Eyes Wide Shut: Political Correctness and Islam : Edward Cline
http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2015/12/eyes-wide-shut-political-correctness_40.html
Remember that “Attack Watch” slogan of Obama’s near the end of his first term, “If you see something, say something,” when he was trying to get Americans to inform on other Americans who were vocally critical of him? In this case, Syed Farook’s neighbors saw something, but didn’t say anything, for fear of being labeled racists or Islamophobes or profilers.
Stephanie Condon wrote in a CBS report in September 2011, “Conservatives mock Obama’s ‘AttackWatch.com,“:
Anticipating a nasty fight in 2012, President Obama’s re-election campaign on Tuesday launched a site, called AttackWatch.com , designed to push back against attacks on the president’s record.
“We all remember the birth certificate smear, the GOP’s barrage of lies about the Affordable Care Act, and the string of other phony attacks on President Obama that we’ve seen over the past few years,” Jim Messina, Obama for America’s campaign manager, wrote in an email to the president’s supporters. “There are a lot of folks on the other side who are chomping at the bit to distort the President’s record. It’s not a question of if the next big lie will come, just when — and what we’re prepared to do about it.”
Yet so far, the site seems to have been most effective at giving conservatives more ammunition against the president. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin is referring the initiative as the “snitch police squad“, while the conservative site Human Events is calling it the “little brother initiative.” The Drudge Report, the news aggregating site popular among conservatives, features a link to AttackWatch.com under the headline, “See something, say something,” in reference to the Department of Homeland Security’s public awareness campaign.
Its “public awareness campaign” to the contrary notwithstanding, the DHS has done its bit in frightening Americans to not “say something,” being one of the biggest vehicles of politically correct thought and speech. And Redlands neighbors’ not “saying something” worked out very well, to Barack Obama’s benefit. It allowed him to dig up that hoary old chestnut, “workplace violence,” and also to grandstand again for more gun controls.
Had these neighbors the courage to notify law enforcement authorities about the frequent presence of Middle Eastern-looking strangers in the vicinity and the unusual activities at Farook’s house, the San Bernardino terrorist attack would not have occurred. The police would have found the arsenal of weapons and pipe bombs in Farook’s house. They would have pulled up the DHS’s record of Farook’s comings and goings. They would probably have found the packaging those weapons and materials came in. They might have learned the true identity of Farook’s “wife,” and where she actually came from.
They would have discovered, not the makings of a neighborhood Tupperware party, but the preparations for another major Islamic jihadist attack.
All that might have happened had not many Americans been intimidated by the MSM and the White House and the PC police into “not saying something” to the authorities.
On one hand, one can’t blame them for not speaking up. How many Americans today want to risk being painted with the “racist,” “Islamophobe,” “bigot” brush, and often to their own detriment? How many of them could afford the legal representation to counter the smears?
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Another Islamic Face of Evil,
Tashfeen Malik, Farook’s wife |
On the other hand, how many of them have allowed their minds to shut down, to allow their freedom of speech to be abridged by the risk of inviting slurs and character assassination? To shut down one’s mind is an act of volition, of choice. How many of them see what they see yet contemplate it with “eyes wide shut” – that is, seeing the evidence before their eyes yet denying or suppressing its reality and significance? How many are guilty of refusing to acknowledge reality, the facts, and the truth?
Caroline Glick, in her Jerusalem Post column of December 3rd, “Column One; America’s pathological denial of reality,” asked:
How much lower will America sink before it regains its senses? Wednesday, two Muslims walked into a Christmas party at a community service center in San Bernardino, California where one worked. They were wearing body armor and video cameras and carrying automatic rifles, pipe bombs and pistols. They opened fire, killed 14, and wounded 17.
The murderers, Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik were killed by police.
Speaking to the Daily News, Farook’s father said his son, “was very religious. He would go to work, come back, go to pray, come back. He’s Muslim.” Farook’s neighbor told the paper that over the past two years, Farook exchanged his Western dress for Islamic gowns and grew a beard.
These data points lead naturally to the conclusion that Farook and his wife were jihadists who killed in order to kill in the name of Islam.
But in America of December 2015, natural conclusions are considered irresponsible, at best.
Farook’s neighbor ought to have reported the transformation to the authorities. He didn’t. He was unable or unwilling to follow those “data points” to a conclusion. He could only sense where they could lead to. Possibly he was afraid of immediate repercussions, of personal recrimination if it turned out that Farook wasn’t up to no good. Just because Farook was looking more and more like a standard, unassimilated Muslim and less like one who was well-adjusted to American standards, apparently wasn’t good enough a reason to take action.
I have few occasions or reasons to quote Franklin D. Roosevelt, but there is one thing he said early in his first inaugural address in 1933, a statement whose sentiment applies today as well as it did eighty-two years ago. The sentiment has always stuck in my mind because it intrigued me.
This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
Fear of something can cause one to not take action against that something. Fearful indecision can emasculate one’s capacity for action against that which causes one’s fear.
