What to Say to the Totalitarian Left on 9/11/11
I recently heard from a Canadian school psychologist who lives in Toronto and who has dual citizenship in Canada and the United States. He was “dismayed,” outraged, saddened, and puzzled, and wanted me to explain to him how a feminist academic could have “hijacked a feminist conference in Quebec to express her feelings about how American foreign policy was totally responsible for the events of 9/11.” Ever since then, Brooks Masterton has written to this particular academic every 9/11 about her “lack of compassion for the victims” and about her hypocrisy, given that she,
Uses the freedoms she has in Canada as well as public funding to express outrageous ideas. I long ago asked her to consider how she would be received in Afghanistan if she pontificated about feminism and the need for female freedoms against male domination in all aspects of life. She would not survive for a week. While I defend her right to an opinion, I detest the way she goes about making her points and the extremely disrespectful, provocative and poisonous comments she makes. I am near retirement… but I still get angry enough to write to her every September to reminder her that she cannot make these comments without expecting to be called to account by others. I do believe that all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to stay silent.
Good women too, dear Dr. Masterton.
Well, he had come to the right woman and to the right feminist. It so happens that I am actually, although only slightly, familiar with Sunera Thobani’s so-called work. In 2006, I had been invited to keynote an international feminist conference at Cambridge University but was soon disinvited. Therefore, my critique of the multi-culturally relativist and postcolonial feminist academy’s tragic failure to take a stand against Islamic gender apartheid coupled with its sacrifice of universal human rights and its essentially racist obsession with anti-racism rather than with sexism was never heard in England.
A year later, I was asked to rebut a 2007 attack that Thobani at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, had launched against American feminists, myself included. She titled her piece: “White Wars: Western Feminism and the ‘War on Terror.’” The Britain-based journal Feminist Theory published it but then approached me as well as two other feminists (Zillah Eisenstein and Judith Butler) for a response. I was the only one who agreed to respond. Here was a potential forum for what I might have said in Cambridge as well as my response to Thobani’s attack.
Writing this rebuttal was not easy. I had to accept more than twenty demands for changes from the politically correct feminist editorial board. For example, I was not allowed to write about “Islamic imperialism” or to name Cambridge as the university that had disinvited me. I was also prevented from writing “people of olive, brown, black, yellow, and red skins’” because, the editors insisted, that could be perceived as “racist.” My attacker Thobani could write about “whiteness,” but I was only allowed to write “different ethnicities” as if skin colors do not exist or mentioning their obvious existence is, by definition, somehow “racist.” However, to their credit (and at the insistence of some British academic Jews), they did publish what I wrote. Perhaps 100 people read it. If so, not a single one ever wrote to me.
I have just reviewed what I wrote four years ago. It has withstood the test of time. What I say may be applied to every pro-Islamist, anti-American, anti-Caucasian, and anti-Israeli academic. I have just updated this piece ever-so-slightly.
Masterton and I both plan to send this piece to Tanzanian-born Sunera Thobani on 9/11.
My Response to a Critic
by Phyllis Chesler
Feminist Theory
I thank the editors for allowing me to comment upon this article by Sunera Thobani, which appears in this issue of Feminist Theory.[1]
Thobani’s article condemns me and two other American feminist scholars (Judith Butler and Zillah Eisenstein) as racially “superior” white women who collaborate with the “imperial imaginary” and with “colonialism.” Thobani also condemns us for daring to present “whiteness” as “vulnerable.” She mocks the alleged “racial paranoia of imperial subjects” (that’s us), claiming that in our work we three experience our own “imperial” aggression as a form of victimization which then allows us to justify the aggression as self-defence.[2]
One might wonder why I am taking the time to respond to this inflammatory article. There are four reasons. First, her diatribe is typical but has rarely been answered in the pages of a feminist academic journal. Second, I could not allow her condemnation of three Jewish feminist theorists to pass unchallenged. Third, I had recently been invited to deliver a keynote address at a distinguished British university as part of an international feminist conference. When I raised questions about security and about the utter absence of kindred spirits, and despite the fact that I had stressed that neither factor would keep me away – I was summarily disinvited. These feminists have invited me to lecture alone at some future date, but not within the context of an international conference. (They were only covering their legal backsides because they never did invite me.) I therefore decided that responding to Thobani might be one way to be “heard” in the UK and in international feminist circles. Finally, I felt it was important to explain how Thobani’s paper (and so many others like it) is the written equivalent of what happens today on campuses when genuine dissent or non-politically correct feminist speech dares appear.
