is the lack of mass response and uniting of liberals, unions, people
of color, many others of decency against an evolving pre-fascist
movement. Included in the vile mix are nabobs financing the rabble-
rousing who benefit from distracting the public from today's survival
issues of housing, jobs and their own rising money accumulation as
everyone else's descends. I'm neither a fanatic nor henny penny, but
fear the worst if we don't quickly form a comparable, national response.
Ed
I got this quote from Sid Shniad just after writing the above. Lincoln says
it better while demonstrating the enduring, systemic nature of the threat.
http://www.notable-quotes.com/l/lincoln_abraham.html
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned
and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of
the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the
prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and
the Republic is destroyed."
President Abraham Lincoln, November 21, 1864, letter to Colonel William F.
Elkins.
From: Mitchel Cohen
PLEASE READ THIS VERY IMPORTANT ARTICLE.
ALSO, to view the rather astounding clips mentioned here, please click on
the links at Glenn Greenwald's blog at:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/08/23/park51
The "mosque" debate is not a "distraction"
By Glenn Greenwald
Salon: August 24, 2010 (updated)
Opponents of the Park51 Islamic community center held a rally yesterday in
Lower Manhattan, and a 4-minute video, posted below, reveals the true
sentiments behind this campaign. It has little to do with The Hallowed
Ground of the World Trade Center -- that's just the pretext -- and
everything to do with animosity toward Muslims. I dislike the tactic of
singling out one or two objectionable people or signs at a march or rally in
order to disparage the event itself. That's not what this video is.
Rather, it shows the collective sentiment of those gathered, as well as
what's driving the broader national backlash against mosques and Muslims far
beyond Ground Zero.
The episode in the video begins when, as John Cole put it, "some black guy
made the mistake of looking Muslimish and was harassed and nearly assaulted
by the collection of lily white mouth-breathers at the event . . . At about
25 seconds in, he quite astutely points out to the crowd that 'All y'all
dumb motherfuckers don't even know my opinion on shit'." As this
African-American citizen (whom the videographer claims is a union carpenter
who works at Ground Zero) is instructed to leave by what appears to be some
sort of security or law enforcement official, the crowd proceeds to yell:
"he musta voted for Obama," "Mohammed's a pig," and other assorted charming
anti-mosque slogans. I really encourage everyone to watch this to see the
toxicity this campaign has unleashed:
The New York Times article on this rally describes similar incidents,
including how a student who carried a sign that simply read "Religious
tolerance is what makes America great" was threatened and told that "that if
the police were not present, [he] would be in danger." Does anyone believe
that their real agenda is simply to have Park51 move a few blocks away to
less Sacred ground, or that they're amenable to some sort of
Howard-Dean-envisioned compromise that accommodates everyone?
All of this underscores a point I've wanted to make for awhile. There's
been a tendency, which I find increasingly irritating, to dismiss this whole
Park51 debate as some sort of petty, inconsequential August "distraction"
from what Really Matters. Here's Chuck Todd mocking the debate as a "shiny
metal object alert" and lamenting "the waste of time" he believes it to be,
while Katrina vanden Heuvel, in The Washington Post last week, condemned
"pundits and politicians [who] are working themselves into hysteria over a
mosque near Ground Zero" on the ground that it won't determine the outcome
of the midterm elections. This impulse is understandable. If you chose to
narrowly define the topic of the controversy as nothing more than the
Manhattan address of Park 51, then obviously it pales in importance to the
unemployment crisis, our ongoing wars, and countless other political issues.
But that's an artificially narrow and misguided way of understanding what
this dispute is about. The intense animosity toward Muslims driving this
campaign extends far beyond Ground Zero, and manifests in all sorts of
significant and dangerous ways. In June, The New York Times reported on a
vicious opposition campaign against a proposed mosque in Staten Island.
Earlier this month, Associated Press documented that "Muslims trying to
build houses of worship in the nation's heartland, far from the heated fight
in New York over plans for a mosque near ground zero, are running into
opponents even more hostile and aggressive." And today, The Washington Post
examines anti-mosque campaigns from communities around the nation and
concludes that "the intense feelings driving that debate have surfaced in
communities from California to Florida in recent months, raising questions
about whether public attitudes toward Muslims have shifted."
To belittle this issue as though it's the equivalent of the media's August
fixation on shark attacks or Chandra Levy -- or, worse, to want to ignore it
because it's harmful to the Democrats' chances in November -- is profoundly
irresponsible. The Park51 conflict is driven by, and reflective of, a
pervasive animosity toward a religious minority -- one that has serious
implications for how we conduct ourselves both domestically and
internationally. Yesterday, ABC News' Christiane Amanpour decided to let
Americans hear about this dispute from actual Muslims behind the project
(compare that, as Jay Rosen suggested, to David Gregory's trite and
typically homogeneous guest list of Rick Lazio and Jeffrey Goldberg and you
see why there's so much upset caused by Amanpour). One of those project
organizers, Daisy Kahn, said this during her ABC interview:
This is like a metastasized anti-Semitism. That's what we feel right now.
It's not even Islamophobia; it's beyond Islamophobia. It's hate of Muslims,
and we are deeply concerned.
