Hatewatch Briefing 2006-05-19 (April 2006)

Welcome! This briefing will be looking hard at the dark places the mainstream media sometimes seem determined to look away from, to better understand our declared enemies on their own terms and without illusions. Our goal is to bring you some of the top jihadi rants, idiotarian seething, and old-school Jew-hatred from around the world, leaving you more informed, more aware, and pretty disgusted every month. This Winds of Change.NET HateWatch briefing is brought to you by Omri Ceren of Mere Rhetoric. Past briefings and posts on related topics can be found here.

HIGHLIGHTED TOPICS

• Religious Hate: Global Islamist mass murder in India, Egypt, Iraq, and Israel; Hindu holy building destroyed in Malaysia; Saudi cleric seeks fairness, balance for Hitler; New terrorist announcements raise unsettling possibility that extremist Muslims hate Jews, not just Israel; Pakistani snuff films very popular; Pathological, disgusting consequences of Islamist debasement of women; Widespread Swedish, European capitulation to Islamism; Anti-Christian violence in Egypt

• Idiotarian Seethings: Pro-illegal-immigrant marches fail to inspire icons of patriotism; Anti-war marchers openly admit: we're here for the therapy; College students publicly take off clothes for reasons almost as dumb as Mardi Gras beads; Ann Coulter smacks around Alec Baldwin; Islamists support, aid pro-illegal-immigrant marches; NBC searches NASCAR for bigoted rednecks

• Race and Culture: Dutch turn on Ayaan Hirsi Ali in last ditch effort to appease Islamists, Hitchens calls for minimum show of support for Ali; American film and TV companies become pathetic apologists for terrorism; Muslim students show Paradise Now in protest of libertarian panel complaining that it's OK to excuse terrorism, but not to do anything that offends Muslims; Nation of Islam moral crusader attacks bouncer to get access to strippers; Major Australian paper: guy who wants to chop up Prime Minister may - or may not - be a terrorist; Legitimacy of anti-Semitic insinuations mysteriously spreads in wake of Mearsheimer and Walt paper; New York Times: Jews really are chimps; Extreme Leftists don't read so good; Intimidation against Rightist bloggers; Colbert bombs; WaPo discovers Jihadist rap

• A Hopeful Note: Fighting anti-Semitism in the academy; Anti-terror marches in Belgium; Anti-terror marches in Egypt; Support for Salman Rushdie; Catholic Church increasingly wary of Islamism

Religious Hate:

• Islamists committed mass murder through bombings in New Delhi, as well as twice in Egypt. Terrorists may or may not have beheaded teachers in front of their students in Iraq, depending on which version of which Reuters story you believe.
  Palestinian terrorists were thwarted in a particularly heinous attempt to commit a genocidal attack on Holocaust Remembrance Day. But a suicide attack slipped through Israel's defenses during Passover, murdering dozens. The Arab world of course declared itself opposed to the harm of any civilians, but... We're not sure if that's better or worse than the spectacle of Knight Ridder barely waiting before referring to the story with big bold letters: Israeli rules cripple life in West Bank.
  
• In Malaysia, Muslim extremists destroyed a century-old Hindu temple as devotees cried and begged them to stop. Maybe they should have threatened mass murder instead.

• Saudi clerics want to know: what about all the good things Hitler did? Because what Saudi clerics value is fairness and balance for everyone. And by "everyone" we mean "not Jews."

• The "moderate" Palestinian Fatah party has figured out how to evade Israeli security and still slake their thirst for Jewish blood: target Jews overseas. Wait - we were told that they were just opposed to the Occupation! Meanwhile, Islamists further marched under the protection of Western laws and tolerance to declare that they intend to commit mass genocide against the Jews in Israel.

• In the suicide bomber buddy flick Paradise Now, there's a scene at a West Bank video rental counter that highlights the degree to which violence is a celebrated part of Palestinian society. The owner is asked about rental prices for the popular videos of Palestinians committing human rights atrocities, and he quotes the highest price for the videos of collaborator lynchings. When asked why, he points out that those videos are more popular than the other, more mundane homemade snuff films that various Muslim terrorists are wont to make of their non-Muslim victims. Turns out there is some diversity in the radical Muslim world - in Pakistan, videos of Muslims killing Muslims and videos of Muslims killing non-Muslims are about even when it comes to flying off the shelves.

