Muslims, Jews, "punks" and bigotry
Recently, Umar Lee attracted the attention of the notorious frothing bigots of Little Green Footballs and Jihad Watch with three postings ([1], [2], [3]), the first two comparing them to the lynch mobs who murdered African Americans in the early and mid 20th century, such as those in the notorious public hanging picture, which he dubbed a "1950s Little Green Footballs gathering". I have no idea what motivated him to bring up the issue; I've glanced at LGF a few times since I first saw it in late 2003 or early 2004 and rarely glance at Jihad/Dhimmi Watch anymore either. Interesting that this takes place just as the controversy over blogging conduct hit, with Tim O'Reilly (of O'Reilly computer books fame) attempting to get everyone to sign up to a code of conduct (see previous entry). In today's Guardian, Jonathan Freedland suggested that the "blogosphere risks putting off everyone but point-scoring males" and offered what he sees as a representative slice of online debate:
So you're at a public meeting on, say, the war in Iraq and the main speaker has just sat down. Someone in the audience rises to declare the speaker is talking crap, but that's typical of him because he knows nothing and it's a scandal that he's paid for the rubbish he turns out. A second man agrees that the speech was trash, but tells the first man he should crawl back under his stone because he never says anything worth listening to. A third man wonders why the speaker didn't mention Israel, especially given his Zionist-sounding last name.
The first man is now shouting at the second man, insulting him for insulting him first. A woman gets up to make a point about the war in Iraq, but she is rapidly drowned out by a fourth and fifth man now debating Israel and the Palestinians. A sixth man compares the speaker to Hitler and proceeds to read out a 1,500-word article he read somewhere six years ago. If that has an oddly familiar ring, it may be because you're spending a lot of time online, specifically in the new and still lawless world known as the blogosphere.
Umar makes the point, in his third posting, that anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Black bigotry are one and the same thing and tend to emanate from the same people:
I grew up with and around these type of people and I know them all too well. That is why these guys have the smell all over them. These cowards are afraid of blacks and Latinos. A few black families move into their neighborhoods and they flee. If they are so tough, then why don’t they stand their ground? Why don’t they say these things in public?
These LGF clowns have sent me several emails calling me a “nigger lover”, “rag-head” and “goat f*cker” from the safety of their homes, but they would never do it in person. They called blacks “sh*t skins” in the comments, but they would never go to Bed-sty and say that. They sit in their suburbs and talk trash about non-whites but would never even drive through their neighborhoods, much less say these things in public. They pretend to be good people in public, but they are rabid racists. I know their type. You can see it in their posts.
When I ventured into LGF three years ago, I noticed what was obvious: that the news stories were entirely skewed so that only bad stories about violent Muslims (except for a tiny number who issued sweeping denunications of Muslims) were included, that the misdeeds of individual Muslims, particularly when they appeared politically-motivated and even when the perpetrator was obviously mentally ill, were used as "evidence" against all Muslims, that any repressive measure against Muslims was cheered on and any concession, even by a commercial organisation for the purposes of pleasing customers, was attacked (the Alabama driving licence affair being a case in point, the location being very relevant), and that bigots were left to froth unrestrained, in language undistinguishable from racism and some of it actually racist. Jihad/Dhimmi Watch, and its own crowd, was little different. (The design for J/DW, incidentally, was done by LGF.) There was a quiz, published around 2003, called "Little Green Footballs or Late German Fascists?", comparing comments left at LGF with the rhetoric of the Nazis - notably the references to vermin and subhumans and suggestions that people be sterilised.
Still, I have serious reservations about whether you can lump in the anti-Islamic bigotry of the western Right, and sections of its Left, with the murderous anti-Black racism of the past. Sure, some of the anonymous idiots who have responded to Umar's three recent posts have used an N-word or two and some have sent emails with the same word. However, I'm not sure Johnson or Spencer are racists as such even if they tolerate it on their blogs; their agenda is about religion. They support, for example, anti-Islamic Christian politicians and activists in the Muslim world and its borderlands, not all of them white. There is also a danger in seeing yesterday's bigotry in today's: for example, Oriana Fallaci is best known now as the anti-Muslim bigot she became in old age, but in her youth she fought against fascism in Italy, which is where her "authority" came from. In the past, laws were passed in Europe (and elsewhere) explicitly discriminating against Jews (and other minorities) by means of the numerus clausus and dictating where they had to be in the evening; today's discriminatory laws are aimed at groups' normal behaviour, such as prohibiting their clothing or making it difficult for the itinerant to find places to stay, without actually mentioning them by name. One thing remains the same: much of mainland Europe in particular cannot accommodate a distinct minority with a different way of life, but history does not repeat itself. As I wrote on a previous occasion, if there is another holocaust, it will no doubt be perpetrated by people who would be horrified at the thought that they were perpetrating any such thing. In fact, they may even think themselves the heirs of those who defeated the perpetrators of the Holocaust.
