Posted on 11/29/2005 4:16:39 PM PST by Lorianne
Are we winning the war against terror or more precisely, against the death-cult ideology of extreme hate that employs terror as one of its weapons? America, Britain and Israel have all committed significant sums of money to fight back militarily and to ensure civilian safety. However, we must fight another very hot war, one which will ultimately decide whether Western Civilization lives or dies. This is a war we are not winning and some argue that it is a war we have not yet even begun to fight.
I am talking about The Culture War, the war that must be fought to oppose the campaign of lies and propaganda that Islamists and western Stalinists launched against the West, beginning with Israel, arguably anywhere from forty to seventy years ago.
The Culture War is a very hot war: no prisoners are taken, no mercy is shown. And there are now penalties for trying to tell the truth about the danger of jihad or about the barbaric and pathological nature of militant Islam today.
Indeed, if you try to discuss the Islamic religious and gender apartheid and its dangerous proliferation into Europe and North America (i.e. there have been honor killings in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Jersey City, Toronto, as well as all over Europe and in the Muslim world), this is what will happen to you: If you tell these truths in the Arab and Muslim world, you’ll be beheaded, probably tortured, certainly jailed, exiled if you are lucky. Many Muslim and Christian dissidents have suffered precisely this fate. There are no more Jews there, as the Islamist Caliphate rendered the entire Arab Middle East Judenrein long ago. Try to say this in Europe and you might be butchered, as Theo Von Gogh was, or simply imprisoned in purdah, veiled, or threatened, forced to go into hiding, or honor-murdered as so many Muslim girls and women are.
Try to tell the moral tragedy that the United Nations represents, or the even greater tragedy that the word “Palestine” has come to represent objectively — and therefore in a non-politically correct way — on European and on North American campuses, or on the increasingly left-dominated liberal media airwaves, and you may not be shot on the spot, but you will be slandered and called a “racist” and a “fascist.” I have been called both.
If you are a North American intellectual, you may not be imprisoned or beheaded but you will be heckled, mocked, and shunned. You might need security in order to speak. If you’re a feminist, you will no longer be taken seriously as an intellectual, nor will you be “heard.”
Expose the permanent Intifada against Western Civilization and against the Jews and you will be sued and driven into exile, as Oriana Fallaci has been, or sued and prevented from traveling to certain countries, as Rachel Ehrenfeld has been. You will be sued and silenced in all those places where you were once published, even lionized. Dare to say that the torturer and genocidal tyrant, Saddam Hussein, is on trial today only because of America’s and Iraq’s sacrifice and their bold vision of democracy and you will be called a reactionary, a liar, a fool, and the worse epithet of all: a conservative.
Both Western leftists and Islamists brandish many tools against America and Israel in this war. Their first weapon is the systematic misuse of language. Mainstream and liberal newspapers write about “insurgents,” not “terrorists,” whom they describe as “martyrs,” not “killers, and as “freedom fighters,” not as “well educated evil men.”
Anti-American and anti-Israel demonstrators, who are clearly and visibly filled with hate and rage, are described as “peace activists.” Anti-Semitism is legitimized, while the slightest criticism of Islam is banned because of the disallowance of “Islamophobia.” Telling the truth has become an offense which is unprotected by free speech doctrines, which instead protect the telling of lies.
I was once held captive in Kabul, Afghanistan. I experienced, first-hand, what life is like in a Muslim country, one that has never been colonized by the West. I learned that it was both foolish and dangerous to romanticize Third World countries. And I learned first-hand that evil and barbarism exist a priori, and are not caused by western imperialism or colonialism or by the “Zionist entity.” It’s where I also learned to reject the doctrine of multiculturalism, which teaches that all cultures are equal, formerly colonized cultures even more so. This leads to isolationism and non-interventionism and condemns millions of civilians to Islamist torture, terror and genocide.
Although, to their credit, a handful of feminist activists and journalists have sounded the alarm, once America invaded Afghanistan these very activists, all Democratic party operatives, swiftly opposed the military routing of the Taliban. And why? Because the expedition had not been undertaken, apparently, with women in mind. It’s as if they did not think that bin Laden’s terrorism kills women too.
