Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning
On Sunday, Brad Friedman posted a “Toon of the moment” in which a hypnotist sits dangling a watch in front of two stupified voters as Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) look on. The hypnotist tells the voters:
Replace the hypnotist and watch with “illegal immigrants” or a “Ground Zero Mosque” (what the Los Angeles Times‘ Tim Rutten refers to as a “rising tide of Nativism“) and the cartoon would be equally spot on, though this form of hypnosis is utilized by the billionaire-funded hard-right not only to “forget” the disaster that was the Bush/Cheney cabal but to avoid a debate on the Republicans’ cold and heartless, class-based decisions to oppose an extension of unemployment benefits, to block funds for state governments intended to prevent a layoff of thousands of teachers, to block vital environmental legislation, to engage in never-ending privatization schemes, which by design are intended to destroy government’s ability to provide vital public services (police, fire, health care, education), and to repeatedly level false charges of insolvency as part of their scheme to permit the thieves of Wall Street to raid the Social Security trust fund.
Those who are rational and see the mosque as an issue of First Amendment religious freedoms (and common sense) fail to appreciate the visceral appeal of Republican race-baiting, which, in the case of the mosque, seeks to tap into a deep-seated, cultural anxiety that has been created not only by 9/11 but — as I explained in “Hate Speech and the Process of Dehumanization” here at The BRAD BLOG, and in its follow-up — by the vilification of Arabs and Muslims in books, films and on television over a span of decades. It was this same deep-seated and subconscious loathing which permitted the Bush/Cheney cabal to conflate Saddam Hussein — just another swarthy, mid-Eastern bad guy — with al Qaeda for the purpose of invading Iraq.
The politics of Republican fear-mongering and race-baiting exploits cultural dehumanization so as to conflate all Muslims with 9/11. The result is a perversion of that seminal event — which, even under the Bush/Cheney Administration’s own “official theory,” entailed only al Qaeda — into an unprovoked assault by the Muslim world on “Christian America.”
“You know nothing. You remember nothing. You don’t remember George W. Bush or how badly he screwed things up. You love Republicans. They are here to help you. You will welcome them back…”
Dehumanization Makes the Irrational Seem Rational
In The Lucifer Effect, Professor Phillip Zimbardo described dehumanization as a process “by which certain other people or collectives of them are depicted as less than human…
As revealed by Jack Shaheen, a Professor Emeritus of Mass Communications at Southern Illinois University, who conducted a study of nearly one hundred years of motion picture films in which Arabs have been ” vilified,” American culture is imbued by negative stereotypes of Muslims and Arabs.
Where Don Imus was sanctioned for his racist remarks about female, African-American college basketball players, right-wing pundits routinely disparage Arabs and Muslims without fear of reprisal from their employers.
As I noted in the follow-up to “Hate Speech and the Process of Dehumanization,” America’s Eva Braun aka Ann Coulter offered up a series of columns in which she urged that the U.S. “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”; suggested we spy “on all Arabs” and engage in “torture as a spectator sport…” When she was called to task for calling Arabs “camel jockeys,” Coulter replied: “Oh. Yeah. No. They killed 3,000 Americans. I’ll be very careful with my language.â€
I added:
These same pundits would no doubt think you were crazy if you suggested that there should be no churches within one mile of the Alfred E. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City because it was bombed by a “Christian terrorist,” Timothy McVeigh.
Nor do they see any irony in, or have any concerns about, the “Gentleman’s Club” (strip joint) which has long been prospering in downtown NY, even closer than the proposed site of the Muslim community center (where a Burlington Coat Factory was until recently) to the “hallowed ground” of the former World Trade Center.
But the illogical and visceral reaction to the “Ground Zero Mosque” is by no means limited to right-wing pundits. The mosque was openly opposed by The Anti-Defamation League with the “L.A.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center” attempting to take what it deems a more moderate approach of leaving the decision to the 9/11 victims’ families.
Aside from the fact that these organizations seem unaware that Muslims, like Tariq Amanullah, a vice president of Fiduciary Trust International, which was on the 97th floor of WTC-2, also perished on 9/11, one wonders how these two anti-defamation organizations would react if someone were to suggest that we leave it to the family of Rachel Corrie (a 22 year old American member of the International Solidarity Movement who was run-over and killed by an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) bulldozer while she was trying to protect a Palestinian family’s home) to decide whether a synagogue could be built in the state of Washington?
Avoiding the Harsh Reality of Fascist Economics
Time devoted to debating a phony “issue” like a “Ground Zero Mosque” is time that is not spent focusing on the fact that Republican billionaire and gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s “plan” to restore California’s economy is simply a rehash of the failed Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, coupled with a scheme to sell the state to Wall Street. It’s time not discussing KY’s Republican Senatorial candidate Rand “accidents happen” Paul’s ignorance of the mine labor history of Harlan County, KY, or Paul’s insane assertion that the likes of Massey Energy and its despicable CEO, Don Blankenship (already responsible for ecological devastation through mountain-top removal and numerous safety violations even after the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster in which 29 hard-working Americans perished), should be permitted to wreak further havoc, unfettered by federal regulations.
