California state senator Scott Wiener is running for the San Francisco congressional seat that Nancy Pelosi is vacating after 20 terms. She’s leaving big high heels to fill.
Wiener seems like he could fill them. He’s far out in all the required respects. However, he was harassed mercilessly by one Dimitry Yakoushkin “for insufficient alacrity in condemning Israel for supposed genocide in Gaza,” as Rich Lowry puts it in a good column on the incident depicted in the video below.
Scott Wiener showed up to the trans march and for the first time we kicked his ass out. It's sad because while he's written some good legislation for queers, hes ultimately a genocidal-supporting center right shill. Trigger warning: broken man walking away defeated. Vote Connie! pic.twitter.com/TXIB7omxde
— Dimitry Yakoushkin (@decadimitry) June 27, 2026
Wiener might have been a little late in his compliance with the required line on “genocide,” but he quickly came around. Now Wiener has issued a lame statement condemning the harassment to which he has been subjected. Much as he has tried, he won’t be able to appease the mob.
Liel Leibovitz explains why. It must have something to do with the residuum of his being:
Because “pro-Palestine” is simply a slightly more pleasant term for rabid Jew-hatred. The goons poking their fingers at Wiener weren’t protesting any of his policies or positions. They were simply having fun beating up on a Jew, just as their spiritual ancestors in Berlin had done not even a century ago.
As we have all seen:
[T]hey’re hardly outliers. From New York’s mayor, who has referred to pro-Israel advocates as “monsters,” to our soon-to-be congresswoman, Darializa Avila Chevalier, who attended a pro-Hamas rally on October 8, 2023, the Democratic Party is now the party of bigotry, violence, and hate.
Leibovitz doesn’t specifically address Wiener’s lame statement, yet this covers it pretty well. Wiener can’t even call out the mob for what it is:
Which, sadly, doesn’t mean that Wiener himself is an innocent victim here. Cowardice and complacency aren’t minor character flaws. And it doesn’t take a particularly brilliant student of history to realize that you can never, ever appease the revolutionaries: All you can do is buy yourself a little more time before they put you, too, up against a wall.
As Bob Dylan puts it in “Ballad of a Thin Man”: “Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?” For “Jones” read “Wiener.”
Leibovitz concludes on what seems to me an unrealistically idealistic note:
[W]atching Wiener flee, haggard and humiliated, too many conservatives cheered, delighted by the spectacle of the left eating its own. This, too, must stop. We only have two political parties in America, and when one gets consumed by the sort of savages who think nothing of roughing up an opponent simply because he’s Jewish, we’re in deep, deep trouble.
Kicking these benighted savages out of the Democratic Party, out of politics, and, whenever possible, out of America is a tall order. Here’s hoping it’s one that can still bring all sane Americans together, no matter their partisan affiliation.
I should add that James Lindsay expresses reasonable disagreement with the interpretation of the Scott Wiener experience here on X. I think Abe Greenwald captures the spirit of the thing as “the queer Klan.” In any event, I wouldn’t want anyone to get on his high horse until we address the Axis of Carlson among us.