I hold the Western academy, including the feminist academy, which has been utterly Palestinianized, responsible for failing to expose and condemn the realities of Islamic gender apartheid. I know feminist graduate students who are busy “deconstructing” the veil, polygamy and arranged marriage as possible expressions of feminist or female power — no different from the bikini. None have congratulated President Bush on his excellent choice of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state and none have given her the slightest credit for her pro-woman, pro-human rights and pro-Israel speeches.
The number of lies being told in the Western academy and among Western activists are literally beyond belief. Here’s one: Mohammed was really great to women, especially to one Safiya bint Huyay, whom he married even though she was Jewish. Yes. But first he beheaded her father and her husband and exterminated her entire village. And then he forced poor Safiya to convert to Islam before he married her. This disinformation campaign leaves me speechless.
Our own intelligentsia — our professors — are so politically correct and so multiculturally relativist that they refuse to call “barbaric” the act of stoning a woman to death because she was raped or because she refused to marry her first cousin. Nor will they denounce subjecting women to genital mutilation and public gang rape as “barbaric.” Nor did American media commentators who showed the Palestinian lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in 2000 describe the event, which they played over and over again, as “barbaric.”
The intelligentsia did not describe what was done to us on 9/11 as “barbaric” either. Indeed, I know American and European intellectuals who are convinced that America and Israel are the greatest barbarians of all, and that we deserved 9/11. According to Islamists and Western academics and journalists, bin Laden is not an “Islamo-fascist." To them, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are the “Nazi fascists.”
And then there is that vast industry of Palestinian, Arab League and United Nations-funded-and-distributed doctored footage and fake film massacres including fake gun battles and the faked death of Palestinian children at Jewish and Israeli hands. Our Islamist opponents have turned out this propaganda nonstop around the world.
As propagandists, they are far more sophisticated than Goebbels, and far more patient. We cannot afford to underestimate their skill at telling Big Lies. Islamists understood that if they funded madrassas in the East and Middle Eastern Institutes in the West — and if they funded the total Palestinianization of the United Nations and of every international human rights group — that in thirty to fifty years they would have brainwashed generations to see things their way.
Islam is sacred — it cannot be insulted. Imagined slights are as important as real slights. Lies have as much weight as the truth. Whether American military forces did or did not flush a Koran down the toilet does not matter. What matters is that Muslims thought they did. No penance is good enough to atone for this crime.
Millions of people have been systematically brainwashed against America, against Israel, against Jews, against women and against the Western concept of truth, objectivity, truth-telling, and independent thinking. All are under siege.
We have a serious fifth column in our midst, one that has made common cause with Islamists against us, one that has been well funded by Arab oil billionaires for more than forty years. And George Soros too — a fifth column general who, for a variety of reasons, has actually been leading the cultural war against the West. They are fools, but they are dangerous fools. Do they think they will be spared because they are so politically correct? Do they think they would enjoy the same freedom of speech in Mecca or Tehran that they enjoy in the West?
What must we do in the face of this tyrannical threat? We must rescue language. It must bear some relationship to the truth and morality. Everything is not relative. It is not all “Rashomon.”
We must not allow our media or academics to continue to insist that Islam is not the problem, but that even if it is, that we cannot say so, lest we be deemed racist. We must teach the history of jihad against infidels, and the history of how infidels (Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians) were treated under Islam. We must insist that criticism of America and Israel be balanced, not pathological, obsessive and cult-like as it is now. We must insist on civility in public discourse. We must model it for the coming generations.
We must fund seriously a collective effort to combat vulgar lies and vilification, the propaganda against us which has brainwashed countless generations.
We need a War Room effort to counter the Big Lies. We need international radio and television channels to educate people. We need to teach people about intellectual diversity and tolerance.
This country has birthed two significant waves of feminism. We must now take that feminist vision global. We need our foreign policy to contain serious provisions about women’s rights abroad. Otherwise, democracy cannot and will not evolve or flourish in Muslim countries.
