To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
South Pacific
When I read about resurgent antisemitism in America, my emotions are mixed. On one hand the Klan, the people who read Jew Watch with swastikas tattooed on their necks -- and as Octopus suggests, the mainstream of the new GOP don't scare me personally. On the other hand the similarity of rhetoric with that fire hose of filth coming from Islamists worldwide does. I'm suggesting that Europe and other parts of the world are no longer safe for Jews -- if in fact, they ever were. Jewish exodus from France is escalating --doubling in 2014.
"There is no future for Jews in France as long as Europeans refuse to confront the tacit acceptance of violence by many of the continent’s Muslims."Writes James Kirchick in The Daily Beast. If he's right that Europeans have trouble admitting or discussing it, perhaps it's true of us as well. From my personal experience it's quite impolitic to bring up anti-Semitism when discussing racism or bigotry with those insisting that there is no diminution of racism in America, yet just before I fled the North for Florida my town, a recent home of a Muslim community Center was enduring a well funded siege of its school board by irate Muslim parents insisting that neither events of European antisemitism nor the events some call the Holocaust should be taught in schools. Virtually all of those good folks were refugees from the Balkans seeking safety here while insisting we become just like the Balkans.
During the events in Paris far more was made of the attack on cartoonists than the innocent Jews murdered in a Kosher Grocery, killed for no apparent reason other than Islamic antisemitism. French journalist Marc Weitzmann wrote from the scene of the grocery store siege:
“I spoke to a person who teaches history in a high school in one of the suburban Cités, He told me that this is a complete disaster. Teachers are afraid to mention the events. He told me that in his school, students are asking to debate the massacre—and they are justifying it. Thirteen-year-olds, 14-year-olds saying, ‘You shouldn’t insult the Prophet. The killing is justified.”As per affluent Muslims in an affluent Chicago suburb raging against teaching the Holocaust 15 years ago, teachers in France are being made afraid to talk about this pathological hatred of Jews being preached from Mosques and Madrassas in Paris and all over Europe. According to Pew polls 72 percent of Frenchmen have favorable impressions of Islam and we see quite easily how one is automatically accused of "Islamophobia" by moderates and Liberals when connecting this weekend's events with massive outrages by Islamists all over the world.
You have to be carefully taught, goes the old song and yet we're all so reluctant to look for the teacher because it might seem that we're "profiling" or being otherwise illiberal. We'll say irrelevant things like "most Muslims are good" when that's hardly the point, or we'll blame it on poverty when that's hardly the case. It isn't the poor or unemployed behind these attacks or preaching sermons and quoting scripture. It isn't the poor training and housing and funding terrorists, rapists and slaughterers of the innocent. Is our "niceness" our open-mindedness" our very liberal principles greasing the ways as civilization slides back to the dark ages?
Perhaps France is not afraid of terrorists, but the question, I think, is whether they're too afraid to offend innocent moderate Muslims to protect innocent Jews, cartoonists or in some way only understandable to psychopathic Jihadists -- anyone who "insults the prophet?"
Captain,
ReplyDeleteRN posted a short comment on the reactions of an infamous rightwing blogger … known here collectively and euphemistically as ‘The Cringe Fringe.” To spare you a visit to an open sewer pit, here is a snapshot: ‘Fuck Mohammed (…) Fuck Islam’ - crude epithets that hardly rise to the artistry of Charlie Hebdo.
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State, has broadcast this strategy: He WANTS to foment a paradigm war (i.e. clash of civilizations) between the secular democracies of the West and militant jihadis of the Middle East. His purpose behind brutal and savage tactics is to engender mutual enmity and foment a vicious cycle of reprisals and revenge. Atrocities are recruitment tools, and Fringe bloggers – in adding fuel to the fire of mutual hatred through incitement - fall sucker to these tactics. IOW, the Cringe Fringe gives al Qaeda and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi exactly what they want.
One cannot defeat extremism by wantonly and gratuitously stereotyping every person of the Islamic faith, which feeds into this vicious cycle. Most reasonable people feel righteous indignation, but gratuitous, stereotypical attacks on all persons of the Islamic faith makes the Cringe Fringe appear no better than garden-variety terrorists.
How quickly the Fringe forgets about the massacre of schoolchildren in Peshawar by Taliban militants – an example of Muslim-on-Muslim violence. They disregard the beheadings of Shia and Sunnis in Iraq and the Kurdish struggle against the Islamic State? They forget about the Muslim police officer in Paris who was murdered by the same criminals who attacked Charlie Hebdo. They never mention the Muslim hero who saved Jewish shoppers in the attack at Porte de Vincennes. The Cringe Fringe narrative is highly selective and subjective, and opening a door to one form of bigotry opens a door to all forms of hatred, as examples:
Necromancer: “Remember when we were making fun of them in 2003, changing our favorite tater' treat to "Freedom Fries" and making jokes about the only way you'll get a French soldier into Iraq is if they grow truffles in Baghdad ... thats [sic] called KARMA my friend.”