As I noted in “‘Tea Party’ Future: Fascism, Feudalism, Economic Collapse,” former Vice President Henry Wallace wrote in his April 9, 1944, New York Times op-ed:
They claim to be superpatriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjugation.
“You know nothing. You remember nothing…They are here to help you. You will welcome them back…”
First Amendment Defense of Mosque Not Enough
Setting aside the inexcusable backpedaling by both the President and the cowardly Harry Reid (D-NV), Barack Obama’s effort to defend the mosque solely on First Amendment religious freedom grounds, though legally correct, falls woefully short. His audience is not an educated judiciary but a viscerally-manipulated populous who simply do not begin to appreciate the depth of the cynical manipulation or the extent to which they have been culturally dehumanized.
Ideally, if he had not already compromised his credibility by way of the Orwellian speeches he gave to justify escalation of the “war on terror,” the President could and should have used the bully-pulpit to lecture the American public on the process of dehumanization. He has not done so, and it is doubtful that he ever will.
For now, let’s hope that Americans can at least get a glint of what is wrong with this picture from the interaction between Chris Hays and Princeton Univ. Prof. Melissa Harris-Lacewell during the Aug. 16 edition of The Rachel Maddow Show. (video below).
“You love Republicans. They are here to help you. You will welcome them back…”
Update 08/18/2010: We, at The BRAD BLOG are delighted to receive a comment from Dr. Jack G. Shaheen, author of Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, whose work I covered in greater depth in Hate Speech and the Process of Dehumanization: A FOLLOW-UP.
Readers are encouraged to watch a 50-minute video by the same title, in which Dr. Shaheen’s narrative about his study of more than 1,000 films exposed “stereotypes that rob a people of their humanity.”
As applied to this current nonsense about a “Ground Zero Mosque,” the applicable word from the film is “Islamophobia.”
An example of Islamophobia can be found in a letter to the editor from Arthur Senzy of Santa Monica which appeared in today’s Los Angeles Times: “I agree with Obama: We are not at war with Islam. But the president is overlooking the fact that Islam is at war with America…”
Hmmm! That may come as a surprise to the Muslim-Americans who are serving in the U.S. armed forces, and especially to the families of those who died while serving the U.S. military in Iraq.
Among the many powerful observations Dr. Shaheen’s narrative presents is the salient point that motion pictures provide the most powerful medium for “creating propaganda.”
After presenting numerous examples of negative stereotypes about Arabs in general and specifically Palestinians as “terrorists,” Dr. Shaheen states:
Now why are they denied us? Is there an unwritten code in Hollywood saying that we cannot and will not humanize Palestinians? And why can’t we humanize Palestinians in the same manner as we humanize Israelis? Is not the life of a Palestinian child, media wise, Hollywood wise, politically wise, as important, as humane, as valuable as an Israeli child? And if the answer to that is yes, why can’t we see that on the silver screen?
Why indeed!
Chris Hays and Prof. Melissa Harris-Lacewell on the Aug. 16 Rachel Maddow Show follows…
Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).
The Ground Zero Mosque:
Another fear pumping, hate spewing plutocratic wedge issue that Obama tap dances around.
Obama isn’t a President…he’s a conciliator, America needs a staunch leader…not a god damn conciliator.
I’ll be attending party meetings next go round…but they won’t be Dem party meetings…
Color me Green…
I’m done…kaput…
GORDON DUFF: THE GROUND ZERO MOSQUE LIES
ISRAEL’S PRE-ELECTION ATTEMPT TO DEFLECT A NEW 9/11 INVESTIGATION
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
There never were plans for a mosque at “ground zero.†The entire story is made up by a public relations agency working with the Israeli government and the GOP. There are plans for an Islamic center in an old Burlington Coat Factory store blocks away. That far down the island of Manhattan, a couple blocks away is “across town.†The idea that Israel is financing the “Ground Zero Mosque†controversy when Mossad agents were arrested, dancing in the streets on 9/11, is an obscenity.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/08/14/gordon-duff-the-ground-zero-mosque-lies/
@bluehawk
There are many reasons to vote green and to oppose Obama but I don’t really think that this is one of them.
Obama said the right thing. The walkback wasn’t all that bad, I just object to the fact that he felt he had to “clarify” at all–that was kinda gross. For a moment there he was a principled man defending the rights of a minority…and then he was attacked not just by FOX, but as John Stewart noted in your clip…the entire press questioned the “wisdom” of standing by the 1st amendment.
Its CRRRazy that this ever got to be a national issue. It’s not really Obama’s fault that it did.
Am I crazy or is our sensitivity being tested? After a certain amt. of discomfort one tends to get desensitized. Maybe they whisper in his ear about how he has so much time to accomplish his goals that a smooth & steady course is SO much more effective. Yada yada & oh & you’ll make more friends this way… — … maybe the nation is being tested just to see how much we’ll take &people know their President may have sold them out.