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★★★★★★★★★
Can I tell you something?
I got to tell you one thing
If you expect the freedom
That you say is yours
Prove that you deserve it
Help us to preserve it
Or being free will just be
Words and nothing more
Lyrics from KANSAS – Can I tell you?
★★★★★★★★★★
Terrible. Brilliant.
Congratulations for your faith. You still believe that the totalitarians can be spoken to. It’s just an ideology, they are fanatics, they are just like their islamic friends.
Well, in November 2012 we can say something to the totalitarians. Get out of the White House.
Then we have to kick them out of our schools and universities.
I find it disgraceful that we even allow Muslims to set foot in the US or other western countries, let alone teach, publish, attend conferences, or, heaven forbid, be elected president!
Muslims are NOT third-world victims to whom we all owe an endless and eternal debt of “reparations.” I would suggest that, if anything, the REVERSE is true! Why does nobody demand that the Turks pay reparations to the Serbs, the Armenians, the Greeks, and many others? Muslims are foreign enemies, and they will never be anything else!
Speaking of foreign enemies…
Oh, and BY THE WAY, was this the first of the planned 9-11 anniversary attacks? It sure looks that way to me.
Impressive. You made me oppose the Serbs *more*!
one day you will know what it’s like to be persecuted by muslims. if not you, your progeny.
muslims war against Serbs predates your ignorance, and will continue until all of the world submits.
you must be one of those strange people that thinks Vlad Tepes should have welcomed muslims with a bowed head instead of heads on stakes.
You admit that you already opposed the Serbs BEFORE you read what I had to say. That makes YOU the bigot. No evidence was ever uncovered to back up all of the excuses and false accusations that were provided for making war on the Serbs. THAT was the bigotry. You bought into it. Shame on you!
The Serbs are a wonderful people! It was the courageous Serbs who saved and hid Americans and other military allies during the Second World War. The Serbs paid a terrible price. Rather than reveal the hiding place of the Americans, an entire Serb village was horribly put to death.
Based on a PHONY massacre, US/NATO knew NEVER took place, US/NATO waged merciless war on Kosovo’s Christian Serb civilians for the KLA Muslim terrorist organization in order to win the jihad for Islam. Another country conquered in the relentless global jihad aided and abetted by Western powers.
Bigoted clowns like you play into the hands of Islamofascism by making critics of Islamofascism look like bigots.
If you think that there is any difference between “Islamofascism” and plain ordinary mainstream Islam, you are ignorant and sadly deluded.
There is no “radical Islam.” There is only Islam.
Learn about the Qur’an and the Hadiths. There is no room for moderation there.
The is a difference between radical Muslims and moderate Muslims. The moderate Muslims will not behead you without giving you the opportunity to convert or a agree to submit as a Dhimmi. [end sarcasm]
As long as we leave one token Communist at each university, as a reminder of our capacity for utter stupidity.
Right now, there are a lot more than one Communist at each university. At some, you’d be hard put to find anybody who admits to not being a Communist.
See THIS article, right here on PJM:
How Harvard Remembered 9-11
I completely agree with your reaction. But re your final point: “Then we have to kick them [leftist totalitarians] out of our schools and universities.” I don’t think that “we” (if I am correct in assuming that you have your formal schooling behind you) have the power to do so. That task will have to be borne by the students of today and tomorrow; and frankly, I have faith that they will soon awaken and REVOLT against the lies and manipulations that their aging-hippie masters have been force feeding them for decades now. It is time once again for a new generation to “take it to The Man”; to “Question Authority”; and to “Fight the System” that is robbing students of their financial futures, and Americans generally of their traditional freedoms. I think the message is getting out there, thanks to alternative media purveyors, like talk radio and PJM, etc. I just have this sense that, as we have not yet lost our right to free speech, *real* change is on the way. The backlash is coming. Don’t put away your flags just yet, people!
Anyway, cheers!
