Bethany Mandel, the controversial right-wing pundit, home-schooling advocate, and prolific social media poster, is running for county school board — as a Democrat.
Though the school board race in deep-blue Montgomery County, Maryland, is technically nonpartisan, Mandel’s campaign published a graphic on Tuesday listing her as a Democrat. The move quickly raised eyebrows online, and prompted a community note on X (formerly Twitter) stating, “Bethany Mandel has identified as a Republican numerous times on her personal Twitter account.”
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Those who know Mandel recognize her for writing molten-hot takes and far-right political commentary. The most infamous was a column, published in the wake of the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, titled “We Need to Start Befriending Neo Nazis.” (Mandel is Jewish.) Her content can be cringey, like her column defending Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ wife: “If Casey DeSantis is a Karen, she’s our Karen.” She’s posted dehumanizing rhetoric, too. “Not nuking these fucking animals is the only restraint I expect and that’s only because the cloud would hurt Israelis,” she’s written about Palestinians.
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I’ve yet to hear exactly what was so controversial about my initial response to a comment that literally generalized child abuse across all of homeschooling… Again, where is your outrage over that? Where are you interrogating them for sources? I matched aggression at every point in these threads. Where you see those sources linked, I held a reasonable conversation with far less aggression – did I not? You see it goes both ways.
Truly. I genuinely wish you could just reach your hand out and other users would reach a hand back out and we’d sing Kumbaya. In my experience that just doesn’t work and you just get rolled over. I had to be assertive to dispel any notion of the original argument – for which has not in conceivable way been addressed. In other words, this massive pivot to attack my character or how I said something is a clear deflection to the actual substance of the topic at hand.
I’ll treat anyone with the utmost respect if they bestow the same to me. Otherwise, I’m dishing it right back at you. So to be clear, the insults directed at me have fundamentally dwarfed anything I’ve said beforehand.
Should be noted that the original user who made that comment finally responded and we generally saw eye-to-eye.
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Fairest comment yet, and I recognize your attempt to rein the conversation back in — so thank you for that.
Well honestly, I think this is for better or worse just how I write. Feel free to look through my comment history but I didn’t consciously go out of my way to write different here any more than elsewhere except for maybe dot my i’s and cross my t’s a little more tightly, knowing that any low-hanging fruit I leave behind will be cannon-fodder for an attack against me (too dumb; too arrogant, etc.).
I enjoy a healthy written discussion. What really gets under my nerves are insincere double-standards when people are reading these threads… When you write from a position of the minority, knowing what you’re writing is unpopular but still have strong convictions about it, you recognize the uphill battle that is going against ingrained beliefs and bandwagon/ad-populum fallacies. I’m fully aware one should be on their best behavior when in these situations, but it can be difficult to maintain perfect composure when you’re taking blows left and right and anonymous down-votes despite any substantive response to the points being presented. I just wish people cut me a little more slack when the user basically said I suffered child abuse and am committing child abuse to my kids without merit. I suspect most here wouldn’t maintain composure either under such audacious claims.
I had the sources from the start but I figured (a) The initial user made an outlandish claim, didn’t back it up, and nobody interrogated them for evidence, and (b) even when you provide sources against people who want to believe otherwise, they often just dismiss them outright or cherry-pick relentlessly. But duly noted that I should maybe just lead with that next time.