July 4th Thoughts on Rightwingers Celebrating Leftwing Victories
by: Dave Belden on July 4th, 2010 | 8 Comments »
At the US Social Forum there was a curious brouhaha, which has been fairly widely reported on the web, over a workshop organized by the vehemently pro-Israel group Stand With Us. As a workshop on LGBTQI rights in the Middle East it looked as if it would fit right in with the Social Forum’s worldview, until it became seen as a way to extol the virtues of Israel compared to its neighboring states and thereby justify Israel’s occupation. It was canceled, with this explanation by the USSF. Stand With Us objected. If you want to know more about Stand With Us, Tikkun ran an article last September by David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi, The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics, that was strongly critical of it.
This workshop seemed to me to fit in the same ballpark with those rightwingers who have fought against feminist and GLBT rights all the way, right up to the point when the defense of them as proving the quintessential goodness of Western civ becomes a handy weapon to wield against Islamic immigration to the West or against rightwing Islam. This strategy is more common in Europe (where it was pioneered by the late Pim Fortuyn), but in the US can be seen in the way the American Enterprise Institute became the protector of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali Dutch feminist and Islamophobe, about whom I wrote in Tikkun a while back.
I find the cynicism of this U turn from opposing feminist and GLBTQ rights to extolling them nauseating or hilarious, depending on my mood. But seeing that it’s the Fourth of July let us remember that just about all the things we have to celebrate about today’s United States (the nation state as opposed to the land) — like the Constitution, republican instead of monarchical government, abolition of slavery, extension of the franchise, civil rights for all as have them so far, laws for the safety of food, medicines and workplaces, laws for ecological protection, communal efforts to prevent destitution (e.g., social security), for a start — were originally opposed by conservatives, before all of them (in the case of the Constitution) or some of them (in the case of social security and Medicare) saw that these innovations were worth celebrating and conserving. Michael Lerner wrote about this last week here and is having an Interdependence Day Celebration today in a local park. It was nice to see our friend Shane Claiborne pick up this theme on HuffPost too in a different way, in a piece called “This July 4th, Let’s Celebrate Interdependence Day.”
Back to the Stand With Us workshop at the USSF. Don Cohen was preparing an article for The Jewish News on this brouhaha and I had expected to be able to link to it before now, but I haven’t seen it appear yet. I asked Michael Lerner about this issue and he gave Don this well-balanced statement:
Israel deserves strong commendation and appreciation for being the most advanced country in the Middle East with regard to women’s rights and gay rights, and on these issues way ahead of many other countries all around the world. None of that is a reason to stop critiquing Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people, its systematic denial of human rights in the West Bank and Gaza, its “targeted assassinations” of “suspected” Palestinian “activists,” its holding in prisons and outdoor detention camps thousands of Palestinians without ever being charged must less getting a jury trial, and its collective punishment to enforce its unjust occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza. These are sins which are not erased either by the good record Israel pursues on women’s or GLBTQ rights nor by human rights violations from Hamas.
The only way we will have an Israeli state in existence for future generations (of liberals and conservatives) to celebrate is if the conservative penchant for playing hardball against the Palestinians today is replaced by empathy, repentance, and the enacting of the two state solution with full rights and equity for all. Progressive victories today are what give conservatives something to celebrate tomorrow.
“Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali Dutch feminist and Islamophobe”
That is a slander every bit as as contemptible as Mark Tooley’s about Michael Lerner.
You’ve gone completely through the looking glass now, kid.
No wonder they call you folks at Tikkun “DHIMMIS – Dupes, Helpful Idiots, and Misguided Morons for Islamofascism”
Rob, if it’s a slander I would be happy to retract it. But would she not call herself both a feminist and someone who is terrified of the power and reach of Islam? She has argued very strongly and comprehensively against Islam as a religion. Does that mean the “phobe” ending is inappropriate? I do understand that it is always used as a negative, not a simple descriptive, but in this case it seemed like she might very well accept it as accurate herself. Incidentally, I think very highly of her, but not of all her opinions, and certainly not of her blanket dismissal of Islam, and I am looking forward to the memoir she writes in about 20 years, as she seems to be someone who is always rethinking and may go places in future where she is not at present.
“Islamophobe” is a weasel word used by self-proclaimed “progressives” in a way greatly resembling the use of “anti-American” during the McCarthy period. It is a worthless neologism used only in a mindless attempt to devalue the opinions of those who oppose the Islamic ideology.