I wonder if Ms. Thorbani realizes how much she sets back the cause that she claims to represent? Her line of thought is often portrayed as the mainstream by those opposing your cause. This article puts the lie to this portrayal as it is factual, well written, and calm in it’s rebuttal of her attack on you. Well done.
Bravo! Brilliant article. Good for you for telling the truth.
“What matters to theorists like Thobani is this: she will condemn Third World deaths only if they have been caused by ‘white’ people, but not if those deaths have been caused by Third World people of ‘color’.”
In 2003, before the invasion of Iraq, I was participating in a debate regarding the proposed coming invasion. I had supported my views with facts, and history of the events leading up to WWII, and the failure to enforce international agreements.
There was one zealot whom I could not abide that kept going on and on about the first gulf war and Afghanistan and American Soldiers killing innocents.
I finally became so flabergasted I said in a post; “The truth is, you really don’t care if those people live or die at all, the only thing you really care about is Who it is that kills them.”
I was kicked off of the website for “personal attacks” the next day.
At first glance I thought there must have been mistake in the photo of Thobani. I thought it was Ozzy Osbourne… Oops! lol
But I do want to thank Phyllis Chesler for her response to Thobani. It’s not easy dealing with the kind of mindless hate that a creature like Thobani perpetuates. That’s what makes the response so valuable. It’s a keeper.
What’s Ms. Thorbani’s position on AGW?
After all, Al Gore is White, American, and (shiver) Male.
Perhaps if we just call her what she is, a hate-filled enemy of the Western World, we can save ourselves a lot of time and trouble.
Phyllis Chesler, your response is excellent. Unfortunately the effort is wasted on Thobani and her ilk. There is nothing you have pointed out, or anything any of the posters here have said, that they do not already know. It will make no difference to them, only to us. They are not interested in intellectual intercourse, only in advancing an anti-western, anti-white, anti-jewish agenda and silencing any criticism. They are the evil, backward products of evil, backward cultures and philosophies.
Perhaps we in the west should begin to view bigotry in a different light. Cultural bigotry, that is impatience with primitive cultural practices, intolerance of primitive cultures, contempt for preachers of racism and hate and the subjugation of evil, ignorance and backwardness are good things.
Sir Charles Napier has been quoted often lately, but this gem is worth repeating ; ” This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
You’re right. We must take a firm stand to defend the values that we believe in, and that includes, wherever possible, putting a stop to practices (such as honor killings, FGM, persecution of non-Muslims, and killing ex-Muslims for the “crime” of apostasy) that we rightly consider abominable.
Leftists employ some ugly defenses against having to change their ideology when the real world proves them wrong, as it often does. Shouting and yelling, threats and blackmail, censorship, name-calling, as well as libel and slander, are their tools of “debate” – or rather, tools to shut down debate. The problem is that they have too much social, emotional, and sometimes financial investment in their existing world view, as well as an intense anger at anybody who believes in traditional Judaeo-Christian values.
See: Why modern liberals are 100% wrong about everything
Will the feminists of the world kindly do me one favour and drop the phrase “people of colour”? This phrase has irked me since I first heard it.
While it appears to be a more politically correct alternative to saying “black” or “non-white”, the simple fact is that white people have a colour too, namely white, or, more accurately, a combination of pink and beige. To say that I, a “white” man, am not a ‘person of colour’ is to, in effect, declare that I am transparent, in the literal sense, as in clear like a glass window. I assure you that this is not the case. I have never seen a transparent human being. All people, even albinos, have some colour.
So kindly relegate “people of colour” to the ash-heap of history where it belongs. Thank you!
Technically, according to light theory, black is the absence of color or the lack of reflection of any light, while white is the sum of all colors reflecting. Scientifically, white people are “colored”.
My ex-wife was a shop steward. When she first heard the PC “person of color”, she was stupified; she explained to me that the blacks, West Indians, etc. that she worked with were all too likely to hear “colored person” and beat you to death for your trouble.
The criticism of the phrase “people of color” ought not be directed at the author, but at the editors. Here is part of the author’s introduction to this piece:
“Writing this rebuttal was not easy. I had to accept more than twenty demands for changes from the politically correct feminist editorial board. For example, … I was also prevented from writing “people of olive, brown, black, yellow, and red skins’” because, the editors insisted, that could be perceived as “racist.” “
Good point!
