[WCUSP] Hate Week Comes to Campus

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

Hate Week Comes to Campus
By AARON HESS

If you  wanted to know what Sen. Joe McCarthy would sound like if he came  
back  from the dead, read David Horowitz's explanation for "Islamofascism   
Awareness Week," an event he is sponsoring on college campuses across the  country 
 from October 22-26: The progressive left is the enabler and  abettor of the 
terrorist jihad. It has forged an "unholy alliance" with the  most retrograde 
and reactionary forces in the world today. The  institutional base of the left 
is the university  system, from whose  classrooms it is conducting a 
behind-the-lines psychological  warfare  campaign against its own countrymen.  
Horowitz, who edits the online  FrontPage Magazine and runs the creepily named Web 
sites CampusWatch and  DiscoverTheNetwork, is the self-appointed chief of the 
new thought police  on college campuses.

Ironically, Horowitz is a former radical himself--a  prominent writer and 
activist in the movement against the U.S. war in  Vietnam. But in the 1970s, he 
distanced himself from the left, and by 1987, he  had "come in from the 
cold"--hosting a "Second Thoughts" conference that brought  together fellow 
ex-radicals who now embraced Ronald Reagan and the Cold  War.Horowitz's subsequent 
career "baiting the left"--to use his own phrase--is  lucrative. In 2005, the 
David Horowitz Freedom Center received more than $15.5  million in right-wing 
grant money, and in 2003, Horowitz's own income  for the year was $310,000.  
Though he sounds like an irrelevant crank,  a look at Horowitz's track record shows 
no one should ignore his latest stunt.  "Islamofascism Awareness Week" is one 
part of a broader attempt to stifle  academic dissent.

In just the past year, the new McCarthyism cost several  professors their 
jobs, including DePaul University's Norman Finkelstein, an  outspoken critic of 
Israel's occupation of Palestine; and Native American  scholar Ward Churchill 
at the University of Colorado. Other academics have been  investigated and 
censured for their political ideas.

Horowitz has been at  the center of the assault. In 2003, he launched the 
misnamed Students for  Academic Freedom (SAF), which encourages students to 
"collect evidence" of their  professors' "indoctrination" in the classroom, and 
file reports with college  administrators.Horowitz claims SAF is 
"nonpartisan,Horowitz has been at  the center of the assault. In 2003, he launched the 
misnamed Students for  Academic Freedom (SAF), which encourages students to "collect 
evidence" of their  professors' "indoctrination" in the classroom, and file 
reports with college  administrators.Horow

But Horowitz's blacklist is reserved  exclusively for critics of U.S. wars 
and the right-wing agenda. Whatever their  rhetoric, the new witch-hunters want 
to silence ideas that challenge the status  quo from the left.

* * * 

"ISLAMOFASCISM Awareness Week" is designed,  according to FrontPage, to 
"challenge most of what students are taught about the  so-called War on Terror both 
in the classroom and on the quad."
In reality,  Horowitz and friends rely on standard right-wing myths  and 
stereotypes-stereotypes-<WBR>-echoed by mainstream politicians and the media on a  
regular basis--to demonize Arabs and Muslims, and justify U.S. war atrocities 
in  the Middle East, including a future attack on Iran, which is at the top o
wish list.

A featured speaker on Horowitz's right-wing road  show is the self-described 
"religious expert" Robert Spencer, author of the book  Religion of Peace? Why 
Christianity Is and Islam Isn't. Spencer's book argues  that the Koran is 
responsible for violence committed by Muslims against Western  targets--but that 
"there is no justification for violent acts committed by  Christians, either in 
the Christian Scriptures or the teaching of various  Christian churches."  
Really? What about the Crusades in the Middle Ages?  The Spanish Inquisition? 
The genocide of Native Americans? The ongoing U.S. war  on Iraq? All of these 
crimes were justified in their time by  Christians-- Really? What about the 
Crusades in the Middle Ages?  The Spanish Inquisition? The genocide of Native 
American

Spencer could stand to  re-enroll in Bible study class. For every violent or 
intolerant passage to be  found in the Koran, an equally bloody one can be 
found in the Old and New  Testaments. For instance, the book of Deuteronomy 
contains the command that  anyone who "hath gone and served other gods"-- in other 
words, practiced  another faith--should be "stoned by stones till they die."

