It seems like a day doesn’t go by without a mosque being blocked, burnt, or picketed by racists. An ignorant “patriot” murders a group of Sikhs because he thinks they’re Muslims. Republicans, besides their usual dismissal of Blacks, gays and Latinos, show a special fondness for demonizing Muslims. Congressman Peter King regularly convenes McCarthyesque show hearings on the Muslim Menace. And in two dozen states these haters have filed “anti-Shariah” legislation authored by a Jewish White Supremacist that serves no purpose other than to show their hatred of Muslims and to proclaim their preference for the “Judeo-Christian” way of life.
CAIR, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the FBI, all report an alarming increase in murders, assaults, arson, and property damage directed against Muslims. Hate crimes against Muslims are up 50% — and it’s largely the byproduct of a small group of Islamophobic extremists, a well-financed crusade that cranks out books, blogs, and movies like the one that surfaced last week — and which funds think tanks and talking heads on FOX News and other right wing outlets. Disturbingly, these hate-filled messages are nothing but recycled antisemitism: Muslims are the new Jews and Islamophobia is the new antisemitism.
Although today some regard it a sign of an enlightened democracy to permit Muslim-bashing and hate speech of this sort to go unchallenged, let’s not kid ourselves: hate propaganda kills. The Holocaust and the thousands of attacks in recent years on Muslims and those perceived to be “soft” on them by the far right, such as in Norway last year, illustrate this all too well. But there was a time when the United States recognized the lethality of hate speech. In October of 1946, during the Nuremberg trials, Nazi propagandistJulius Streicher was hanged — not for murder but for his “journalistic” career devoted to demonizing Jews.
Colm O’Broin has compared some of Streicher’s antisemitic screeds to current Islamophobic talking points written primarily by Robert Spencer, who is a friend and advisor to just about every right-wing ideologue in the United States, not to mention the author of now-discredited FBI training materials. Many of the quotes O’Broin chose are taken from the Nuremberg trial transcripts or Streicher’s propaganda paper, Der Stürmer. In a few cases I have changed O’Broin’s wording or chosen a different quote. I have also added two points. Clicking on an author’s link will bring up the original quote.
Below are the main points both the Nazi antisemites and contemporary Islamophobes hammer away on. They are amazingly, eerily, disturbingly similar.
1. Muslims/Jews have a religious duty to conquer the world.
“Islam understands its earthly mission to extend the law of Allah over the world by force.” — Robert Spencer
“Do you not know that the God of the Old Testament orders the Jews to consume and enslave the peoples of the earth?” — Julius Streicher
2. The Left enables Muslims/Jews.
“… the principal organs of the Left, which in its [sic] hardened hatred of the West has consistently been warm and welcoming toward Islamic supremacism…” — Robert Spencer on jihadwatch.org
“The communists pave the way for him [the Jew].” — Julius Streicher
3. Governments do nothing to stop Muslims/Jews.
” FDI acts against the treason being committed by national, state, and local government officials, the mainstream media, and others in their capitulation to the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, the ever-encroaching and unconstitutional power of the federal government, and the rapidly moving attempts to impose socialism and Marxism upon the American people.” — Freedom Defense Initiative, a Robert Spencer/Pamela Geller organization
“The government allows the Jew to do as he pleases. The people expect action to be taken.” — Julius Streicher
4. Muslims/Jews cannot be trusted.
” [Muslim] believers may legitimately deceive unbelievers when under pressure.” — Robert Spencer
“In the Jewish lawbook ‘Talmud’ the Jews are told that the possessions of gentiles were ‘ownerless property,’ which the Jew was allowed to obtain through deceit and cheating.” — Julius Streicher
5. Recognizing the true nature of Muslims/Jews can be difficult.
“…there is no reliable way for American authorities to distinguish jihadists and potential jihadists from peaceful Muslims.” — Robert Spencer
“Just as it is often hard to tell a toadstool from an edible mushroom, so too it is often very hard to recognize the Jew as a swindler and criminal.” — From The Toadstool, a children’s book published by Julius Streicher
6. The evidence against Muslims/Jews is in their holy books.
“What exactly is ‘hate speech’ about quoting Qur’an verses and then showing Muslim preachers using those verses to exhort people to commit acts of violence, as well as violent acts committed by Muslims inspired by those verses and others?” — Robert Spencer
“In Der Stürmer no editorial appeared, written by me or written by anyone of my main co-workers, in which I did not include quotations from the ancient history of the Jews, from the Old Testament, or from Jewish historical works of recent times.” — Julius Streicher
7. Islamic/Jewish texts encourage violence against non-believers.
“And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter…” — Surah 2:191, a Koranic verse quoted by Robert Spencer on Jihadwatch.org
“Deuteronomy 7:16 expresses that command to hate that Moses received at Sinai from the Jewish God Jahwe. It says: ‘You will destroy all the peoples of the earth, whom Jahwe will give into your hands. You shall have no mercy on them.” — inaccurate Biblical verse quoted by Julius Streicher in Der Stürmer
8. Christianity is peaceful while Islam/Judaism is violent.
“There is no Muslim version of ‘love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you’ or ‘if anyone strikes you on the right cheek turn to him the other also’.” — Robert Spencer in “Islam Unveiled”
“The Jew is not being taught, like we are, such texts as, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,’ or ‘If you are smitten on the left cheek, offer then your right one.” — Julius Streicher
9. Muslims/Jews are uniquely violent.
“(Islam) is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.” — Robert Spencer
“No other people in the world has such prophecies. No other people would dare to say that it was chosen to murder and destroy the other peoples and steal their possessions.” — Julius Streicher
10. Criticising Muslims/Jews is not incitement to violence against Muslims/Jews.
“There is nothing in anything that I have ever written that could be reasonably construed as an incitement to violence against anyone.” — Robert Spencer
“Allow me to add that it is my conviction that the contents of Der Stürmer as such were not (incitement). During the whole 20 years, I never wrote in this connection, ‘Burn Jewish houses down; beat them to death.’ Never once did such an incitement appear in Der Stürmer.” — Julius Streicher
11. God-Bashing: The Muslim/Jewish God is not “our” God
It’s not enough to demonize a people and their religion. Ultimately, you have to blame their God. And in order to do that, you have to deny that their God is the same as yours. Hey, the Nazis did it. The Islamophobes have followed suit.
“In the same way, it is possible that the Qur’an and Islamic tradition present a picture of God so radically different from that of the Bible and Catholic tradition that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the proposition that they are the same Being in both traditions, apart from some minor creedal differences.” — Robert Spencer and this too
“Deuteronomy 7:16 expresses that command to hate that Moses received at Sinai from the Jewish God Jahwe. It says: ‘You will destroy all the peoples of the earth, whom Jahwe will give into your hands. You shall have no mercy on them.” — inaccurate Biblical quote by Julius Streicher in Der Stürmer
12. People who defend Muslims/Jews are secret race-traitor followers
When it’s not sufficient to bash governments for failing to wage a pogrom on Jews/Muslims, you have to resort to name-calling. Progressive Democrats and others who refuse to demonize Muslims must be Muslims themselves, just as for Streicher the FDR administration had all become Jewish, as if by a bacterial infection. Streicher pre-dated Orly Taitz’s Birtherism and the Tea Party’s obsession with Shariah Law in his “What is Americanism?”
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