I suggest that we European-Americans of the pink/beige persuasion arrive at the polls in November 2012 wearing Pink Panther costumes. I expect that there will be Black Panthers at the polling places trying to intimidate us into not voting, so we’d better be ready to respond in kind!
LOL…
One simple question Dr. Chesler….why do you still consider yourself part of the feminist crowd? They do not represent you, not as a Jew and not as a crusader for the rights of women. Personally because of these attitudes which showed themselves very early on in the movement, I have refused to call myself a feminist since I was a child. Why devalue what you do by associating your beliefs and actions with them? Why are you still looking for their acceptance? When groups change their ideology they are no longer the group you thought them to be…It’s the same with Jews who remain as members of the Democratic party…why? You are not respected and most importantly you are not wanted (except in the case of the democrats they still want Jewish PAC bundlers). Why not simply call yourself a woman’s rights activist…that has more meaning and alot more of the truth of who you happen to be.
Indeed. The word “feminist” has been hijacked just like “social justice”, and both had their meaning perverted into sick parodies of their plain meaning.
I like “women’s rights activist”.
As a lifelong Canadian, I recall when Ms. Thomani was the leader of NAC, the National Action Council on the Status of Women, in the early 90s.
I thought it was wonderfully appropriate when her angry diatribes, frequently directed against the federal government, finally provoked that same government, which had been providing the lion’s share of funding for the NAC, to withdraw that funding. It was high time that those chickens came home to roost and for it to happen on Ms. Thobani’s watch seemed especially just.
I hadn’t heard of her since then. It is distressing, but not surprising, to hear that she is still the same hate-filled radical she was then.
I wish you all the very best of luck, Ms. Chesler, in your efforts with regards to a feminism we can all believe in, where universalism, not racism, religion, or ideology drive the quest to treat all human beings decently and equally.
Hell on earth. There is no mercy. No compassion in Islam. The golden rule does NOT exist in Islam. And they have come to our countries in a massive Muslim immigration invasion bringing their beliefs with them and a determination to conquer hated infidel non-Muslims and subjugate and enslave us under their dreadful Islamic sharia law where defenseless non-Muslims have NO human rights.
Our leaders are guilty of allowing this invasion. Our leaders are now responsible for immediately dealing with this terrifying situation and preventing the annihilation of our freedom, security and human rights. Of preventing hell on earth in our countries.
There are many no-go Muslim areas in India, Israel, UK and Europe where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter. In some areas of Europe, Muslims attack ambulances and fire trucks. Ambulances require a police escort.
Linda the best thing for the world would be ti aniahlate all muslims. islam is not a religion. it’s a wicked CULT and should be destroyed befor it grows any more. I dont care how nice one of them seems to your face he-she is thinking how much they want you dead. they have been brain washed from infancy to hate all non muslims,
G-D is deeply concerned how we treat other human beings. The Bible is filled with our Creator’s concerns for the humanity He lovingly created. G-D’s requirement for ALL humanity is KINDNESS:
Bible, Micah 6:8 And what does the L-RD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-D.
We wait for that wonderful future G-D promised in the Bible where the evil ones will never again hurt another human being.
Thank you for writing this and continuing the fight against Liberal Totalitarianism. It’s going to be an eternal war of ideas with them. We cannot allow them to control the academic culture ever again. At least not without a hard fight to make sure they can’t monopolize the institutionalized cultural capital system.
Argh, there I go saying that like we’ve won already. We haven’t, not by a long shot. But it’s the kind of fight worth fighting, so thank you again.
There is no use in engaging in polemic with fanatics. To these crazed radical feminist types, just as it is with the Islamists, we are simply an enemy to be eliminated.
Superb reply. Thank you Phyllis Chesler for maintaining a brilliant and valiant defense of real liberty. Thobani is of course a totalitarian, which is also to say a member of a dangerous cult. And like all who do the bidding of dangerous cults, Thobani employs empty jargon in her war against reason, health and peace.
She’s a Muslim. Agit prop. She’s here to distort, to sow doubt, to confuse, to deflect and to turn reality on its head.
She should be stripped of citizenship and shipped to an Islamic desert of her choice.
