Despite the best laid plans of the Revolutionary Communist Party, we blessed three (Ibn Warraq, Christina Hoff-Sommers, and myself) quietly triumphed at Columbia during Islamo-fascism week. But you’d never know it if you read The Nation’s online coverage. Esther Kaplan, author of “With God on their Side: George Bush and the Christian Right, ” led with her bias showing.
In her article, Kaplan spends ten paragraphs demonizing David Horowitz and then dismisses us as fellow travelers in only a mere two paragraphs. I am not complaining. If she had written about us at greater length, she would only have misquoted us or taken our words out of context even more.
For example, she sidesteps my points about the Islamist persecution of homosexuals and only notes that I “sounded an alarm against an epidemic of homosexual pederasty in the Muslim world”–and then likens me to Gary Bauer in his denunciation of gay marriage. Kaplan utterly fails to describe the “violent oppression of women under Islam” (which is also the title of a pamphlet I co-authored for David Horowitz) and fails to mention the heroic feminist struggles in the Muslim world which both Christina Hoff-Sommers and myself discussed.
Kaplan reduces the learned and brilliant Ibn Warraq to just one sentence–yes, the same Ibn Warraq who recently defeated Tariq Ramadan in a battle of ideas in London. I highly recommend Ibn Warraq’s new book, “Defending the West. A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism.”
Kaplan and the Nation share a similar point of view. Israel and George Bush’s America (not the Palestinians, the Arab League, or al-Qaeda) are the satanic “provokers.” And, shades of Walt and Mearsheimer: AIPAC and Campus Watch are the primary bearers of “hate” and they brandish academic “hit lists.” Edward Said and the politically correct Stalinists are heralds of the Second Secular Coming and can do no wrong.
Luckily, other reporters were also present. For example, Fern Sidman, who has interviewed me in the Jewish media, described us as “three voices of truth” in the article she published online in the Intellectual Conservative. When President Amadinejad spoke at Columbia, Sidman also interviewed Mary Lou McKinley-Greenberg, the activist who prepared the Questions to be posed to me for the Revolutionary Communist Party. Sidman writes:
“I met Mary Lou Greenberg about a month ago at Columbia University when she was there on the day that Iranian President Ahmadinejad spoke. Her group, the Revolutionary Communist Party was there with a huge banner reading, ‘Ahmadinejad is Bad but Bush is Worse.’ Her group was decrying a possible US invasion of Iran. As a journalist covering the event, I conducted an interview with her. She told me that in a communist society everyone would have the right to voice dissent. I asked her about gays in Cuba, (the only Communist country left in the western hemisphere,) and whether they had a right to voice their dissent, to speak out and identify as gays and she equivocated her way through a feckless attempt to answer the question. ”
Dear Reader: Please note that I am publishing my remarks here and not in the pages of Nation magazine. I have learned that “the left” will only demonize their opponents and valorize fascists; and that the “Jewish left” will not, even at the midnight hour, talk or listen to anyone who has already been demonized by the larger “left.” (The Jewish left has, indeed, finally begun to talk about anti-Semitism on the left but they do so only in whispers, in small groups, and only with each other. Their comrades do not support them).
So: the West’s Queer Nation will not stand up for homosexuals who are persecuted by Islam and the Marxist and Secular Feminist Nation will not stand up for women who are persecuted by Islam either. What was it that Pastor Neimoller said about the Nazis who came for the trade unionists?
The Nation no longer represents the far left fringe of the Democratic Party. No, it is now a “mainstream” publication. I have no polling data to offer, but is my guess that at least half of all Democrat activists and donors share the Nation’s contempt for the West. The Islamic nihilists are perceived as dark skinned victims of Western imperialism. We do not have the right to condemn their evil deeds. They also have the right to present us with a blank check demanding full payment whenever they desire to do so.
I recently realized that there is one most important question to ask in next year’s elections: which candidate is the least politically correct? It really is that simple and straightforward. Every other question should normally be considered of secondary importance.
It is well known that politics makes strange bedfellows. People unite against a common enemy, which is what the United States and the USSR did during World War II. On the other hand, the Marxist-Islamic alliance makes no sense at all. It is simply insane when feminist and gay activists support jihad and oppose Israel. They are fighting against their own interests, and they have absolutely nothing to gain by uniting with Islamists to do so.
Anti-Zionism is the most powerful political force on earth. This cannot be explained.
Still, you should probably link to their online coverage so we can decide for ourselves.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071112/kaplan
I’ve heard her complaint about you and Sommers before. Apparently, many “maintream feminists” claim, you and Sommers (and Horowitz) are truly not interested about women under Islam, and “mainstream feminists” are.
I find it odd or just arrogant, or ignorant that they can make this claim with a straight face.
There’s also this statement which could have been lifted almost entirely from an anti-mainstream feminists book. With the change of a few nouns, I think Daphne Patai, Wendy Kaminer, or Warren Farrell could have written it about “mainstream feminism” or that Kim Gandy, et. ak., could have written it about dreaded “fathers’ rights activists.” Sadly, many groups use language policing as one of their tactics.
Of course, as Elizabeth Castelli, chair of Barnard’s religion department, said to me before the festivities, Islamofascim Awareness Week is “not about academic freedom at all.” She calls Islamofascism a “made-up term” designed to “close off debate, impose a particular position and set of arguments, and invite the harassment of individuals who hold alternative positions. It casts the world situation in a clash-of-civilizations mode–and places any critic in the position of being anti-Western, or even treasonous.”
This attack from The Nation bears quite a resemblance to what was discussed earlier on Five Feet of Fury about Saul Alinsky. I wasn’t expecting to see confirmation so quickly, but it’s exactly what Enter Stage Right said:
http://www.fivefeetoffury.com/:entry:fivefeet-2007-10-29-0003/
linked to
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/1107/1107rushbattle.htm
Carol
I don’t understand your comments – I am an Alinsky organizer and a feminist. I support Chesler, Hughes and Burkett’s efforts to expose the Islamic slave patriarchies. I agree with the person above who finds in incomprehensible that all feminists and gay activists are not with us. I find it disgusting that we have to explain patriarchy to people making a living from women’s studies.
I have been supporting the war since day 1, in hope that it would affect the status of women in the middle east for the better. I am supporting C Rice’s State Dept’s Office of International Women’s issues for the same reason.
I see Laura Bush is wearing a Burka to visit the middle east – I can only hope she does not force Condi Rice to start doing the same thing. That would be the final Bush betrayal of Muslim women which started with the refusal to build domestic violence shelters in Afghanistan.
I can still see the war but its’ justification as far as women are concerned is almost non-existent now. Too many men got to make compromises which sold out women’s chances for rights. We could use a few more Alinsky organizers on our side.
BTW your second link does not work, maybe that is why I do not get your point.