Vivian Ho at The Guardian on Bret Stephens’s Revenge Column:

On Friday, Stephens used his weekly column to issue a warning about the modern dangers of hateful comments disseminated through mass communications, drawing a line from Hitler’s radio addresses to the power of social media today.

In the ultimate subtweet move, Stephens didn’t even reference what had happened on Twitter – rather, the column casually dropped a quote about bedbugs in relation to the burning of Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto.

Nothing to do with David Karpf at all! Pure coincidence!

David Klion doesn’t buy the coincidence theory:

My jaw is on the floor

David Karpf, the author of the tweet that started the saga, told the Guardian he was “surprised and disappointed” that Stephens escalated what should have been “a silly argument”. “Bret Stephens does not appear to have the humility to admit that he was having a bad night, overreacted and was wrong,” Karpf said.

…

“Stephens states in his op-ed that eliminationist rhetoric is particularly prominent from the left. That isn’t the least bit true, and the Times ought to hire a factchecker to challenge him on these assertions,” Karpf continued. “He also says that the most reviled people in American politics are the moderate Republicans … again, this is embarrassingly self-centered and obviously untrue.”

Other than that it’s great stuff.

Meanwhile, internet sleuths were quick to tactfully decompose Stephens’ argument.

Following the link that Stephens left in his column suggests that he searched “Jews as bedbugs” on Google books to find the quote in question – “The bedbugs are on fire. The Germans are doing a great job”.

Despite Stephens’ obvious arduous researching endeavor, the quote may not actually be in reference to Jews. “Professor Jerzy Tomaszewski” – a historian who taught at the University of Warsaw – “believes that ‘the bedbugs are burning’ should be taken literally: there was an infestation of bedbugs in Warsaw at the time which was generally believed to have originated in the ghetto,” the book reads.

And all this, let’s remember, is a columnist in The New York Times – not the Tulsa World or the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. The NYT has a pretty large and respectable reach. This is a columnist in the NYT going after an academic who made a mildly insulting joke about him on Twitter. This is a columnist in the NYT pretending a Jewish academic making a mild joke is comparable to Göbbels ranting about the Jews.

It’s a bit Gatling gun—>gnat.

Am I allowed to say “gnat”?