I also do not think Umar is the best person to make the point about the link between this type of bigotry and racism - as if it had to be made and had not been obvious for years anyway. Umar in the past has not been above using stereotypes about what he called weak white men or boys who grew up in the 1960s, contrasting them with Black men who at least "didn’t cry and bawl and have the emotions of a ten-year old girl like many white men", on one occasion attributing someone's apostasy from Islam to such characteristics. This isn't racism as such, but it's a mixture of male chauvinism and the sort of class chauvinism that fuels the American right-wing backlash of which Spencer and the like are an example - it's what we call over here "inverted snobbery". Anyone who is not unashamedly "common" is derided as weak, effete and (if they are male) effeminate, and accused of thinking themselves superior. I had to deal with a lot of this at school, and it's common in the media, particularly talk radio, nowadays, here in the UK as well as in America. For what it's worth, I know plenty of men who grew up in the 1960s and are not all that demonstrative with their emotions, and when I think of women of the time, my impression is of very feminine hippies and flower girls, not bra burners.
Second, another site I used to try and read from time to time, and now hardly ever do, is the parallel universe that is Front Page Magazine, in which Robert Spencer's articles regularly appear. The last time, I think, was last year when I read through Joe Kaufman's attack on the entire Muslim blogging community. I hardly need to tell you what that universe is like: everyone is either a river-to-sea Zionist or an anti-semite; nearly all Muslim groups are just fronts for Hamas; global warming is a myth; the Left never did any good, the moderate Left are buddy-buddy with the Communists and they're no better than Nazis. Umar's blog has included a number of dispatches from another parallel universe: "Irish" America, in which the IRA are what they may have been several decades ago, namely a force for the liberation of Ireland from "British tyranny", rather than the mass murderers they became by the time of the Enniskillen bombing, to name just one of their atrocities. One of his most recent postings involved a man named Gerry McGeough, currently in jail awaiting trial for attempted murder, who was tried for bombings of British army bases in Germany. He may not have been involved (he was acquitted), but the IRA still attacked bases which stood to defend France and Germany from (respectively) German and atheistic Soviet aggression. Since when was that a legitimate target for an organisation seeking to remove the British from Ireland? Given that France is mostly Catholic and Germany is largely so, the fact that his organisation did this should give the "devout Catholic" that McGeough supposedly is a bad conscience, to say the least. When the Front Page mob publish articles on the issues that mostly concern them, they never consider that "information" from MEMRI or the accusations of US prosecutors against Muslim defendants is anything but gospel; Umar Lee makes the same assumptions regarding the claims of IRA "veterans" and the propaganda of pro-IRA groups in the USA, never considering that the IRA men they champion are anything other than heroic defenders of freedom, rather than mass-murdering thugs. His mentality is not as far removed from theirs as he likes to think.
I do not think he has done the Muslims much of a favour with his action. He has basically thrown a brick into a big pot of bubbling excrement, and had some of it fly back into his face. What he may well have done is turn the clock back, for the Muslim bloggers, to 2004 when certain bloggers asked me not to link their sites in case a certain individual with a Jewish-sounding name found their blogs and started spewing his abusive dreck in their comment boxes. Umar's blog has been invaded by LGF and Jihad Watch goons who massively swelled his comment count for his first post in the series. Of course, some of us can moderate now, and delete comments en masse which we couldn't as unpaid Haloscan users, and I suggest that anyone not moderating at the moment starts now, at least for a while. As for his conclusion - "that white populism is at the root of their popularity and if you scratch under the surface of the Muslim-hater you will more often than not find someone who hates blacks, Latinos, and a good dose of anti-Semitism" - this is wrong as well. There is doubtless an element of white racism, but LGF and sites like it have long had a heavy Jewish element among their comment writers, which becomes obvious whenever the Palestine issue comes up (see this article: their racism is particularly directed against Arabs, and most particularly Palestinians). Given the Jewish contingent among the bigots who tell us their names, it's a fair bet that many of the jafis hiding behind screen names like "Sharmuta" and "Son of a Monkey and a Pig" are as well. This is not to say that all Jews are Islamophobes or otherwise bigots, but it's clear to me that LGF's conveyor belt of hate carries as much Jewish bigotry as white racism, if not more.
Comments
Where to begin? I might have some small glimmer of sympathy or solidarity if he had been provoked or attacked. When Umar made his first post, I thought there must have been some incident, some debate over at LGF that prompted him to do what he did. It would still have been a terribly stupid thing to do, but at least I can understand losing one's temper after a heated argument. But no, this was a completely unsolicited initiative on his part. I can hardly imagine a more counterproductive use of the medium. Turning the clock back is right.