Another  speaker dredged from the gutter to join Horowitz's tour is Ann 
Coulter. Coulter  is a disgusting bigot who saves her most vile slurs for 
Muslims--like the  comment, "I believe our motto after 9/11 should be: Jihad monkey 
talks tough;  jihad monkey takes the consequences. Sorry, I realize that's 
offensive. How  about 'camel jockey'?"

Horowitz is also employing one of the right wing's  favorite smokescreens in 
attacking Muslims--by claiming to be concerned about  the "oppression of women 
in Islam." FrontPage states that "the plight of Muslim  women will be 
featured at 'teach-in' panels and also at sit-ins in Women's  Studies Departments.H

This cynical ploy has been used many times in  the past as justification for 
Western imperial powers to invade and occupy the  Middle East."During the 
British occupation of Egypt, British Consul General Lord  Cromer 
declared that Egyptians should 'be persuaded or forced into imbibing  the 
true spirit of Western civilization,declared that Egyptians should 'be persuaded 
or forced into imbibing  the true spirit of Western civilization,<WBR>'" wrote 
Sharon Smith in her book  Women and Socialism. "Cromer targeted, 'first and 
foremost, Islam's degradation  of women.'"But this supposed champion of women's 
rights in Egypt was,  In 2001, the U.S. used the horrific treatment  of women 
under the Taliban as an excuse to invade Afghanistan. But the new  Afghan 
regime installed by the U.S. relies on a grouping of warlords from the  Northern 
Alliance, which has a record of terrible violence against Afghan  women.

According to a 2007 report by UNIFEM, the women's fund at the  United 
Nations, the majority of Afghan women today will be victims of sexual  violence, and 
the average life expectancy of Afghan women is 44 years.

As  for Horowitz, he may pose as a champion of women's rights in the Middle 
East,  but making three stops on his Islamophobia tour is one of the right's 
favorite  anti-abortion fanatics: former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

* * * 
THE CONCEPT of "Islamofascism" has been  conjured up as part of the right 
wing's effort to sell the U.S. war to control  the Middle East as a battle of 
"values" between a democratic, tolerant and  rational West and a totalitarian, 
intolerant and fanatical political  Islam.  But even U.S. foreign policy elites 
reject the idea that there's  any connection between political Islam and any 
conventional definition of  fascism. "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,"  wrote Daniel Benjamin of the mainstream Center for 
Strategic and International  Studies.

In reality, the claims about "Islamofascism" have more to do  with the 
longstanding practice of the U.S. political and media elite to brand  every passing 
U.S. enemy as the "new Hitler."  Among those who to receive  the label are 
Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and even Jean-Bertrand  Aristide. But of 
course, the Hitler slur is never used against the  U.S.-supported right-wing 
regimes that did embrace elements of 
Nazism--for  example, the racist apartheid regime in South Africa or the 
Indonesian military  dictatorship under Gen. Suharto.

Another example of this double standard is the hysteria  surrounding the 
recent visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to  Columbia University. New 
York tabloids screeched that hosting Ahmadinejad was  akin to hosting Hitler, 
and Columbia President Lee Bolinger introduced him as  the "mind of evil." 
You would never know that it was the U.S. government hinting  that it was about 
to declare war on Iran, and not the other way around.   Meanwhile, on the same 
day as Ahmadinejad'  Meanwhile, on the same day as Ahmadine  Meanwhile, on 
the same day as Ahmadinejad'<WBR>s visit, the president of  
Turkmenistan-<WBR>-the ruler of a one-party state that tortures political  prisoners and prohibits 
freedom of the press, as even the State D

The difference, of course, is that Turkmenistan is a U.S.  ally.Horowitz's 
Islamophobia tour takes place at a time when racism against  Muslims and Arabs 
is rampant and provides one of the only remaining selling  points for U.S. 
wars. Politicians and the corporate media use bigotry to  scapegoat Iraqis for the 
ongoing failure of the U.S. occupation and turn up the  military pressure on 
Iran.

Given the climate, it's little surprise that  the Council on American-Islamic 
Relations has documented a rise in  discrimination and hate crimes against 
Arabs and Muslims in the U.S.  David  Horowitz and his fellow Islamophobes 
should be confronted and exposed for the  bigots they are--at every campus they 
show up on, and everywhere opponents of  war and racism raise their  voices.








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