Dr. Chesler, I would hardly claim anything like your knowledge, experience, and perspective in assessing people like Thobani and feminism generally, but I am a bit confused. You seem to believe that academic feminists or for that matter what we might describe as establishment feminists care anything at all about individual women. It’s glaringly obvious that they don’t and what they seek, in common with most leftists, is not the relief from oppression or improvement of conditions that they claim to seek, it’s simply power.
For what it’s worth, I happen to be Ashkenazic through and through (possibly with more Cossack in there than I’d like to admit) and my skin is noticeably darker than hers. Of course, as usual by “race” she means something altogether different from the normal usage of the word and, as usual, it is a professed anti-racist who is obsessed with race.
Dr. Chelser, with respect–and by saying “with respect” I actually mean “with respect”–I have to echo the question above. Why do you still call yourself a feminist, at least without some qualifier like “a traditional feminist” or “a Susan B. Anthony-type feminist” or some such? I kept insisting I was a liberal and then it finally struck me that that the term meant what it meant, not what it used to mean or what I wanted it to mean, and I stoipped calling myself that.
As to multiculturalism, my all-time favorite statement is by someone no doubt Thobani detests, Sir Charles Napier, the conqueror of Sind. He was the governor of an Indian province, engaged in stamping out suttee, and a local Brahmin protested that this was their custom.
“In my country, too, we have a custom,” Napier replied. “When men burn women alive we hang them. Next to your pyre my carpenters will erect a gallows. Then let each of us act according to his custom.”
Phyllis: An excellent work of rebuttal to Thobani, whose native country Tanzania, has a very checkered past regarding the treatment of women, their neighbors, etc. As we used to say, “She should be one to talk”.
However, her rantings are pyschopathic so there is nothing we can do to change her mind or even get her to acknowledge the positions of others. She is the “super/uber feminist” – always right, always ideologically pure, the “SuperWoman of ‘Man and Superman’” if the gender was changed.
We once had women like her – Ilse Koch comes to mind – “The Bitch of Buchenwald” – always right in action, always correct in ideology.
Well Phyllis, you “Bitchslapped” Thobani, in an intellectual way, a way that will leave a permanent imprint on her warped and hate-filled ideology and mentality. Others will read your writing and spread it around, if only in a “Samizdat” format where it cannot be openly printed and read. But it will be read, and if you will pardon the analogy, it will be the equivalent of Martin Luther’s letter, nailed to the church door.
We Jews don’t nail things to doors, but we do use superglue on ocassion.
Phyllis: Take a break for a moment. You have slain one dragon but there are others in the herd to take her place. Polish your armor, sharpen your writing lance, and feed your horse/charger/computer. They will be needed sooner than later, but as my friend, an former soldier and disabled NYPD officer likes to say:
“Lances Forward”.
Good hunting. So many targets, so little time – so aim well, my friend, and bring the hateful beasts down, one at a time.
What do you expect from these cultural relativists?
They make me sick.
I find these women to be racist (against whites) and sexist (against men). Send this whining fascist to a place with shariah law and sit back with some popcorn and watch the cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics.
You, Ms. Chesler are a bright light, one of the few feminists who speak out about this issue. God bless (namaste) and do not give up the fight. In Hinduism there is a saying, do right action but do not become attached to the fruits of your action. I guess this means, do the best you can and leave the results to God. Let these people like Thobani bark like dogs. In the ultimate scheme of things, it is between you and god. I’m religious – sorry to the atheists here – but this is my viewpoint.
People like Ms. Thobani are clearly infuriated by the West’s freedoms and, while it is tempting to suggest theories as to why this is so, I believe it is an issue that is best dealt with by professional psychiatrists.
I have on occasion been present when people of similar opinions were giving the usual leftist condemnation of everything Western and some people in the audience were laughing and giggling the entire time. It did not seem to me that they were laughing at the lecturer as expressing the fact that they were getting a walloping charge out of the lecturer’s condemnations of the US, the West, freedom, you name it. Expressing extreme opinions like this and listening to them seems to be the leftist version of having a good time.
Amongst wilding Progressives striving to achieve their ever exploding standards for authenticity, poor Ms. Thobani has a lot of competition: for example, certainly “The more incompetent one is as judged by her meaningless verbiage, the more
enlightened, oops, colored she is, and the more ‘progressive’ her….disease.” But then there’s always those definitively afflicted with such things as cerebral Lead poisoning and the much sought after mentality of Neurosyphilis for her to contend with next, and completely without regard to mere skin “color”! So her task is indeed daunting.Feminist(s) should go back to their barricades and demand equal human Rights for Females. First, they must ask for the Hauswork to be payed, and for Childcare, too.