Hankydub…
Obama’s walkback is the only reason…it’s all the other walkbacks Obama has done.
Obama is a tool of the plutocrats…just like every other politician. it doesn’t matter who’s in office GOP or Dem…the program remains the same.
I drank the Obama kool-aid…and spit it out. Obama isn’t change, he is business as usual.
Gibb’s blast of the left did more to turn me against Dems than anything…this administration could give a squat about ‘it’s base’…it’s catering to right wing fears to manipulate and divide the people, just like fascists do.
fuck ’em…fuck ’em all
To Ernest Canning…..thank for citing my work and for your brilliant essay on “the other.” drop me an email so we may stay in touch. Best wishes, Jack G. Shaheen
Well Bluehawk I tend to agree with you about Obama generally, but I do think we should moderate our critcism when it really isn’t warranted. It has been a while since I was proud I voted for Obama, but when he took his position on this, I was proud of him and proud of my vote. Not because he took the obviously correct position, but because (in this loony political environment) taking that position actually carries a little bit of political risk for him (because he is a scary secret muslim terrorist).
Hankydub
I fear Obama (and anyone else in the major two parties) actually aren’t choices anymore. They are two brands of vanilla.
Yes I bought the “change we can believe in” crap too. But nothing has changed. Obama has doubled down on Bush’s constitutional violations, played the fear card about Iraq and Afghanistan, passed two do nothing bills that he termed ‘major legislation’…he’s caved in to rabid right wing hysteria at almost every turn…the Dems have had congress since 2007 and congress and the Whitehouse for 18 mos…but nothing has changed.
That’s pathetic…it’s not incompetent though. They’ve done their job by keeping the status quo in place…while using the rabid batshit crazy right wing and tea baggers as an excuse for doing nothing. The Dems had the power and the votes to effect revolutionary change…but they didn’t.
So I’m done with the Democratic party…
I think, BlueHawk, that one has be careful not to ascribe blue dog fever to all Democrats. There are real progressives within the Democratic Party, Kucinich being but one example.
Given the overwhelming advantage of corporate wealth, progressives need to find a way to unite during primary challenges within the Democratic Party and, if that fails, to unite behind a progressive third party candidate in the general election.
The problem is media.
We know that, on policy, the overwhelming majority of the American people are far more progressive than their “representatives” in Congress. The problem is that the corporate media insures that elections are not determined by the policy positions of the candidates which are seldom discussed. Instead, the outcome is determined by PR images.
What is needed is a well-organized, cross-party movement to educate the American electorate as to where each candidate stands on the issues that matter. That, and the elimination of unverifiable e-voting systems is a prerequisite to meaningful “change we can believe in.”
Ernest…I understand what you’re saying.
From my perspective blue dogs are simply opportunistic republicans, they’re Dems playing to a republican electorate. Dennis Kucinich, Anthony Weiner, Allan Grayson and even Ron Paul…along with Bernie Sanders (not a Dem, but progressive) and Al Franken are but a few sane voices in a sea of corruption.
I wholeheartedly agree about the corporate money/media influence.
The media is indeed the problem, but as long as the media is controlled by right wing corporate interests the truth is fucked.
You make valid points…but I’m starting to think that changing the system by working with it isn’t the answer…this system has been on a downward spiral for 30 years, this system has corrupted the legislative, executive and now the judicial branch of government.
Personally I think the only change will be to Gandhi like stop the system by not serving it…spin our own cloth and make our own salt; as it were. Sit down in the streets and not be moved.
Lefties still can’t go more than a few minutes without mentioning President Bush – you do realize he has been out of office right? I suppose ruminating about Bush is easier than confronting the idea that President Obama may be a worse president than Carter.
Michael –
Apparently this is your first time here. We do more than “ruminate” about that, we discuss Obama’s failings ALL the time here.
That said, Bush was the worst “President” this nation has ever seen and we will keep discussing his failures so long as this nation continues to pay a direct, horrible and unprecedented price for them (and as long as his predecessors, appallingly, fail to hold ohm accountable for his crimes against this country).
Don’t be a stranger! You might just learn something here, Michael!
Apparently righties just can’t stand it when we point out just how dramatically their republican presidents have failed us. Any time Bush is criticized they instantly begin to whine and put.
Rub some dirt on it, Michael. Your Jesus/President is going to get criticized here, because he was illegitimate and he was a catastrophic failure to boot. Might as well walk it off, suck it up and grab yourself a tissue.
Brad, it’s successors, not predecessors. Although I have to say none of W’s predecessors who are still around seem to be holding him to account in public, either, but they don’t have any power to do anything more than talk about his crimes any more, unlike his successor, who has a whole executive branch at his disposal.
Michael would you like some cheese with that whine ?
Oh, and Michael, I’d rate President Carter as a far better President than any of his successors (Republican or Democrat), though his true humanity and courage did not come to the forefront until after he left office.