Politics is show business for ugly people. It’s an old line, one for which many claim parentage.

But it’s true. And there’s been quite a bit of ugliness pinballing around in recent months. Because, too often, it works.

In 2016, Democrats didn’t believe ugliness could prevail. In that U.S. presidential election year – where, full disclosure, this writer worked for Hillary Clinton in three different states, including her Brooklyn headquarters – nobody believed that Donald Trump’s style of politicking could possibly succeed.

Trump called Clinton a criminal. He called for her to be locked up. He said Barack Obama founded ISIS. He said Mexicans were rapists, and attacked Jeb Bush for marrying one. He said John McCain wasn’t a war hero because he got caught. And so on.

Nobody believed that kind of ugliness could win an election, let alone a presidential election. But Trump did.

Eight years later, Democrats aren’t taking any chances. They’ve quoted Trump’s former chief of staff, who has called Trump a fascist. They’ve slammed Trump at every opportunity, sparing no adjective. Meanwhile, Trump’s Republican Party – because they are, indisputably, his party – held a big rally at Madison Square Gardens on the weekend and permitted all kinds of ugly things to be said.

Like that Puerto Rico is a “island of garbage” floating in the ocean. Like that Kamala Harris is “the antichrist” and “the devil.” And, as the Times of Israel noted, antisemitic jokes – most notably, the comedian who said that “Jews have a hard time” spending money. Because, presumably, Jews are cheap.

That kind of ugliness – the ugliness of antisemitism – has been everywhere, in the past year. CyberWell, an Israel-based watchdog that tracks antisemitism online, has issued a report that concludes antisemitism has surged by almost 40 per cent in the eleven months since the murderous attack of Hamas of October 7.

Says CyberWell’s brilliant founder and executive director, Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor: “It’s important, especially since there’s a lot of fanfare around the next administration in the United States and potentially in Canada – it’s very important if you care about what’s happening in your society – that the way to address [antisemitism] in a systematic way is to look at social media reform. We cannot shy away from it just because it’s the tech sector. In fact, the opposite. It’s the key to safer and and more stable societies at this point.”

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Francesca is a fetching Italian woman. She’s telegenic and elegant. She’s also an international lawyer, an academic, and she holds a PhD in International Refugee Law. She has many academic awards and distinctions.

She is also a bigot.

Albanese’s title, presently, is the United Nations’ “special rapporteur” on Palestine. In reality, however, she is not just an advocate for Palestinians. She is also an advocate against Jews and the Jewish state, and she devotes herself energetically to that unwritten part of her job description.

Notably, she is coming to Canada in the next few days. Albanese is conducting a “campus tour,” says Eventbrite, which is promoting her little jaunt. One of the sponsors of her excursion to the colonies is Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). In a detailed lawsuit filed against SJP in Virginia’s District Court in May, survivors of the October 7 Nova Music Festival massacre describe SJP as the “mouthpiece for [Hamas in] North America, dedicated to sanitizing Hamas’ atrocities and normalizing its terrorism.”

So, that is who is one of the sponsors of Albanese’s visit here. A group that oversaw multiple antisemitic campus occupations across Canada, and which itself has called the October 7 attack – wherein 1,200 Israeli civilians were slaughtered, 250 were taken hostage, and more than 100 woman and girls raped – “a historic win for Palestinian resistance.” That’s who Francesca Albanese is hanging out with when she gets to Canada.

In the coming days, you will be hearing lots of debate about the Special Rapporteur for Judeophobia being welcomed at our places of higher learning. Fair-minded people, Jewish and non-Jewish, will attempt to stop her campus tour. But they will likely fail, because the parlour room bigots who run many of our universities will invoke “free speech” as a defence.

So, let’s look at that, shall we? How has Francesca Albanese exercised her free speech?

Hillel Neuer, the brilliant leader of U.N. Watch (and a Canadian) has recently issued a compendious report on Albanese and her statements about Jews and the Jewish state. Here’s just a sampling.

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Trump’s hidden advantage is an electoral college that always tilts towards the GOP.

Harris’ hidden advantage is a GOTV effort that will decimate whatever the GOP has.

Why does the latter matter? Because her team is more motivated to beat him than his is to beat her. His team don’t hate Harris the way they hated Clinton.

Her team deeply, deeply hates him. That’s motivation.

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