Ever heard of the group “Renegade Jew”? No? The name has been trending on Twitter since late Sunday night, and anyone clueless about its original context wouldn’t be faulted for assuming that the otherwise off-putting term was actually the name of a rock band of sorts. After all, most of the tweets about the trending topic allude to the pseudo-rock gods’ past albums, best live performances and most outrageous scandals. Yet the reality is more serious, because it’s the term columnist David Horowitz used to describe The Weekly Standard‘s editor Bill Kristol in an article for Breitbart News.
According to Horowitz, Kristol and a group of GOP members were the fine folks who approached billionaire Mark Cuban about a possible third party run against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Because of this and many other pertinent issues, conservatives like Horowitz worry about the “consequences Kristol and his ‘Never Trump’ cohorts are willing to risk by splitting the Republican vote.” Like the fear that such a split would hand over the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton, the front-running Democratic presidential candidate. Hence the author’s argument that, because the GOP is “the only party that stands between the Jews and their annihilation,” what Kristol and his cohorts are doing “is a political miscalculation so great and a betrayal so profound as to not be easily forgiven.”
Needless to say, Horowitz’s branding of Kristol as a “Renegade Jew” has inspired responses from all over the internet. Most maintain a serious aura of news-driven punditry that political blogs and media sources are known for these days. Twitter, however, took the “Isn’t this the name of a band?” joke and ran as far as it could.
https://twitter.com/JasonBedrick/status/732196811558027264
Caught a killer set from Renegade Jew at SXSW last year
— Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) May 16, 2016
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/732186982282100736
https://twitter.com/JoePerticone/status/732162381820887040
https://twitter.com/Aaron_RS/status/732073071503269888
https://twitter.com/BrookAnglnRogrs/status/732067117965529088
Others who picked up on the musical shenanigans weren’t as fond of the humorous angle.
https://twitter.com/PolitiBunny/status/732071993055412224
Yet much of the criticism, as well as taking the original column seriously, fell to the wayside once Twitter got a hold of the moniker. Especially when music was left behind for other media.
https://twitter.com/MattMinerXVX/status/732196422838321152
https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/732195021160632321
https://twitter.com/GPollowitz/status/732187970145529856
https://twitter.com/SonnyBunch/status/732169060935327744
When I think of "Renegade Jew," my mind goes to… pic.twitter.com/GyUHgsaZsx
— Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) May 16, 2016
Not to mention the obvious connection to another one of history’s “renegade” Jews.
https://twitter.com/HashtagGriswold/status/732180070953967620
My Church was founded by a renegade Jew.
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) May 16, 2016