“I think very highly of her, but not of all her opinions, and certainly not of her blanket dismissal of Islam”
Maybe if you pulled your overinflated, opinionated head out of your fat white arse, got out of the Bay Area, and went and lived in an Islamic Republic or Emirate where the unjust and barbaric sharia is actually implemented in all its mediaeval ghastliness, you would have some comprehension of what you are talking about.
sorry, Dave, that should read: “fat white male arse”
The gender bias is significant where is comes to Lefty willingness to turn a blind eye to the historical and contemporary atrocities committed due to belief in the Islamic ideology.
Rob, I do understand something about atrocities — those committed by some Muslims in the name of Allah and those committed by Christians in the name of Christ. I share your horror of these terrible acts. But are you also aware of the innumerable Muslims — or Christians, or anyone else — who strive to act with compassion and utterly reject the unjust and barbaric?
Is it that you think one religion is better or worse than another? Then how do you make the comparison: between holy texts, between the worst that members of those religions do, or have done in history, or between the best that they do? And if you think one religion is today worse than another in practice — perhaps Christianity because a Christian US president, claiming God’s guidance, launched a war of choice in Iraq that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, primarily to try to secure supplies for America’s oil addiction — do you then condemn that religion in a blanket fashion? Or do you work with the innumerable members of that religion who are striving to act with compassion, who choose to follow, in the case of Christianity, Christians like Francis of Assisi not George Bush? Check out Be Scofield’s post on the way Malcolm X got beyond blaming all white people, as you appear to be blaming
Any religion is a work in progress, including ones that rely on ancient holy texts. How any religion is actually practiced is at least as much a matter of cultural traditions and inventions, as it is of anyone’s vision (positive or negative) of what the religion preaches. People throughout history have called God and their holy texts and religious traditions in aid to justify cruel cultural practices, tyrannies, wars and all kinds of oppression. All religions have texts and traditions that can be called in aid in that way.
At the same time, people throughout history have found inspiration in those same holy texts and religious practices and in their experiences of God to extend empathy and compassion to others, to reform those cultural cruelties, make peace and end tyranny. If you equate cultural practices of a particular and cruel kind that are only practiced by some Muslims and not others with Islam itself, as Hirsi Ali does and as you appear to do, then you offend against logic, and against all those Muslims who are finding inspiration in their faith to make this a better world, and against all other religious people who are striving to do the same, because in scapegoating one world religion you scapegoat them all. “First they came for the Jews…” You become part of the scapegoating approach itself, in company with anti-Semites and racists of all kinds. American imperial power is served right now by an ideology that scapegoats Islam, just as it once scapegoated anyone on the Left in the Cold War era.
Do I have to keep saying it, over & over & over & over & over again?
It’s THE IDEOLOGY.
It is no better than Nazism.
Sometimes I am inclined to think that the misunderstanding is quite deliberate – and perverse – on the part of so-called “progressives”.
Yuck, it’s creepy, like “Nineteen Eighty Four”.
“in scapegoating one world religion you scapegoat them all”
Can’t you tell the difference between legitimate criticism of a destructive ideology created by a mass-murdering Arab imperialist (and polygamist and paedophile, if Muslim sources are to be believed) and scapegoating?
Your Tu Quoque response with regard to Christianity is invalid. I have written repeatedly here at TD that I believe that Christianity is a destructive belief system – and I think that historically, Christendom’s body-count bears that out. I was opposed to the Iraq war.
It is either ignorant or disingenuous to state or imply that all religions lend themselves equally to sanctioning or inciting violence. This may be true of the so-called Abrahamic religions, as they are all rooted in the “revelation” of a sometimes demonically violent imaginary entity. It certainly cannot credibly be said of Buddhism or Jainism, to take just a couple of examples.
As one commentator (a woman with an Arabic name, incidentally) observed in the Washington Post in response to statements similar to your own, Dave:
“Winston Churchill, the identifier of the Nazi threat, identified Islam as a form of Nazism. He referred to the Koran as ‘the Mein Kamp of war’
…If anyone is qualified to identify a Nazi-type threat that man is Winston Churchill. There is no conspiracy about it. It’s just a sad fact. Muslims are following a Nazi type ideology (the Koran). This includes moderate Muslims, who don’t understand what they are part of, just as moderate Germans back in the 1930s didn’t understand what they were part of.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK2ukVCoWUU
If you find the source of the previous video link too distasteful and propagandist, perhaps David Aaronovitch’s obvious surprise and alarm (and possibly a little denial too) as he investigates and discovers the breadth and depth of Jew-hatred in the Muslim world may open your eyes just a fraction. Aaronovitch is certainly no rightwinger:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=397500503034113739#