THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM
A recent Los Angeles Times article
noted that "pro-Israel or Jewish organizations such as the
Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Defense League and the
Middle East Forum think tank have provided news organizations
with reams of critical documentation on Muslim leaders in
recent weeks." Opportunistically taking advantage of the post-9/11
atmosphere in this country, these groups have launched a determined
and concerted effort to scapegoat American Muslims. The purpose
is to rationalize a new anti-Semitism, directed not against
Jews but against Arabs. The irony is that this new bigotry
looks, smells, and acts just like the old version….
LAST OF THE
LEFTIST GLITTERATI
A number of commentators are emerging as the
chief ideologues of the new anti-Arab anti-Semitism: there's
Christopher Hitchens, who coined the term "Islamo-fascism,"
although he doesn't draw this analogy to its logical anti-Islamist
conclusion. The author of No
One Left To Lie To, as well as a much-discussed (and
little-read) tirade against Mother Theresa, Hitchens is the
resident Deep Thinker at Vanity Fair, the literary
embodiment of a dying breed: the leftist glitteratti. His
post-Marxist pretensions are tolerated because he almost always
signs on to the latest crusade of his ruling class masters.
In
a debate with Noam Chomsky in The Nation, Hitchens
manages to extol the Muslims of Bosnia – whose crimes,
he claims, were less onerous than those of their Christian
opponents – while descrying "fascism with an Islamic
face." That this felicitous phrase succinctly describes the
state of Kosovo under the rule of his friends in the KLA is
an irony of which Hitchens seems honestly unaware, but at
least he is entertaining. Andrew Sullivan, on the other hand,
is merely foam-flecked….
BULLIES IN
WARTIME
In his
increasingly dreary "weblog," Sullivan delights in quoting
the most absurd snippets from Arab newspapers and then holding
them up as somehow emblematic of Islam per se: of course,
if someone shows a snippet of, say, the Gay Pride Parade,
with a drag queen and a leather "daddy" leading the semi-naked
throng, Sullivan is predictably outraged, although the proportional
strength of leather daddies in the gay community is arguably
higher than the percentage of Bin Ladenites in the Muslim
world. Bullies come to the fore in wartime, and, for once,
he gets to play the bully, and clearly relishes the
opportunity: "Is it un-Islamic to kill women and children?"
asked a subhead. Sullivan's answer: probably not. Other examples
of the inherent evil of all things Muslim abound in his interminable
weblog, which has become a daily compendium of anti-Muslim
hate.
BOOM TIMES
FOR SOME
For most
of us, the recession has hardly begun: but for a chosen few,
it's already over. A whole mini-industry has grown up in the
wake of the 9/11 atrocity dedicated to the proposition that
Islam is the root of all evil in the world. Just as anti-Communism
employed and otherwise elevated a whole cadre of professional
witch-hunters – and witch-doctors – so the rise of anti-Islamism
opens up a whole new frontier for those thrown out of work
by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold
war. With untold billions of tax dollars being thrown into
the "war on terrorism," the market for anti-Islamists, once
severely restricted, has expanded exponentially, and this
field of expertise is no longer quite so rarefied. The war
has made formerly obscure figures, such as New York Post
columnist and author Daniel Pipes,
familiar to news junkies, and it is in Pipes that the anti-Islamist
ideology takes on its purest, most extreme form.
ALIENATION
In an interview with Salon, Pipes flat
out declared that "Islamism
is fascism," and accused "a substantial body" of the Muslim
population in this country of "shar[ing] with the suicide
bombers a hatred of the United States." When Salon asked
him what percentage fitted this description, Pipes was elusive:
"The numbers are fluid," he averred, and "I can't offhand
give you numbers," while claiming that he had seen a poll
"cited today on National Review Online that shows really
quite a substantial proportion feeling alienated from the
country."
BEGGING THE
QUESTION
Oh, how
I would have loved to write the questions for that particular
poll!
Question: "Your people have been beaten up,
shot at, and even murdered on occasion, including a large
number of Sikhs, Mexicans, and perhaps even a few New York
Italians, mistaken for Arabs. You've got Peggy
Noonan following you down the street with her camera,
and Ann
Coulter demanding that you be forcibly converted to Christianity.
Charles Krauthammer and Norman Podhoretz have labeled you
potential fifth columnists, and your wife and children are
no longer safe in the streets. Now, tell me, do you feel somewhat
alienated?"
Answer: "Well, now that you mention it…."
Pipes believes
that the international Islamist conspiracy – there is no
other way to phrase it – is out not to destroy America but
to subjugate it. Asked by Salon whether the goal of
the Islamists is to create a Muslim state in America, his
answer was "without a doubt." One can only wonder if he said
this with a straight face. Pipes went on to explain that this
meant a state prohibition on converting out of Islam, as well
as the banning of pork, criminalizing adultery, and "doing
away with the equality of the sexes." How does he know this?
Well, you see, he kind of divines it:
"Now,
they don't say that in black and white in their writings.
I can't prove that to you. I can tell you that there are all
sorts of intimations of it. I can tell you I can sense it.