An interesting wrinkle on the IRA issue is that Umar Lee is very critical of immigrants to the US who maintain attachments to "back home", yet he demonstrates the most ignoble characteristic of diaspora communities: supporting violence in their countries of (distant) origin, not unlike the Tamils for Sri Lanka, the Irish for Northern Ireland, the American Lebanese communities during the Lebanese civil war ... the list goes on.
Posted by: bingregory | April 13, 2007 2:57 AM
"LGF and sites like it have long had a heavy Jewish element among their comment writers... Given the Jewish contingent among the bigots who tell us their names"
Apparently jewish, actually. I've often wondered whether the loopier "jewish" or "muslim" commentators aren't often actually engaged in black propaganda for their apparent opponents. I'm fond of irony myself and I've often found that people take seriously and literally what was meant to point up the absurdity of their beliefs. It doesn't make much difference in practise, as arguments have the same validity regardless of the sincerity of their makers.
Posted by: Thersites | April 13, 2007 10:50 AM
I was born and raised in the American South and also know all too well the racist mentalities that can be found there.
I can remember as a child when Reagan bombed Libya and the racist reaction to it at my school (99% white in Mississippi) and the racist jokes that were made by the same people who were anti-black. (No one should interpret this as support of Qathafi. I am only talking about the reaction)
I can also remember the discomfort the black children felt at this. We weren't on Qathafi's side, but we didn't like these racist jokes either.
The same kids that used to tease black kids with "nigger lips" jokes were the ones that make the anti-Arab jokes.
So, I saw signs of this very early in my life and though - at the time - I was too young to understand the nuances, it nonetheless made me uncomfortable because I knew that these people were racist.
I am relatively new to the blogishere, so I can't judge any "setbacks", but I think that it was useful to demonstrate that there is a lot of overlap between anti-Muslim hatred and anti-black hatred.
I don't see this as being about Johnson and Spencer themselves (per se) as much as it is about a general mentality that is found amongst those people.
Whether or not they are is irrelevent to me, because by them (especially Johnson) relentlessly posting day after day of bad Muslim behavior he is definitely playing into a racist mentality. Whether they know it or not, I KNOW that this mentality exists.
I see pointing to their support of black anti-Muslim bigots (such as Hirsaan Ali for example) as similar to neo-Confederates' saying that the slave owners were not racist because blacks fought in the Confederate army and used to help hunt down run away slaves. (My sister's 7th grade history teacher said that the slaves were happy. This same teacher was one of the anti-Arab "patriots")
I do think that you all have the BNP there in the UK as a fine example of the overlap. Here, the people are much more subtle and will be much more careful and they are much harder to pin down for being what they are: bigots.
An example of the subtle bigotry (without using the n-word) was when a Congressman used Keith Ellison's election as an immigration issue in spite of the fact that he was born and raised here and had been for generations. That was code. But alas, he didn't use the 'n-word' so it was not racism or bigotry.
One of the things I really hate about the "n-word" debate is that the word is now seen as so insideous that if one does not use it, then that person can't be racist.
Posted by: Tariq Nelson | April 13, 2007 11:55 AM
Salaam 'Alaikum
It was my understanding that he became a target for the LGFers and the commenters after he appeared on a St. Louis radio program and that program was written up on one of those blogs.
Posted by: UmmZaid | April 13, 2007 5:00 PM
Your description of LGF is fairly accurate, I think. I find I don't object to this MO, though, since it is a counterweight to a tendency I've noted among Muslims to treat their past, and aspects of their present as well, not historically but mythologically. They define "Islam" as everything good (or, what amounts to the same thing, define everything good as "Islam") and go, glibly enough, from there.
Though Jihadwatch and LGF undoubtedly give too great a significance to many of the ugly little tidbits they turn up, it would be nice if Muslims could sometimes give the impression that they ever acknowledge or accept any responsibility for what is less than inspirational in their present or their history.
Posted by: chainlink | April 13, 2007 9:50 PM
Tariq - I agree completely with your comments about racism. The reason I found the exercise pointless was that the existence of hardcore racism on the internet is a secret to nobody who's paying attention. What's next, an expose on the existence of online pornography? Provoking a flamewar on the internet is easier than letting your beard grow, and less productive. WRT to connecting racism to LGF, while I wholeheartedly agree that LGF and JW are islamophobic in nature and that islamophobia and racism are overlapping phenomena, LGF is already listed as a hate site and blocked by many web filters such as Websense, so this is clearly established already based on the site's contents. What Umar did proves nothing because absolutely anyone can read something online and follow a link. As Yusuf pointed out in the comments, "perhaps the goons who replied on [Umar's] blog are not regulars at either site - a serious possibility in the case of LGF, which has been a closed community for some time now." N@zis show up periodically, even without being baited, on any site that mentions race, no matter how high the level of discourse - Razib's GNXP springs to mind.