We are still living in a human society where Working [and earning Wealth/Money] is the most important thing, and the Recognition of female Working will give Females the powerful Status they deserve.
Up to now they’re still UNJUSTLY powerless [and this is merely a matter of human Management of the society: not an essential Truth of Life].
This Fight has to be fought by black, brown, red, rose, white, yellow, whatever Females all around the World: I am sure (I am sure) that the racial/ethnic/religious/multicultural/… Problem will be automatically solved, which means, it won’t even exist anymore [it actually is a diversion from Problem nr. 1, which is the genderist one, not the racialist/ethnicist one.]
Since the Rage against the unjust Counterpart [which are Males in the case of Female (not Feminist) Thobani] cannot be directly expressed,
the Rage gets projected onto someone/-thing else (different coloured people, for instance. Let’s wait her to get reincarnated and having a different skin colour …):
maybe even to try and attract the Sympathy of the (mysogynist) Couterpart [which is not happy with the Hate against Females (Misogyny) only, but needs to hate anything/-one which is not like they are, and find/consider an ally/a brother (or a sister)/a friend, (in) anyone who fights the same fight.]
I must anyway say that the Concept of -Phobia or Anti- still is a matter of Projection. Humanism [Psychology] is the way to undercover Projections, and heal them.
[Humanistically speaking,] Females à la Thobani have still so much to do WITHIN their own societies (racial/ethnic religious cultural … social and economical groups), that they won’t have spare time to waste in projecting.
Loveliest regards.
“Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle of liberty is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips but few in their minds.”- Dante Alighieri
Ahhhhhh – women’s rights!!!! do I see Thomani’s name on any legislation? cases? legal pushes? or just a big mouth? Like the white man Bill Baird: BAIRD v. BILLOTI (US SUPREME COURT ABORTION RIGHTS); BAIRD v. EISENSTADT (US SUPREME COURT ABORTION CASE), MANFREDONIA v. SUFFOLK (def name -?; ABORTION RIGHTS – CONSTITUTIONAL DAMAGES), etc., etc., etc. Like the white man Jew doctor Slepian, assassinated thru his kitchen window, at home.
nothing for the big mouth Tomaini though. Seems like a lot of WHITE MEN SACRIFICED AND DID JAIL TIME, shot at, murdered, firebombed and threatened with death daily, ALL for women’s rights in America.
Talk is cheap.
getting really tired of this shit…….
Ahhhhhh – women’s rights!!!! do I see Thomani’s name on any legislation? cases? legal pushes? or just a big mouth? Like the white man Bill Baird: BAIRD v. BILLOTI (US SUPREME COURT ABORTION RIGHTS); BAIRD v. EISENSTADT (US SUPREME COURT ABORTION CASE), MANFREDONIA v. SUFFOLK (def name -?; ABORTION RIGHTS – CONSTITUTIONAL DAMAGES), etc., etc., etc. Like the white man Jew doctor Slepian, assassinated thru his kitchen window, at home.
nothing for the big mouth Tomaini though. Seems like a lot of WHITE MEN SACRIFICED AND DID JAIL TIME, shot at, murdered, firebombed and threatened with death daily, ALL for women’s rights in America.
Talk is cheap.
getting really tired of this shit…….
Yawn. One delusion against another.
I’m puzzled as to why anyone would want to draw attention to an obscure Tanzanian-born feminist scholar. Hasn’t that entire movement been dismissed and exists for the time being — budgetary axes are about to fall — only in odd corners of the university?
Well thought-out rebuttal. I’m sure many thought about this without posting the question, but I’ll ask it. People like Thobani obviously think that there is such a thing as fundamental human rights. They either know this consciously or take it for granted in an unconscious way, a knowing ignorance. Do they, or yourself, for that matter, ever ask themselves whence these rights arise? Are there different schools of thought on the origin of these rights within the feminist academy? Are they afraid to look?
