Monthly Archives: February 2015

Freedom of Speech

Posted by on 2015-02-15 No comments

I opened today’s Standard Times to see – not in the opinion section but in the news – a piece entitled “Attack on Free Speech.” The article refers to the killing of a filmmaker and the attempted murder of another at what the AP called a “free speech” event. The Associated Press boldly jumped from journalism to propaganda when it neglected to inform readers of details of this supposed “free speech” event.

The victim, 55 year-old filmmaker Finn Norgaard, like most attendees, was probably there just to see what it was all about. Norgaard was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was an inexcusable murder that could have happened to any curious person who went to see what all the fuss over insulting cartoons was about.

The “free speech” event was organized by Helle Merete Brix, the author of numerous books and articles critical of Islam and Muslims. Sort of a Danish Pamela Geller, Brix has made a career of being a professional Islamophobe. In one of her books, “I krigens hus” (“In the house of war”) she maintains that Islam has colonized the West – despite historical proof of the opposite. Norwegian social anthropologist Sindre Bangstad identifies Brix as one of Denmark’s most rabid Islamophobes and notes her influence on mass-murderer Anders Breivik.

Niels Ivar Larsen was a widely-quoted witness to the attack. Larsen is a well-known writer and translator who has called for forcing mixed sexes at mosques and mandating female imams. There is no evidence Larsen has similarly called for a female pope or demanded that Orthodox Jews tear down their mechitzas or ordain female rabbis. It’s fair to say, like Larsen, the audience was largely fixated on expelling Muslims from Europe – not a group of people like, say, James Risen. Risen’s predicament really is about free speech.

The intended victim, Lars Vilks, is a Swedish conceptual artist who, in a dispute with Sweden over two large sculptures, declared the area around them to be a micro-nation he named Ladonia. Between 2007 and 2010 “Sovereign Citizen” Vilks became notorious for creating films of Muhammad, first depicted as a dog, then visualized in a gay bar, employing other devices designed for one purpose only – to insult and marginalize Muslims.

It was at the appropriately-named Krudttønden (Danish for “powder keg”) cultural center in Copenhagen that Brix and Vilks staged their provocation. I use this word because, if words are to have any meaning at all, it is dishonest to claim it had anything to do with “free speech” or an exchange of ideas. They literally wanted to light a match in a powder keg. And they succeeded at the cost of a human life.

What happens if you insult Pope Francis’ mother? The pontiff has already told you. He’ll punch you out. While it is reasonable to lay blame for violence at the feet of a perpetrator, provocations designed to produce violence make provocateurs part of the crime. “Incitement to riot,” for example.

So were these racists, xenophobes, and sovereign citizens really pursuing “free speech” – or were they poking not only Muslims but the rest of civil society in the eye?

If exhibiting hate toward minorities is how a society exercises “free speech” (while actual free speech is limited for “security reasons”) Western democracy is built on an extremely shaky foundation.

This was published in the Standard Times on February 19, 2015
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20150219/opinion/150219344

It’s About Politics

Posted by on 2015-02-07 No comments

Recent letters in these pages have attributed the Charlie Hebdo attack to inchoate hatred of Jews. It is inconceivable or insignificant to the writers that American foreign policy or Israeli domestic policy had anything to do with it.

Similarly, writers Left and Right have reframed the story as one in which democracy and freedom of speech are under attack. “They” hate us for what we have, for who we are, for the freedoms we exercise. From Lindsay Graham to Bill Maher, the only conclusions Americans seem able to draw are (1) Western civilization is at war with people who want to live in the Neolithic Age, and (2) Islam is totally incompatible with democracy. No other narratives are ever used to rationally explain Al Qaeda’s and ISIS’s successes. And we won’t hear of it.

Bin Laden’s November 2002 “Letter to America” in the Guardian addresses two issues: why al Qaeda opposes the West and what it wants from it. The first answer to the first question addressed Palestine. He wrote: “Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple: (1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us. a) You attacked us in Palestine…” To Bin Laden Israel in Palestine was just another example of Western imperialism.

But we know better.

Bin Laden’s other talking points concerned Western involvement in the Middle East and the exploitation of the world’s resources to satisfy a consumer culture he regarded as immoral. He took the West to task for coddling Israel, nuclear hypocrisy, and for U.S. foreign policy and military bases throughout the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

But we know better.

History tells us: that the West carved up the Middle East; that it unleashed Wahhabism against the Ottomans; that the U.S. built Al Qaeda as a proxy to fight Russia in Afghanistan; that “Western” Israel formed Hamas to challenge the PLO; that the U.S. left Shias to die in the first Gulf War and disenfranchised Sunnis in the next; that it inadvertently armed ISIL; that the West’s “coalition of the willing” destroyed and destabilized Iraq, Syria and Libya through regime change masquerading as defense of civilians suffering state terror; that the new GOP Congress wants to add Iran to our national catalog of military disasters.

But we know better.

Didier Francois, a French journalist who was held almost a year by ISIS, was interviewed recently by CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour. When asked about the Western-educated converts to ISIS, Francois responded, “There was never really discussion about texts or — it was not a religious discussion. It was a political discussion. It was more hammering what they were believing than teaching us about the Quran.”

But we know better.

Analysts in the intelligence agencies know that ISIS and Al Qaeda ranks are swollen with ex-Baathists and anti-Assad Syrians. They also contain a sobering number of Western-born and Western-educated Muslims who are radicalized by domestic racism, growing surveillance states, unemployment and consumer culture. They and their lone-wolf brethren are radicalized in part by the realization that their own countries are not quite the democracies they claim to be, and their heritage permits them to see Colonialism with a clear eye. But ultimately they are radicalized by being told to “go home,” that they don’t belong in England or France or Germany. Or the U.S. And by joining ISIS they think they’re going home.

As Didier Francois tells us, though, it’s not the Quran. It’s politics.

And yet we only see a military solution. Americans all-too-quickly resort to war. War is not our last resort. It is pretty much our only resort. As long as we consistently choose to fight without thinking of the political dimensions, the war against ISIS and any future mutations will have only one casualty: our own civil liberties and democracy.

Only after we finally admit our foreign and domestic policies have been a failure and actually encourage recruitment to ISIS and Al Qaeda — and we alter them — will we be able to have any kind of peace.

Until then, we know better.