The Dirty Dozen: Who's who among America's leading Islamophobes

Bigots aren't born, and hate doesn't spring up on its own; as the song says, "You've got to be carefully taught." The following list includes some of the media's leading teachers of anti-Muslim bigotry, serving various roles in the Islamophobic movement. Some write the books that serve as intellectual fodder, others serve as promoters, others play the roles of provocateurs and rabble-rousers. Some ply their bigotry in the media's mainstream, others in the Internet's tributaries, while still others work talk radio's backwaters. Together with uncounted smaller players, they form a network that teaches Americans to see Islam in fearful terms and their Muslim neighbors as suspects.

Read about the dirty dozen at the following link:

http://www.smearcasting.com/smear.html

http://www.fair.org/reports/smearcastersIFAWflyer.pdf

Who's behind ‘Islamofascism Awareness Week’?

FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

The term “Islamofascism” came into common use
after the September 2001 attacks as a favorite way for
neoconservatives to describe the ideology of extremist
and violent groups such as Al-Qaeda that claim to act in
the name of Islam.

A search of the Nexis database shows just two mentions
of the term before 2001, both in British media. The first
(Independent, 9/8/90) came in a remark by writer Malise
Ruthven about governments in predominantly Islamic
countries: “Authoritarian government, not to say ‘Islamofascism,’
is the rule rather than the exception from
Morocco to Pakistan.” (Ironically, considering the term’s
current usage, most of these authoritarian governments--
including Morocco and Pakistan--were backed by the U.S.
at the time.) The second mention (Independent, 10/6/90)
came in a response criticizing Ruthven for coining the
term.

Since 2001, use of the expression has exploded. That
year, according to a search of major English-language
papers in the Nexis database, the word and its variant
“Islamofascist” appeared 12 times, nearly all in reference
to Al-Qaeda. The next year that number rose to 69, and
it reached 92 in 2003 as the word’s definition began
expanding to include Saddam Hussein’s historically nonreligious
and somewhat ecumenical Baathist regime. (As
an example, Tariq Aziz, Hussein’s familiar spokesperson,
was a Christian.)

The word’s prevalence continued to increase in 2005, the
year George W. Bush used it in a speech to the National
Endowment for Democracy (10/6/05), and in 2006 it
appeared 594 times in major papers. David Horowitz’s
“Islamofascism Awareness Week” (IFAW)--organized on
about a hundred college campuses in October 2007--was
a sign that the term had fully arrived in some right-wing
circles, though not all conservatives seemed to entirely
understand the message it is supposed to convey. At
Michigan State University, the campus chapter of Young
Americans for Freedom invited a bona fide fascist--Nick
Griffin, the head of the racist British National Party--to
speak on how Europe is becoming “Eurabia” (Spartan
Spectator blog, 10/22/07). The embarrassment caused
Horowitz (InsideHigherEd.com, 10/29/07) to disavow an
event that, as far as content was concerned, promised to
differ little from IFAW’s official proceedings.

In defending the term, the New York Times’ William
Safire, former op-ed columnist and current “On
Language” columnist, wrote (10/1/06), “Islamofascism
may have legs: The compound defines those terrorists
who profess a religious mission while embracing
totalitarian methods and helps separate them from
devout Muslims who want no part of terrorist means.”
But the term does precisely the opposite, say critics,
linking an entire religion to the violent and intolerant
actions of a minority claiming to act in its name.
Many scholars dismiss “Islamofascism” as little more
than a political slogan that “War on Terror” proponents
use to play on emotions by invoking odious historical
enemies. As former Clinton security advisor and Center
for Strategic and International Studies fellow Daniel
Benjamin put it in a BBC interview (8/12/06):

“There is no sense in which jihadists embrace fascist
ideology as it was developed by Mussolini or anyone else
who was associated with the term....This is an epithet,
a way of arousing strong emotion and tarnishing one’s
opponent, but it doesn’t tell us anything about the
content of their beliefs.”

Niall Ferguson, the right-leaning Harvard historian, points
out the term’s role in Western propagandizing against
the latest enemies in the large and disparate Islamic
world. According to Ferguson (Interviewed for Institute
of International Studies, UC Berkeley’s “Conversations
with History” series, 10/19/06), Islamofascism is “a
completely misleading concept. In fact, there’s virtually
no overlap between the ideology of Al Qaeda and fascism.
It’s just a way of making us feel that we’re the “greatest
generation” fighting another World War, like the war
our fathers and grandfathers fought. You’re translating
a crisis symbolized by 9/11 into a sort of pseudo-World
War II. So 9/11 becomes Pearl Harbor, and then you go
after the bad guys who are the fascists, and if you don’t
support us, then you must be an appeaser.”

Check out FAIR's full report on how
smearcasters like Horowitz have, with the
help of the media, helped make fringe terms
like "Islamofascism" mainstream:

www.smearcasting.com