I recall that Laura Bush, early in GWB’s presidency used the Saturday address to condemn the treatment of women in Afghanistan. A mere week or so later, Hillary Clinton gave a similar speech. A bit late, because she had never mentioned it during her husband’s administration. At that time, you could find NOW supporting RAWA, a woman’s movement in Afghanistan. Oops! The moment Bush had defeated the country and established rights for women in Afghanistan, their site was scrubbed of any mention of the country or RAWA.
My theory is the left is so afraid that Bush will go down in history as the greatest liberator of mankind (and womankind) in 1000 years, they will deny it to their graves for centuries. Yet, if the Arab Spring results in representative governments with human rights across the Islamic world, then the neo-con strategy will have worked, albeit slower than planned. This fear led them to give Obama the Nobel Prize; the stupidest rejection of reality in history.
We watch helplessly as this administration attempts to change history; taking credit for the surge, victory in Iraq, the supposed killing of Bin Laden (no photographic evidence), etc. They will say that Obama’s “color” is responsible for breaking the grip of dictators across the Middle East and “it was bound to happen anyway” just as they dismiss Reagan’s dismantling of the Soviet Union.
I had to read one sentence twice: “… slaughtered — but mainly …” should be “… slaughtered — by mainly …”
It is useful to remember why Americans have freedoms of religion, speech, press, peaceful assembly and redress of grievances. Many 17th century colonists fled religious or political persecution in their homelands. They understood that greatest threat to liberty has always been government. The concept of allowing conversion by sword or killing of nonbelievers would be absurd to the founding fathers.
islam is not a religion worthy of first amendment protection any more than is nazism. The late and unlamented Osama bin Laden correctly observed, “democracy is anti-islamic.” So are basic freedoms and respect for women. Any feminist who apologizes for islam should be reminded that there are islamic rules for beating your wife (or wives).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWGA8i6scYY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKHn92no_8c
islam has been at war with all other religions since the 8th century. Soon, the issue will be resolved permanently with unimaginable violence.
What we have to understand is that multiculturalism is simply a political tactic. You gain influence if you give them an out: their troubles are the fault of others, and they are in no way responsible for their own situation. A little exculpation goes a long way. Islam, with its occasionalism is perfect in that regard, but it works universally.
The multicultural types in the West really don’t know other cultures except by common report: truth received from authority ratified by an act of will, just as religious belief in the revealed religions. When I was at SAIS, people with direct experience never had any illusions about their cultural specialties.
They call it racism because at one time physical features were conflated with cultural characteristics. The truth is that their cultures are flawed which places the onus on its members to change or accept.
Islamophobia is a joke because they are really no danger except to the extent they are allowed to be si. I simply cannot see Islam ever managing a modern culture whether internal or stolen in such a way as to be a true danger. Again, they just don’t have it in them to cooperate in that way.
Let’s make this simple … go to the picture of Suneha and look at her face. Do you see the evil?
Do something nice for yourself. Maybe go work in the garden. Maybe have a nice cappuccino. Send her a simple “F’ You” note and be off about the rest of your life.
Thobani perfectly represents academic, intellectual, and triumphant feminism. She and her fellow academics further the causes of peace, justice, and equality with their every breath. I know it is true, they say so repeatedly in thousands of studies departments of diversity every single day. Why should we be surprised that voters, agencies, NGOs, and governments fund their international conferences? Who would oppose peace, justice, and equality? Let feminism live in the world of its making.
Thobani embodies Hope&Change!.
To all you people who think you are so much smarter and more important then you really are. 50-100 years from now people will not even remember who or what you where. There will be a few who will be remembered for their good or evil but in time they will also be forgotten and become foot notes, unimportant except to themselves. To condemn America for the worlds troubles is irresponsible and an easy answer for all our problems.It is always easy to hit someone that you know is not going to hit you back. Then one day they do hit back and you can not handle it!
Or worse, they never do hit back and the family simply falls and goes to ruin. Afraid, to the bitter end, of upsetting the Children.
I am very pleased that your health is improving and you are writing again. We need more strong women such as yourself to tell the truth concerning the Oppressed Women living under Islamic Ideology. Welcome Back.