It took the FBI a few days, but it finally decided that reality trumps fantasy and the denial of enemy action, and that the Farook/Malik attack on the San Bernardino Inland Regional Center was indeed a terrorist attack. The Washington Post reported on November 4th in its column “San Bernardino attacker pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader, officials say”:
One of the two people involved in the San Bernardino attack that killed 14 people pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, the clearest indication yet that this was an act of terrorism, according to two law enforcement officials.
The clearest indication? Isn’t that evidence enough? It’s just an indication, which together with all the other evidence proves an attack by Islamic jihadists, with or without ISIS’s endorsement or sanction? I keep picturing our dhimmified FBI putting its finger to the wind to determine which way it’s blowing. How scientific, how technologically advanced! You aren’t allowed to think “Islam,” but in the end, you must think “Islam.” Thinking and not-thinking of something can only lead to the destruction of one’s mind. We see that in the fancy epistemological dance steps our authorities are taking. But reality is merciless and won’t let you get away with not seeing. A cannot be A and non-A at the same time.
Since the massacre Wednesday — which also wounded 21 people — officials have scrambled to determine whether they were looking at a terrorist attack or an extremely unusual and lethal case of workplace violence. They have also revealed that the attackers had amassed an arsenal of explosives and ammunition, suggesting the possibility of further violence. [Italics mine.]
Workplace violence? That bewilderingly evasive, politically correct, and obscene, cowardly term “popularized” by Janet Napolitano when she was head of the DHS, on the occasion of the Fort Hood massacre by Nidal Hasan? After all, Farook and Malik entered Farook’s “workplace” and proceed to do violence against its employees. Ergo, it was “workplace violence”! (Actually, the term has a long history, and has gone by other names, so she didn’t coin it, strictly speaking. She merely revived it, which caused ongoing mockery of her and of the term.)
The official said the FBI was perplexed in the days after the attack and was still searching for clues that would indicate radicalization on the part of either one.
There’s Islam, the “peaceful” religion. And then there’s “radicalized” Islam. There’s the “peaceful” Islam which calls for killing Jews, enslaving or killing non-Muslim infidels, in the name of Allah, commanded by Mohammad. And then there’s “radicalized” Islam, which calls for killing Jews, enslaving or killing non-Muslim infidels, in the name of Allah, commanded by Mohammad. We mustn’t confuse the two, you see. It’s so easy to be “perplexed” about a motive. However, you can no more “radicalize” Islam than you can find the square root of one. You can’t be “radicalized” by Islam unless you are open to committing violence, not unless you have a simmering urge to kill that’s repressed but screaming to get out. You can’t be “radicalized” by a nihilistic “religion” unless there’s a kernel of nihilism in you already, nurtured by Islam.
“The FBI is chasing down any contacts these two may have had and whether those contacts are indicative of radicalization or external plotting or are purely incidental,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
The congressman said the shooting did not appear to be “an act of spontaneous workplace violence.” But, he said, it could have been the culmination of a longer-term grievance.
What a priceless understatement: The massacre could have been “the culmination of a longer-term grievance”! Such as a hatred of the West, of America, of life itself? No, the congressman and his ilk in the MSM and law enforcement refuse to entertain that impolitic possibility. They wouldn’t want to appear to be bigoted against Islam.
In the meantime, Attorney General Loretta Lynch wasted no time inveighing against, not the killers, but “anti-Muslim rhetoric.” I am assuming that this and my other columns over the years about Muslims and Islam qualify as “anti-Muslim rhetoric.” I call it freedom of speech. I call it identifying evil and expounding on why it thrives in this country and why Islam has no place in America. Lynch delivered her remarks at the 10th anniversary celebration of the founding of Muslim Advocates, which, like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-connected Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), is a purported Muslim civil rights organization.
Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, in her December 4th article, “Attorney General Loretta Lynch: ‘Actions Predicated On Violent Talk’ Toward Muslims ‘Will Be Prosecuted,’” reported on Lynch’s barely-disguised warning to those who engage their freedom of speech to warn against the depredations of Islam. Drawing on BuzzFeed’s account of Lynch’s address to the Muslim Advocates, she wrote:
“My message not just to the Muslim community but to all Americans is ‘We cannot give in to the fear that these backlashes are really based on,’” Lynch said.
Geller: What backlashes? Americans have been slaughtered at a Christmas party in the cause of Allah. This is Sharia enforcement. This is sedition by the Obama administration. This should not be the response of the wholesale slaughter of American “unbelievers.”
Speaking at Muslim Advocate’s 10th anniversary dinner, the attorney general said, “We cannot give in to the fear that these backlashes are really based on.” Speaking at Muslim Advocate’s 10th anniversary dinner, Lynch said since the terrorist attacks in Paris last month, she is increasingly concerned with the “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric … that fear is my greatest fear.”