Wayward Loon: “The great Arabian ally of the West … happens to be Saudi Arabia. I'd suggest a more in depth probing of this alliance which I would conclude would include Israel as well as other Western countries.”
Please note how rage metastasizes cancer-like into paranoid suspicions against the French, against Jews, against ‘Zionist communists,’ and of course “libtards.” However, there is more than self-righteous indignation on display there. The Cringe Fringe is utterly deaf, dumb and bind to the implications of their blather and drivel. It's a veritable cesspool of hatred just as ugly and dangerous, IMO, as any terrorist group.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm trying to say in my clumsy way is that these latest vermin were french nationals raised in France. The Boston bombers were Americans. I emphatically assert that I am not stereotyping anyone when I point out that Islamic communities support and contain minorities within who subscribe to violent Jihad; that attract and convert people from within and without. Indeed people well outside those communities are attracted. Thousands of Europeans and Americans have gone over to ISIS and Al Qaeda and have attempted acts of mass destruction.
It's not an invention, it has nothing to do with stereotypes to say that where there are large Muslim communities there is is too often an assault on western values. Sometimes it's political: forcing a view of history onto our educational system, sometimes it's committing murder. No, Islamism isn't really Islam, but the first doesn't exist without the last and we cannot fight violent Jihad by making deals or being tolerant of it or ignoring it or turning against ourselves and becoming a police state. We need the help we foolishly thought was arriving with that disappointing "Arab Spring" We need to chastise our foreign "allies" for talking out of both sides of their mouths, talking peace and funding terrorism like the Saudis, shaking hands yet producing hideous antisemitic propaganda like the Egyptians, accepting military aid and housing Osama like Pakistan, etc. etc. We can only do so much to control governments of other countries. We can do something inside our own countries -- I hope -- to oppose ideas about oppression of women, stifling of free speech, honor killings, genital mutilation and the rest. I suspect that our reverence for religion and our notion of fairness has trapped us into supporting our own moral downfall.
Yes, I know, Muslims are opposing terrorism, but yet these rogue Mosques and schools persist and are effective, no matter how small. Who else can effectively oppose something ugly growing in their own neighborhoods? Walking in the street is one thing, walking out of a Mosque and calling the cops is another. Exposing terrorist rhetoric, not making heroes out of murderers, informing perhaps on people training with the enemy and coming back to build bombs -- we need the help of people close to the problem. That's not stereotyping, that's asking for help as fellow Americans or Frenchmen or human beings. There has been too much of a kind of Omerta where you don't inform on another Muslim. There is a time to take sides, really. I think enlightened values are worth defending. Giving them up rather than risk offending?That's not bigotry or prejudice or in my opinion anything more or less than stepping off a pedestal of our own construction to fight for life, liberty and human values.
I continue to admire those millions in France asserting that they will not submit to terror nor tolerate it.
the French aren't famous for tolerance for Jews, but it isn't Christian or even Post-Christian Frenchmen forcing Jews out of France, forcing them to fear for their lives and their children's safety. If there are ten Muslims in France or a million, I don't think it's unfair to point our that Muslims are making life difficult for Jews and other non-Muslims. I think it's a false equivalence to cite the colonialism of the past or the Crusades. This is now. Muslim communities and rogue Muslims hiding in them are terrorizing the Netherlands and the UK and other places. If you are a Muslim and are offended by the fact that Muslim communities and countries are less than tolerant of or friendly to some of the cornerstones of current western morality and some people in those communities and in those countries are trying to undermine it in one way or another -- sorry about that. If you are free to insult my religion, I'm free to insult yours. There's a reason so many Muslims don't want to live in Yemen. I don't want to either, so lets get together on this.
ReplyDeleteExtremism feeding on itself tends to breed more extremism.
ReplyDeleteHatred feeding on itself tend to breed more hatred.
Violence feeding on itself tends to breed more violence.
The difference between the Cringe Fringe and the Jihadists is the Jihadists have preceded the Cringe Fringe into active violence.
In as much as we must be vigilant in fighting the extremist faction of Islam and the terrorists they spawn we must gard against becoming like the enemies of liberty and the rule of secular law.
In closing please forgive any typos or improper grammar, it is late.
I do agree that we have to avoid extremism in fighting extremism. That's why I keep emphasizing that we don't have to act "terrorized" We are stupid in proportion to our fear. They want us to be stupid.
ReplyDelete