Cheaper quotesnThobani thus: “Thobani also condemns us for daring to present “whiteness” as “vulnerable.”” the irony of Thobani’s diatribe against whiteness is that, in the Indian cultural view, all Indians consider themselves white, having descended from Aryan stock. There was an outcry on the Left the other day when Gov. Nikki Haley checked the ‘white’ box. Haley was merely being consistent with Indian cultural thought, no matter how dark the skin of the Indian in question. Thus, Thobani, of dual Canadian and American citizenship … If anything should affirm her whiteness, that should … finds herself in the infelicitous position of being outside looking in. Her color, in these lands, declares what she is not. So, she embraces the rebellious anti-West view of herself as other and rails against what she wishes she were. Having rejected Tanzania, or is it Kenya? Thobani finds herself in the precariousness of a no-man’s land with no recourse but to condemn what she would be whilst she ignores what she is. Thobani is Frantz Fanon, Alberto Memmi, and Paulo Freire run amok.
Judith Butler got attacked, too? What’s that about? I admit I don’t know much about her, except that she “won” that bad writing contest several years ago. But I just assumed she was as PC as they come.
I wish you luck as a feminist, though I’m tempted to put quotes around the word, in dealing with organized feminism. For many years now, the multicultaralist/anti-Western strain has been the true ‘mainstream’ feminism, it ceased to be about anything else (as a large-scale movement) probably as far back as the 1980s. It’s a highly abstract, mostly emotional thing, and has little if any connection to the world of factual reality.
(Abortion politics is about the only exception.)
They are as immune to reason as any other form of fanatic.
It’s like we’re living in some kind of John LeCarre novel, in which a mole has infiltrated the left and made every leftist think that good people (like you, Ms. Chesler, and also Bruce Bawer and Ayaan Hirsi Ali) are bad. I’ve given up trying to explain it.
It would be different if the likes of Thobani actually mattered. Nobody refers to such idiotic rantings, except to discredit all that Feminism stood for.
The rantings of “UN human rights” agencies is equally without merit. Our enemies have managed to subvert many of the most powerful concepts created by western society.
Sadly, few seem to care. Our leftists have smelled where power comes from now, and that power is no longer in the hands of individualists, it is in the hands of tyrants. The real value of the left has been subverted by those who undermine what it used to stand for.
I want women to have all the rights I do. I want people to live in peace without having to bow to the whims of some thug. I want freedom of self-determination. These half baked leftist idiots have only proven Orwell to be correct.
I pity them.
“I pity them.”
I hate them.
In note 15, the link to the Nidra Poller PJM article is dead. The article is apparently no longer on the PJM website. If anyone is interested, it was copied in various places on the web, and it can be read at the Internet Archive http://web.archive.org/web/20061118090005/http://pajamasmedia.com/2006/11/burning_buses_she_was_black_bu.php
“What to Say to the Totalitarian Left on 9/11/11″
FOAD usually works pretty well for me.
And, you can say it every day, not just on 9/11 days.
Ah. Succinct, concise, direct, comprehensive and appropriate to a fault. Good advice thanks.
Makes me think of the Third Reich.
That’s a chick? I coulda sworn that was Ozzy Ozboune [hey, that rhymed whoot].
Damn. I mean, HOT DAYUM…the spirit animals are howling on behalf of her fug tonight.
Good for you, Phyllis. Sometimes you have to be a high-riding bitch, no ifs/ands/or buts.
Hold tight. I’m a high riding bitch too.
I just recently completed my online course from foreign university. And thats is at very low cost. I was at risk when I start my course but its truely successfull. Here the best education for all, worldednet.com
And on and on it goes.
I keep waiting to wake up from this nightmare, but it simply doesn’t happen.
Today’s western university makes about as much sense as cell phone texting on the freeway.
Like Phyllis, I’ll keep my integrity, thank you very much. When some weasel disagrees with me, I will stand proud.
The average Leftist has everyone in a big crib. These folks should put more focus on straightening out their own lives, like learning how to think, for example, before trying to nuture “people of color” or what or whoever. Goddess help us all is these idiots have their way.
I adore Chesler. IF I were not old, married, and ugly, I would propose to her!
Does anyone have or know of an English translation for the source listed under note 5, the article written by Ben Dror Yemini for the Israeli newspaper Maariv and found at: [http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/482/564.html].?
Thank you.
Excellent! I am not at all surprised that Judith Butler didn’t respond.She was insulted for being called an ‘American’ feminist even though she probably agreed with everything Thobani said.