• The debasement of women in many Islamic societies has been a particularly glaring dynamic for explaining the pathologies that plague those societies. Psychologists and academics have insisted that the ground for much of the suffering and lashing out that young Muslim men seem particularly prone to committing can be located in the visceral hatred for any kind of femininity - culturally preserved in primitive honor codes. Such analysis may be important for inquiring into the broad trajectories of Islamofascism, but it should never be an excuse for not noticing the horrors visited on actual young girls living in the Muslim world - horrors that range from being viciously beaten by religiously-inspired sociopaths to being held down by your mother so your father can rape you.

• Do you think it was the visas to Hamas terrorists or the military shunning of Israel that convinced Swedish Muslim extremists that the time was ripe to demand the implementation of Sharia law? Or maybe it was that extremist incitement has already been de-facto legalized, so why not make things official? After all, once you've gotten Swedish authorities to recognize that threatening to kill Jews is a legitimate part of Muslim expression, getting the family courts to recognize Koranic law should be no problem.
  All those things actually happened only last month. In coming years, when people ask "how did it come to this", European capitulation in the fact of explicitly violent threats will have a lot to do with it. Our favorite from this month: rebuilding the toilets of criminals to face away from Mecca.

• Christian Europeans' tolerance for Muslims living in Europe was pointedly not reciprocated, mutadis mutandis, when Coptic Christians living in Egypt were attached on Good Friday. Then again, said tolerance was already being pointedly not reciprocated last October when Coptic worshipers were attacked in Egypt. Or in the subsequent violence to the recent stabbings. Not to mention that whole international terrorism thing.

Idiotarian Seethings:

• For the second month in a row, we're forced to remind Leftists that trying to get white Americans to accept illegal immigrants by insisting that whites don't belong in America is a poor tactic.

• Idiots calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq staged a march in New York. One day, participants in social movements will be sophisticated enough not to betray the degree to which their shouting and chanting is a poor substitute for therapy. That day has not yet arrived:

  One woman who marched says she "had a lot of anger" and has to do something. Marjori Ramos of Staten Island said, "We've been lied to."

  We are confident that the British, French, and Russian intelligence agencies that apparently misled this distraught Stanton Island resident about Saddam's pursuit of WMDs will be suitably cowed by the marchers' anger, and that they will issue immediate apologies.

• We're sorry that you're still mad at your parents, and that in some sort of weird post-60s transference you have channeled that bitterness into an anti-sweatshop protest - against a University that already has anti-sweatshop guidelines, no less. We hope that things work out for you, and that you don't warp too many young minds as the shrill, petulant, liberal arts college professor that you are obviously destined to become. In the meantime, keep your damn clothes on.

• Alec Baldwin has to learn that when actors step outside the cocoon of Hollywood pandering, they can actually get dinged. He is a sheltered, pathetic crybaby. Ann Coulter makes her living by destroying people's self-esteem. How did he think it would go?

• In the halcyon days of yesteryear, incoherent anti-WTO/anti-Iraq/anti-racism/anti-border-enforcement/anti-sexism/anti-heterosexism Leftist marches promised two things: some sort of an Islamofascist presence and giant puppets. What happened to the puppets?

• Media elites really have no idea what people in the Red States are like. But they bravely refuse to let ignorance stop them from making total idiots of themselves.

Race and Culture:

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Dutch neighbors, finding her presence among them intolerable, have had her evicted from her home. Frightened of the Islamofascist crocodile in the heart of their multi-cult utopia, they have taken the brave stand of hoping to be dined on only after Ms. Ali is consumed as an appetizer. We don't think we're being hysterical about this whole "Dutch capitulation to Islamic fundamentalism" thing, either, given Dutch officials have literally issued a report reports advising their fellow citizens to embrace Islamic law.
  Chris Hitchens eviscerates their spinelessness - he urges those in the West who find Ms. Ali's presence bracing and Holland's treatment of her shameful to purchase her expose on the horrors of fundamentalist Islam. Hitchens's call to defend Islamic reformers echoes the broader one made on NRO earlier in the month by Paul Marshall.