UmmZaid (or anyone else) - Do you have a link to the original callout on LGF? The only links I found were in response to Umar's "1950's" post. Clarifications welcome.
Posted by: bingregory | April 14, 2007 3:00 AM
Interesting post. You are spot on about the "jewish" element or rather the zionist stench over at lgf and jw. Umar completely whitewashed this out of his posts. This is not a coincidence as he has belittled the plight of the Palestinians and made some amazingly ignorant statements endorsing zionism in other posts.
Posted by: DrM | April 14, 2007 8:05 AM
DrM, I think you're too obsessed with Jews and Zionism.
There are probably far more people (non-Jews at least) who support Israel because they hate Islam, than people who hate Islam because they support Israel.
Posted by: George Carty
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April 14, 2007 10:34 AM
I'm just call it as I see it, George. The majority of zionists are NOT Jews, which is why I used the term "zionist."
Nor do I think its a coincidence that the IDF counts lgf among its favorite sites.
Posted by: DrM | April 14, 2007 5:04 PM
I'm just call it as I see it, George. The majority of zionists are NOT Jews, which is why I used the term "zionist."
I've just thought of something. There's a lot of pro-Jewish sentiment in the West because of the Nazi Holocaust - maybe Islamophobes claim to be motivated by Israel even if they're not, in order to take advantage of this sentiment?
Posted by: George Carty
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April 14, 2007 5:46 PM
Salaam 'Alaikum
bin g: it was a blurb somewhere. I'll see if I can find it later tonight.
George: I wonder if you aren't on to something...
Posted by: Umm Zaid | April 14, 2007 6:00 PM
Jews are both pawns and players at the same time, a tragic situation?
Posted by: Saggal | April 14, 2007 9:29 PM
Salaam 'Alaikum
Bin G: Umar Lee writes:
"As for Robert Spencer implying that I ran away from the St Louis debate. This is not true and he knows it! Anyone can check the archives of the Dave Glover Show of FM 97.1 in St Louis and the records are clear for anyone who wants to check. Robert Spencer did not show up and I debated Craig Winn instead. I destroyed Craig Winn in the debate and one of the producers said that they had never seen anyone silence Craig Winn like that."
That is why I thought that. But after holding my nose and going over to Mr. Spencer's site (I usually do not read these sites at all, for any reason), I think I misunderstood. It seems like the radio show was a while back, and that this brou-ha-ha started over a video link that was posted on UL's site or another post on UL's site from last week. Sorry for the confusion.
Posted by: UmmZaid | April 15, 2007 12:24 AM
Does anyone know anything about Robert Spencer? He says on his website that his family originates from a Muslim country and he's a Catholic I beleive. Is he an Arab Christian, because if he is, he could easily be attacked on the street by the very racist types who frequent his website. Although they claim it's Islam the belief system they hate, they're venom quite regulalrly morphs in to disdain for Arabs as a race.
Posted by: Raashid | April 16, 2007 2:09 PM
I think it's unlikely that Spencer is Arab, as only a small minority of Arab Christians are Roman Catholics. Most are Eastern Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox.
Divisions within Christianity were crucial to the success of the Islamic conquests. The Ghassanids (the Arab puppet army which the Byzantines used to defend the Levant) were Monophysites, not Greek Orthodox. Due to brutal Byzantine persecution of their co-religionists, they switched sides en masse at the Battle of Yarmuk, thus guaranteeing a Muslim victory.
Posted by: George Carty
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April 16, 2007 9:24 PM
GC: About 25% of Lebanese are Maronites, which are an eastern-rite Catholic grouping. However, eastern-rite Catholics like the Maronites and the Uniates of eastern Europe are not called Roman Catholics, despite following the Pope, because they do not use Latin liturgy and terminology.
Posted by: Yusuf Smith
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April 16, 2007 9:48 PM
Elizabeth Poole, in her close research of the coverage of Muslims in the British news media, argues cogently that the way Muslims are represented in contemporary British news media has its roots in racism discourse. But contemporary Islamophobia is no longer driven by xenophobic nationalism, in my view. Anti-Muslim bigotry is predominantly a middle class affair (hence Muslims aspiring to integrate into the white Middle classes are not beyond co-opting Islamophobic attitudes). And what drives Middle class bigotry is complex and far more intractable than the racism I grew up around. I believe it is tied up with deep seated middle class attitudes over social difference (evident in e.g. the explosion of diagnoses in social-behavioural disorders such as Asperger, ADD, etc). Today's Islamophobia, no doubt given great impetus by 9/11 and 7/7, settled on fertile soil. Hence, my view is that it will take a great deal of digging to rid our societies of this bindweed - and why fighting Islamophobia is such an imperative.
Posted by: Julaybib | April 17, 2007 2:38 PM