Disturbing anti-Muslim rhetoric? Where? In the streets? At home? Oh, that’s right. On blog spots like Geller’s and Robert Spencer’s and Daniel Greenfield’s and a dozen more, including my own. Or in the statements of political candidates. Her greatest fear is not about possibly being gunned down by Muslims in combat gear at her Christmas party. And she isn’t much concerned about the victims in Paris or the victims in San Bernardino. Her sympathy rests with the alleged victims of that “anti-Muslim backlash,” a “backlash” that never actually materializes.
Following the Paris attacks, there has been an uptick in violent attacks on Muslims and threats against mosques across the country. That, combined with heated political rhetoric such as GOP presidential front runner Donald Trump’s call to register Muslim Americans, has Muslim community leaders worried that they could be facing a new era of discrimination.
Lynch made it clear that she shares those concerns, but vowed to use the DOJ to protect Muslims from discrimination and violence. Noting the rise in violence against Muslims and mosques in the wake of the Paris attacks, Lynch added that, “When we talk about the First amendment we [must] make it clear that actions predicated on violent talk are not American. They are not who we are, they are not what we do, and they will be prosecuted.”
So, by “predication,” is Lynch saying that if someone reads my column and goes out and smears a mosque door with pig’s blood, or gives a Muslim the finger on a public street, my “violent talk” – what a contradiction! Talk isn’t “violent, it has no metaphysical power to hurt anyone, except perhaps their ‘feeling’” – he could be arrested and charged with a hate crime, and I could be charged with “hate speech”? See the video of Lynch pontificating on “violent talk” here, courtesy of the Daily Wire.
Has she anything to say about the “violent talk” or “anti-infidel rhetoric” that can be found on various Internet social media that can “radicalize” the Farooks and Maliks of America and which “predicates” their violence? Probably not.
I wonder what she would make of this. IPT’s John Rossomando reported on December 4th that
On Thursday a leading ISIS propagandist who tweets under the handle Muslimah congratulated Farook and Malik for the San Bernardino assault, calling them martyrs.
“May Allah Accept Our Brother & Sister who were martyred after carrying out an operation against Crusaders in USA,” she tweeted.
I’ll bet you didn’t know that people with disabilities and in wheelchairs attending a Christmas party were “Crusaders.” But if you’re not surprised, it means that you know that Islamic jihadists regard civilians and non-combatants and even children as legitimate targets, just as Jews are in Israel and everywhere else.
“What is greatly concerning to us is the rise, I remember 9/11 and those were very disturbing days, I heard some disturbing things from people that I never thought I would hear (Video appears to have been edited at this point to remove something Lynch said) the rise of the internet, the ability of people to issue hateful speech of all types from the anonymity of a screen obviously increases that hateful rhetoric,” she added.
“Now obviously this is a country that is based on free speech, but when it edges towards violence, when we see the potential for someone lifting that mantle of anti-Muslim rhetoric… when we see that, we will take action.”
Lynch is “edging towards” committing the violence of government censorship. This should not surprise anyone. Obama nominated her as a soul-mate who would fit his political agenda, and she was Attorney General Eric Holder’s first choice of successor in that office.
Daniel Greenfield, in his FrontPage article of December 4th, “Attorney General Tells Muslim Pro-Terrorists She Will Crack Down on Anti-Muslim Rhetoric,” not only noted everything in Geller’s column, but also some interesting information about the head of the Muslim Advocates.
Muslim Advocates, headed by Farhana Khera, who peppered a smiling Lynch with questions about “anti-Muslim rhetoric”, had played a significant role in crippling DOJ investigations of Islamic terrorism by eliminating training materials about Islamic terrorism.
Khera had vocally opposed the sorts of sting operations that had succeeded in capturing a number of ISIS terror plotters before they were able to act. A similar sting might have stopped the San Bernardino massacre. She had opposed the FBI recruiting informants and supported Muslim leaders linked to terrorism. She had even defended terror charities like the Holy Land Foundation.
And she and another Muslim Advocates figure had urged Muslims not to provide information to the FBI. “Any information you provide to the FBI can be used as the basis for further surveillance and investigation of your community,” a Muslim Advocates lawyer had said. “So you really don’t want to be putting yourself in a situation where you’re providing anybody with information about people in your community that the FBI is now gonna follow up and start investigating those people.”
Loretta Lynch, Farhana Khera, and Tashfeen Malik – a “Band of Sisters” and enemies of America, united in their resolve to punish “thoughtcrime,” “hate speech,” and “Islamophobia,” and any other kind of thought and speech they can think of. As long as it can be throttled and prohibited by Sharia law. Political correctness is one of Islam’s most effective allies.
Political correctness is a destructive censoring power itself. One can choose to censor oneself, or it can be imposed on one by an external “authority.” It demands that we see without seeing – “eyes wide shut” – and become easy prey for the murderous “crusaders” of Islam or their mouthpieces and defenders. Their purpose is the conquest of our minds – or their erasure.
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