Opinion Editorials, January 2008
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Fascism and the US Corporate Media
By Abid Ullah Jan
ccun.org, January 10, 2008
The die-hard Islamophobes in the corporate media are the real fascists of our age. They not only promote fascism on the political, academic, and military fronts, but also paint evil into goodness and lies into reality. A quick comparison of their acts with those who were charged and punished as fascists earlier might expose the real face of the media-fascists of the modern age.
The Nuremberg Tribunal convicted Julius Streicher of "crimes against humanity". He was later hanged. Interestingly, the prosecutors did not argue that Streicher killed anyone. In fact, Streicher did not commit any violent act personally. Above all, Streicher was not even a prominent official in the German government during the period when the Jews and others were persecuted and killed.
The sole offense for which Julius Streicher was put to death was having served as publisher and editor of Der Sturmer in the early 1930s, years before the Nazis actually carried out the genocide. In this capacity, he was accused of penning a long series of virulently anti-Jewish editorials and "news" stories, usually accompanied by cartoons and other images graphically depicting Jews in an extraordinarily derogatory fashion.
These write ups, the prosecution asserted, had done much to dehumanize the Jews in the minds of the German public. In turn, such dehumanization made it possible—or at least easier—for average Germans to later indulge in the outright liquidation of the Jews. The Tribunal agreed, holding that Streicher was therefore complicit in genocide and deserving of death by hanging.
Let us fast forward to 2006. We see two major types of Julius Streichers around: one, those who are trying to be politically correct; and two, those who are so honest and sincere in their commitment to dehumanize Muslims that they hardly care about mincing words. The sum and substance of the work of these Julius Streichers is the same: discredit Islam and dehumanize Muslims.
Those who blame every terrorist act on Muslims within minutes of every attack, without even waiting for any investigation, blame the "poisonous interpretation" of Islam for all wrongs in their politically correct statements. On the other hand, the overt Julius Streichers of our age do not hesitate in saying in the pages of the Washington Times that this is a war on Islam and its basic sources:
It is time we admitted that we are not at war with "terrorism." We are at war with Islam…we are absolutely at war with the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran. The only reason Muslim fundamentalism is a threat to us is because the fundamentals of Islam are a threat to us. Every American should read the Koran and discover the relentlessness with which non-Muslims are vilified in its pages. The idea that Islam is a 'peaceful religion hijacked by extremists' is a dangerous fantasy—and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge. 102
For the politically correct Julius Streichers, more than 75 years is enough time to consummate their skills at dehumanizing a people and discrediting their faith. They think they know how to win future Nuremberg trials. Despite their perfection, they are so naïve to take the world for fools, thinking that no one will understand their gradual shift to high gear from a "war on terrorism" to war within Islam, and a "war of ideas" to the open threats of holding all Muslims guilty for any future terrorist attacks.
The New York Times editorial pages are an open invitation to the extremist elements, holding grudges against Muslims and Islam, to terrorize their readers and blame Muslims for the rising level of fear. Imagine the New York Times,103 a source considered most credible and authentic in the corporate media, telling its readers that 1.2 billion Muslims are raised with the supremacist concept of God: "Muslims are raised with the view that Islam is God 3.0 , Christianity is God 2.0, Judaism is God 1.0, and Hinduism is God 0.0." 104 With this statement, Thomas Friedman gives the impression that Muslims are supremacists. In fact, Islam is the only religion that exhort its followers to believe and respect all prophets, beginning from Adam (including David and Jesus) and all the revealed books (Bible, Torah, and the Qur'an).