I can make this case, but I can't make it specifically for
CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations]. But you
asked me, do I think that's what they want? Yes."
DAN PIPES'
PSYCHIC NETWORK
He can "sense"
it! US intelligence agencies are employing the services of
psychics in the search for Osama bin Laden, according
to reports, but Pipes' extrasensory powers are even more
valuable to the war on the home front. For Pipes and his ilk
are the attack dogs of the New Inquisition, whose job it is
to sniff out "intimations" of treason. Pipes was vague when
it came to the evidence for his outrageous claims, but very
specific in singling out a particular organization –
the Council on Islamic-American Relations, whose leaders met
with President Bush and other Arab and Muslim figures at a
mosque. But Bush, at least according to Charles Krauthammer,
"is
hardly an authority on Islam," i.e. he's too stupid to
comprehend that all Muslims are just plain evil.
PUTTING ISRAEL
FIRST
The view
of the anti-Islamists coincides perfectly with the perspective
of the Israeli foreign ministry. What they want is the sort
of "war on terrorism" the Bush administration is laboring
mightily to deny: a war on Islam. A war in which the US and
its faithful ally, Israel, take on the entire Muslim world
– and US military power is utilized, albeit indirectly,
to further the dream of a Greater Israel. This goal is actively
aided and abetted by the weird leftist-sounding smear concept,
"Islamo-fascism," which means, as Pipes puts it, that "Islamism
is fascism." So much for Bush's grand "anti-terrorist"
coalition, including Egypt, Jordan, and even Iran, as well
as Russia and China. For how can we ally ourselves with fascists,
all of them incipient if not actual Bin Ladenites?
WHY THE ANTI-SAUDI
CAMPAIGN?
The whole anti-Saudi campaign being whipped
up by this same crowd is yet another front in the neocons'
anti-Islamist jihad. Stephen Schwartz, writing in the
Weekly Standard and the British Spectator, has
made it his personal mission in life to define Saudi Wahabism
as an ideological threat on a par with the old Soviet Union.
A lot of the same newspaper columnists and neocon publicists
who demanded that we go to war in the Gulf in order to defend
Saudi Arabia are now pointing to the House of Saud as the
real epicenter of evil in the world. Go figure. Looked at
from an Israeli perspective, however, this weird reversal
makes a certain amount of sense. After all, if even the Saudis
are not our allies in the region, then that leaves only Egypt
to get rid of – and that may be easier than anyone now imagines.
It may not serve the national interest of the US to plunge
the Arab world into chaos and revolution, but there is
one country that might conceivably benefit – that is, if
Armageddon in the Middle East can be considered a "benefit."
WHY THEY WANT
TO BLAME THE SAUDIS
The Saudis certainly have a lot to answer
for, but the reality is that they are less responsible for
Bin Laden and Al Qaeda than the US. If Saudi intelligence
had links to Al Qaeda, then so did our own CIA; we financed
and gave political support to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan,
and helped build the framework on which the vine of terrorism
grew and blossomed forth in all its malignant evil. We are
constantly reminded that most of the hijackers were Saudis,
but so what? In the 1970s, the Japanese Red Army, whose members
were Japanese nationals, carried out a number of terrorist
attacks worldwide. Did we blame Japan? Of course not. Al Qaeda
aims to overthrow the Saudi monarchy, and replace it
with the rule of the mullahs. That is a prospect the Afghan
war has brought much closer to the realm of possibility, and
one that many American supporters of Israel would welcome,
as it would effectively end the "Arabist" influence in US
governing circles.
A GOODHEARTED
MAN
The President
has, rightly and nobly, made a point of condemning in advance
any hate campaign against Arab-Americans or those of the Muslim
faith – a fact even opponents of this war, such as myself,
should publicly thank him for. He visited a Washington mosque,
an event that had the neocons howling with anger: but Bush
has bravely ignored their vicious sniping and kept on message
by making Arab unity against Al Qaeda the diplomatic and political
linchpin of the war effort. The President is a goodhearted
man, which is largely why the American people elected him,
and, in these days of the imperial presidency, that means
a lot.
THE GOD OF
CHANCE
It means that he can block the worst designs
of the opportunistic bullies who want to target and perhaps
intern all Arab-Americans, even US citizens. It means – maybe
– that he can at least ameliorate, if not prevent, the worst
effects of the general roundup of Arabs and others, and (again,
maybe) block the consolidation of a full-fledged police
state. It means he can overrule the hotheads who would start
World War III in the Middle East. It's all in God's hands,
at any rate – and that's true whether you're Muslim, Christian,
or Jew. As for me – an unreconstructed atheist, albeit hardly
a militant one – I think that's the same as leaving it all
to chance….
Please Support
Antiwar.com
A contribution
of $50 or more will get you a copy of Ronald Radosh's out-of-print
classic study of Old Right conservatives, Prophets on the
Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism.
Send contributions to
Antiwar.com
520 S. Murphy Avenue, #202
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
or Contribute Via
our Secure Server
Credit Card Donation Form
Your contributions
are now tax-deductible
|
