On Monday, Fox News dedicated at least six segments to Cornell University sophomore Austin Franco. His crime? Sending a private email to the Jewish head of a company stating that he was “not interested in working for a Jew.”
Had Franco said he was not interested in working for a Muslim, right-wing media would have hardly said a word about it. But in this case, Franco transgressed one of the only dogmas that is still defended by the conservative establishment.
On Fox’s Outnumbered program, co-host Emily Campagno candidly admitted, “I want his life ruined.”
During an interview with anchor Gillian Turner, Rabbi Chaim Mentz said that Franco, who is not Jewish, is comparable to the primates in the science-fiction movie Planet of the Apes.
The drama began on June 8 when Gabriel Einhorn, a Jewish entrepreneur who founded an app called “VryfID,” took to X to rebuke Franco, who had applied for an internship at his company.
In a now-edited post, Einhorn shared Franco’s name in order to make a public example of him.
“We’ve been seeing rising anti-Semitism and the whole goal was just to prove that it is real and this is a clear example of it,” he told Fox anchor Dana Perino.
Two days later, Einhorn tagged Jewish billionaire and Zionist activist Bill Ackman to draw more exposure to his complaint.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the New York Post picked up the story the next day on June 13. In her reporting, Post journalist Sonya Gugliara accused Franco of putting “his antisemitism on full display.”
The Dispatch
Einhorn immediately showed his appreciation for the article, thanking the outlet on X.
Jewish activist and Republican party donor, Joe Lonsdale, joined in pile on, aggressively urging Einhorn to share Franco’s name, despite Einhorn having already done so.
Lonsdale is a co-founder of Palantir, a tech company that contracts with the US government to collect data on American citizens.
Franco has admirably defended himself in the face of the smear campaign currently being waged against him.
On social media, he responded to Einhorn directly, telling him that he was merely “stating why I was not interested [in working for you] after you had asked [me] to interview three times. I found out you were Jewish after the fact. My experiences with Jews have not been pleasant, both in person and online. This is not to say I haven’t had positive experiences, but on the aggregate, that is not the case.”
Noting that his issue was not with all Jews without exception, Franco said that the online attacks he was receiving from the Jewish community in recent days “only serve to further prove my point.”
“Given that I have been doxed and intimidated by your community, including having my personal life investigated for no other reason than a single comment, I can’t imagine any reasonable person not coming to a similar conclusion,” he said.
As readers of Integrity are already aware, those who transgress Jewish taboos both inside the Church and outside the Church suffer enormous personal and professional consequences. As is the case with Austin Franco, speaking up about the issue may well result in non-stop media coverage from some of the biggest television networks in the world.