• Would the American studio of United 93 prostrate themselves before the altar of sentimental political correctness and publish excuses for terrorism? Yes.
  Also, you may have heard that Comedy Central banned a South Park episode about censorship in the depiction of Mohammed from depicting Mohammed.

• In response to libertarian mockery of how media and art elites go out of their way to excuse Islamist extremism, U of Chicago Muslims showed a movie designed to humanize terrorists. We're not saying that English departments should reinstate the canon in toto, but perhaps a basic high-school level course defining terms like "irony" might be beneficial.

• Rush Limbaugh gets literally prosecuted for his wrenching addiction to pain-killers and we swear to all that's holy we can't drown the moonbats out. But this Nation of Islam moral exemplar gets busted for getting overly frustrated about a strip club (get it?) and apparently hypocrisy is no longer the gravest cultural sin committable.

• One would hope that at least in the Anglo-sphere, when an Islamist nutcase threatens to chop up the sitting Prime Minister of a country... one would hope that the leading newspapers of the country could drop the scare-quotes around the word terrorist. Not so much.

• Mearsheimer and Walt - Pretend that their defense of "we're just telling the hard truth" actually held up. Pretend that they weren't giving succor to open racists who use said "hard truth" to buttress lies that even the two washed out social scientists would repudiate. They would still have set off what can now only be termed an open climate of intellectualized hate.

• Memo to the New York Times: though not all anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, being anti-Zionist doesn't automatically make you not anti-Semitic either. Please see: the anti-Semitic cartoon you felt safe in publishing. Let's be blunt: if the NYT had chosen to depict Muslims as chimps, there would be worldwide rioting and death threats. That these riots and threats would be overreactions to offensive imagery doesn't make the imagery less offensive: but that the NYT has adopted Islamist standards both in absolute deference to Muslim sensitivities and in active participation of the debasement of Jews is perhaps worth pondering.

• Schadenfreude. No, we're not too proud.

• Seething thugs from UC Santa Cruz have launched a very public, very ugly campaign of intimidation against Michelle Malkin. Timid rats who find strength only in numbers have trouble understanding that there are people who don't scatter when light is shown on them - and so these odious specimens are probably at least somewhat baffled that they have been very politely invited to go to hell.

• Spare us the pretentious high theory describing subtle distinctions between parody, satire, and comedy. Colbert was just not funny. His job was to make people laugh. People didn't laugh. Dogs peeing are also making a kind of statement - but there are appropriate and inappropriate times to misbehave in order to get attention.

• The Washington Post seems to have discovered Jihadi rap, albeit with bemusement displaying a shocking lack of appreciation for its depravity. More concerned - as well as aware - observers have been trying to alert people to this real, dangerous phenomenon for almost half a decade. Nice to see the Washington Post has at least recognized the "real" part.

A Hopeful Note:

• Sarcasm aside, it's nice when self-identified Leftist academics try to combat anti-Semitism. But as one of the smartest Leftist professors we've ever had pointed out, any Leftist theorist of any stature usually gets a pass on anti-Semitism (Martin Heidegger? Actual Nazi. Paul de Mann? Nazi collaborator. Edward Said? Virtual founder of the New anti-Semitism? Noam Chomsky? Self-hating Jew. And so on) So we're kind of hopeful, but only kind of.

• In Belgium, tens of thousands marched in memory of a teen murdered by violent Muslim extremists. Or in the AP's words, "two suspects of North African origin".

• Mass murderers are discovering that not all Egyptians support their cause.

• Refusing to accept intolerance masquerading as tolerance, administrators at Nova Southeastern University have thus far refused to reconsider their commencement invitation to Salman Rushdie.

• The Catholic Church is taking increasing notice of a threat to Europe last put down by princes and kings fighting to save Christendom.