The way I see it, everything is at stake. This is a time when we must all be heroes. We must all stand up to evil in our lifetime. We must acknowledge that Islamist terrorism is evil and has no justification. We must teach this to our children. We must support Muslim and Arab dissidents in their fight against Islamic tyranny and gender apartheid.
We can do this. We must do this. Otherwise, we will die, and our history and our values and our entire way of life will die with us. If we fail, we will betray all that we believe in as a free people.
Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D., is the author of thirteen books including the just-released “The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom” (Palgrave Macmillan) and “The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It.” She can be reached through her website (www.Phyllis-Chesler.com).
One of the few radical feminists who seems to understand that Islam is not something that the left should love.
To this I would add the result(s) of blacks in positions of government leadership. Whether it be in a single city, i.e. Detroit, New Orleans, etc., or in an entire nations, i.e. S. Africa, the former Rhodesia, or in not-for-profit institutions, i.e. universities,etc. to question and/or criticize is considered de facto unforgivable malicious racism.
As if trying to hold black leaders/leadership to the same standard as those expect of non-black is somehow cruel and unrealistic. You know, like expecting a half-wit child to multiply fractions, or a child with a club foot to be a track-and-field star. IOW, "The subtle bigotry of Liberalism." After all, we don't make excuses, or expect less, from people we consider our equals.
I know feminist graduate students who are busy “deconstructing” the veil, polygamy and arranged marriage as possible expressions of feminist or female power
If true, my question is: How intellectually bankrupt can you get?
Here it is: On a lot of shows (and I mean a lot), the last word you hear before they go to a commercial break is one of the following: "death", "murdered", "killed", "passed away", "homicide", "suicide"; in other words any and all words and phrases "death" related.
Now, this usually isn't found on shows like "Raymond" or other comedies. But on the "CSI" shows, "NCIS" and other dramatic shows, it happens repeatedly.
It simply cannot be unintentional or accidental or coincidence. No way.
Suicidal, I would say.
Excellent. Thank you.
This is the second Phyllis Chesler thread today. The other one is excellent. I'm self-pinging this one for later.
The bankruptcy on the left is not merely intellectual and moral. It is homicidal. The links between global liberalism and militant Muslim extremism are visible and growing. They are the same enemy.
Old gaurd leftists and mature terrorists do not believe their own propoganda. Their goal is the same, the destruction of the existing world order. Japan, Germany and Italy had the same goal, the destruction of the West.
The left is guided by Marxist ideology. So is Muslim terrorism. They are both driven by a vision of one world government. They are playing on the same team with the same ambitions and the same purpose.
IMHO, this is the true reason why the Left supports the Islamists: When you peel back the onion, the Left has always been after one thing: absolute power. It was true (and obvious) in Stalin's time and it is true now. The best way to sucessfully wield absolute power is to totally subvert the individual to the State. To do that, one must tear down the attitudes, values, and traditions that the majority holds dear and replace them with a new, different set. This is a variant on the technique used in military basic training. That is part of the reason why the Left supports things like rampant immigration, Gay marriage, and radical feminism while eskewing established Westen religion institutions. Radical Islam fits the bill in two respects. First, like the Left, it seeks the overthrow of Judeo/Christian culture. Second, and more importantly, Islamic clerics have close to absolute power over their adherents. If the Mullahs can motivate someone to be a suicide bomber, convincing them to pay higher taxes should be a piece of cake. Many in the Left must salivate at the thought of having that much control over the individual. At some point, the Left will have to choose between radical Islam and the continued embrace of its traditional interest groups (gays, feminists, etc). I predict they will chose the former, because ultimately the Islamists will be more numerous (in 30-50 years or so).
