to self-determination.

 

She argues that condemning the alleged “genocide” that Israel has supposedly been engineering in the Palestinian territories for generations now — incompetently, we must assume — is a political litmus test. “It’s powerful to use the word and to democratize its power,” she said. Proving the existence of said genocide has been a struggle, but evidence of the charge apparently doesn’t matter if you repeat the accusation enough. The “word” itself has the “power” to impute guilt.

 

So, demonize the Jews.

 

In sum, Vigeland’s preferences include sanctioning and pacifying the Israelis, denying them self-determination, and accusing them of crimes they did not commit. It’s hard to see why she would object to candidates who maybe weren’t so “secret” about it.