To the contrary, evidence of racial supremacy and promotion of the concept of treating Muslims as sub-humans can be seen in the New York Times op-ed piece by Paul Sperry, a Hoover Institute media fellow. His article is titled: "It's the Age of Terror: What Would You Do?" While justifying racial profiling, he argues:
…profiling passengers based on proven security risk is just smart law enforcement...Truth be told, commuters need to be most aware of young men praying to Allah and smelling like flower water. Law enforcement knows this, and so should you… Once an Islamist suicide bomber is sitting next to you on the train, your chances of escape are slim. The only solution is for the police to stop him well before he boards your car. But with the system as it stands, that terrorist could easily slip in through the numerical window of random security screening. 105
Another article by Charles Krauthammer, in the Washington Post, also endorsed the practice of using ethnicity, national origin, and religion as primary factors in deciding whom police should regard as possible terrorists. Such open promotion of racism is justified as racial profiling in this new age of fascism. He writes:
"The fact is that jihadist terrorism has been carried out from Bali to Casablanca to Madrid to London to New York to Washington by young Muslim men of North African, Middle Eastern and South Asian origin. This is not a stereotype. It is a simple statistical fact. Yes, you have your shoe-bomber, a mixed-race Muslim convert, who would not fit the profile. But the overwhelming odds are that the guy bent on blowing up your train traces his origins to the Islamic belt stretching from Mauritania to Indonesia." 106
In another article, "When You Have to Shoot First," in the New York Times, Haim Watzman argues that the London police officer that chased down and put seven bullets into the head of a Brazilian electrician without asking him any questions or giving him any warning "did the right thing." 107
Now imagine the precariousness of the situation in an environment where the public is constantly subjected to the concept that Muslims have a supremacist concept of God and they deserve to be dehumanized. Imagine the impact of open threats to all Muslims in the same pages 108 that it is a Muslim problem, all Muslims are suspect, and they should mend their ways, otherwise "the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way—by simply shutting them out, denying them visas and making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent." 109
Is this any degree less than what Julius Streicher did in early 1930s, keeping in mind that the situation is already volatile, and in little more than a week's time after the London bombing, there were already more than 1200 attacks on Muslims. Such concepts and threats in the New York Times and other such credible sources are sufficient to further enrage the extremists who are already sending threatening and hate-filled e-mail messages to Muslims in the West, calling them "towel heads," "rag heads," and "little pigs," and directing them to "go back" to their "sands."
The efficiency and ruthlessness with which ideological war is being waged against Islam is mind-boggling. The above mentioned examples show that those involved in this campaign believe that the U.S.-led direct and indirect occupations and the puppet Muslim regimes will only succeed in eliminating the threat of Muslims' exercising their right to self-determination and securing self-rule for living by Islam by using any means necessary, including torture and violence. They believe that helping eradicate any resistance to their totalitarian designs will occur by way of propaganda warfare similar to the efficient methods Goebbels employed during the Nazi era (which rallied the German people so surprisingly behind the concept of Aryan supremacy). Thomas Friedman of the New York Times finished his July 22, 2005 column with two word "Words matter." 110 Christian Science Monitor titled John Hughes article "Winning the war of words in the campaign against terrorism," (May 17, 2006). Moreover, "winning the war of ideas" is one of the main themes of Islamophobes. Christian Science Monitor (June 16, 2006) reported that out of 117 American foreign policy experts, both conservative and liberal, 84 percent believe that the US is not winning the war of ideas. 111
Islam can certainly withstand such attacks. However, the situation is definitely set to get worse because Muslims are divided and must employ counter media and lobbying tactics. Whoever committed the 9/11 and the July 7, 2005 bombing in London are common enemies of Muslims and non-Muslims, and they certainly do not reside in the resourceless madrassas in Pakistan. Rounding up hundreds of people in Pakistan after the London Bombing, compared to not even a dozen in the UK, is a clear example of the misdirected approach that only supports the propaganda of modern day Julius Streichers.
Muslims extending apologies and statements of denunciation simply confirm the preconceived conclusions that Muslims are guilty for these crimes. Instead of issuing fatwas for what is so-obviously transparent in the message of Islam anyway, Muslims need to launch a vigorous campaign against the media's use of virulent qualifiers, and against directly and indirectly discrediting the Islamic concept of God (as in the case of New York Times), the Qur'an (as in the case of Washington Times), and the direct threats to all Muslims in the editorial pages of leading American dailies.
Silence due to fear of being blacklisted by Blair is expediting the process that will lead to Muslims facing the same horror that the Jews faced at the hands of Nazis. Ignoring the process and denials will never stop their march toward a Muslim holocaust. Silence of the majority of Muslims is far worse than cooperation of a few Muslims in this war on Islam.
This is an excerpt from Abid Ullah Jan's book: " After Fascism: Muslims and the Struggle for Self-determination."
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