The other thing is that the whole Islamic civilization is mobilized for Jihad. There appears to be unlimited funds, individuals, and energy available to support this cause. While those of us in the West are obsessed with career and material success, the Muslims have bred a generation of aimless troublemakers, supported by a combination of terrorist fianciers, Islamic "charaties", and (sadly) Western welfare states. These guys whittle the day away working for death of the West at the grass roots level. In contrast, the West appears to be simultaeously divided against itself and ashamed of its culture. Despite the resources our Government is throwing at this problem, we have not yet mobilized our society to fight this threat. Unfortunately, while the West has the military power to take on this threat, a combination of PC, liberalism, and lack of faith has sapped our will. I fear Europe will burn before things turn around.
Unfortunately, what she still has yet to understand is that it is the western feminist culture that has caused much of the world to react so slowly to Islamofascism.
Tammey Bruce is another such feminist. One who seemingly understands the threat, but does not understand the role western feminism has played.
You nailed it.
Very good analysis. Unfortunately, many in our country are still half-asleep. I truly fear they will not wake up in time to save the next generation.
Any petty differences between Christians and Jews must be set aside. Either that or perish.
To mobilize our society requires something more than advice from the government to act like nothing has happened; put masking tape on our windows; and, keep our eyes open for anything suspicious.
Mobilizing our people means first and foremost arming every honest citizen who wishes to be armed. Terrorists will not succeed if 50% of the lambs they intend to slaughter have teeth. It is axiomatic that an armed citizenry controls crime better than an armed police force. The cops can catch the perpetrator but the citizen can stop him in his tracks.
Second, the citenry needs to end the tyranny of religious hatred. Religious freedom is an absolute right. Contempt for religion rots the soul of our country. It is an insidious cancer that destroys the foundations of culture. Freedom of religion is not freedom from religion. Where there is legally protected freedom from religion there is no freedom of religion.
Third, economic freedom must be reinstituted by ending income taxes. The citizenry does not owe its labor to the government. Federal and State income taxes turn citizens into slaves who must work for the state before they see any part of the fruits of their labor. So long as citizens are enslaved by the government there can be no freedom.
These are each guarantees of individual rights that are usurped by a government seeking control over its people. The tyranny of government must be ended. Only then will we be free to fight the enemy who seeks to murder us in our beds.
Welcome to FR, Phyllis...
What has happened to the left is the victory of very old propaganda techniques that have ballooned into a culture. These revolve around drawing a boundary around one's presumptive opponents, stigmatizing and stereotyping them, and at last relating only to that stereotype rather than to the human beings behind it. It is this dehumanization that resulted in six million Jews being killed not for what they had done but for the idea of what their enemies claimed that they were.
It is much easier to relate to a stereotype than to actual human beings, and when one hears mindless criticism of "the religious right" for example one hears the heartbeat of this monster.
It allows persons who subscribe to a certain set of ideals to project their opposite into opponents who may very well be their biggest defenders. Modern feminists who refuse to recognize that Bush, for all his putative faults, has done more for women's rights in three years than their academic caterwauling has done in three decades are a case in point. He and his supporters are the enemy, they have been categorized, bounded, and defined into a neat little ideological package that is a sort of intellectual shorthand and an excuse for lack of real thinking. And where this fantasy is threatened by the reality of the rape rooms it is the rape rooms that are dismissed. That is the suicide of idealism in the interest of something else.
That something else consists of what used to be known as "class consciousness" - membership in a group with a common set of what are by now attractive and comforting illusions, solidified by hatred and nurtured by a reactionism that leads its adherents far from their original ideals. This is not hypocrisy, it is deliberate and desperate self-blindness. It is also seductive and exceedingly dangerous.
The test is a simple one - intelligent, truly independent people on the left may make common cause with their political opponents against the real enemy of their common ideals - a Hitchens, a Paglia, a Fallaci may do this but those of less stern intellectual stuff are prevented by fear of disapproval. It is that disapproval that is truly feared by those who have succumbed to this false class consciousness, and one hears its echoes in the vituperation directed at such as Hitchens, Paglia, Fallaci, by their former friends.
Truly a culture war, this one, but the truth will out. It always does - fantasy fails in the face of fact, especially when fact consists of an Islamic knife drawn across one's throat. That is very unfortunate for the fantasist but it's the truth.
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