Can anyone watch the video of that disgusting hate rally and dispute that?
That's exactly why I've found this conflict so significant. If Park51 ends
up moving or if opponents otherwise succeed in defeating it, it will
seriously bolster and validate the ugly premises at the heart of this
campaign: that Muslims generally are responsible for 9/11, Terrorism
justifies and even compels our restricting the equals rights and access of
Americans Muslims, and more broadly, the animosity and suspicions towards
Muslims generally are justified, or at least deserving of respect. As Aziz
Poonawalla put it: "if the project does fail, then I think that the message
that will be sent is that bigotry and fear of Muslims is not just permitted,
it is effective."
That's exactly the message that will be sent, and that's what makes this
conflict so significant. Obviously, not all opponents of Park51 are as
overtly hateful as those in that video -- and not all opponents are
themselves bigots -- but the position they've adopted is inherently bigoted,
as it seeks to impose guilt and blame on a large demographic group for the
aberrational acts of a small number of individual members. And one thing
is certain: if this campaign succeeds, it will proliferate and the
sentiments driving it will become even more potent. Hatemongers always
become emboldened when they triumph.
The animosity and hatred so visible here extends far beyond the location of
mosques or even how we treat American Muslims. So many of our national
abuses, crimes and other excesses of the last decade -- torture, invasions,
bombings, illegal surveillance, assassinations, renditions, disappearances,
etc. etc. -- are grounded in endless demonization of Muslims. A citizenry
will submit to such policies only if they are vested with sufficient fear of
an Enemy. There are, as always, a wide array of enemies capable of
producing substantial fear (the Immigrants, the Gays, and, as that video
reveals, the always-reliable racial minorities), but the leading Enemy over
the last decade, in American political discourse, has been, and still is,
the Muslim.
That's why the population is willing to justify virtually anything that's
done to "them" without much resistance at all, and it's why very few people
demand evidence from the Government before believing accusations that
someone is a Terrorist: after all, if they're Muslim, that's reason enough
to believe it. Hence, the repeated, mindless mantra that those in
Guantanamo -- or those on the Government's "hit list" -- are Terrorists even
in the absence of evidence and charges, and even in the presence of ample
grounds for doubting the truth of those accusations.
And there's no end in sight: the current hysteria over Iran at its core
relies -- just as the identical campaign against Iraq did -- on the
demonization of a whole new host of Muslim villains. A population that is
constantly bombarded with tales of Muslim Evil (they want to kill your
children and explode a nuclear suitcase in your neighborhood) will be filled
with fear and hatred -- sentiments always exacerbated during times of
economic strife and uncertainty -- and very well-primed to lash out. That's
the decade-long brew that has led to this purely irrational, hate-driven
demand that they not be allowed to desecrate and infect the Sacred, Hallowed
Space of Ground Zero (the religious terminology used to talk about 9/11 is
both creepy and no accident). This "debate" over Park51 is many things. An
inconsequential "distraction" from what Really Matters is not one of them.
UPDATE: Ron Paul issued a statement today excoriating conservative
opponents of Park51 for violating their alleged belief in religious freedom
and property rights, and added:
In my opinion it has come from the neo-conservatives who demand continual
war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly
justify it.
They never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for
the ill conceived preventative wars. . . Defending the controversial use of
property should be no more difficult than defending the 1st Amendment
principle of defending controversial speech. But many conservatives and
liberals do not want to diminish the hatred for Islam -- the driving emotion
that keeps us in the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. . . .
The outcry over the building of the mosque, near ground zero, implies that
Islam alone was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. According to those who are
condemning the building of the mosque, the nineteen suicide terrorists on
9/11 spoke for all Muslims. . . . . This is all about hate and Islamaphobia.
It is indeed "about hate and Islamaphobia," and that is the driving,
enabling force behind so many of America's most controversial and
destructive policies.
UPDATE II: Perhaps the most depressing aspect of this entire episode has
been the dearth of national politicians willing to stand up to this campaign
of bigotry. Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley became one of the few to issue an
unapologetic, principled, unparsed, caveat-free defense of Park51 today,
joining Ron Paul, Joe Sestak, Grover Norquist, Russ Feingold, Jerry Nadler,
Ted Olson and only a handful of others. It's particularly commendable of
Feingold and Sestak to do so given the very tight Senate races they are
fighting, and there's added weight when people like Paul, Olson, and
Norquist stand up to their own party to do so.
I'll be on MSNBC, at roughly 4:00 p.m., this afternoon, discussing these
issues, along with National Review's Cliff May.
UPDATE III: The group which sponsored this rally has a website -- the
repellently named StopThe911Mosque.com -- which is registered to The Center
for Security Policy, the group of Frank Gaffney, one of the most deranged
and dishonest right-wing extremists in the country. So it's hardly
surprising that such a rotted root gave rise to this toxic fruit (I just
unintentionally made a nice rhyme).
Speaking of deranged right-wing extremists, I was on MSNBC today debating
Park51 with Cliff May of National Review; it largely degenerated into a
cable-news screamfest, but for those interested, you can watch it here:
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