… and you end up staring into Nietzsche’s abyss. Dave Weigel starts his new Bloomberg gig by spotlighting “Naomi Wolf and the Search for American Fascism“:
… Wolf didn’t play a huge role in post-Gore Democratic politics, but to my surprise, I met her in 2008 when she spoke at a shambolic, mid-July, brutally hot Ron Paul march in Washington. Wolf had published a treatise called The End of America, which argued that the United States was becoming a fascist state…
All of this is preamble to Wolf’s current obsession, which is coming as a surprise to the people who remembered her from the Clinton years or the Gore campaign. Over the weekend, Wolf took to Facebook to ask why the media was reporting on ISIS’s beheadings of prisoners without asking whether the acts were hoaxed. “It takes five people to stage an event like this,” Wolf wrote at one point. “Two to be ‘parents’ — two to pose for cameras … one in a ninja outfit … and one to contact the media.”…
Partisans no longer want Wolf on their side. On Twitter, the HuffPost Obama endorsement has been circulating to prove that Wolf’s obsessions do not come from the right. True, they don’t — they come from the fringe, which surrounds the right and left, and which is ready to believe that any crisis that spurs new military or government action may have been faked…
It’s best to understand Wolf in that context. She’s not the only person who sees the media hyperventilating about new threats and understands how that could build momentum for wars. She just chooses to fight this by tossing wild accusations and demanding that journalists debunk them. Wolf has been convinced, for at least seven years, that America is slipping into fascism. As an image consultant, she knows that reality can be manipulated to get a rise out of the electorate. She assumes the worst — and complicates the job of people who want to soberly assess the threats of ISIS and the American response.
Aaaand, coming into this discussion from the opposite direction, here’s Bill Maher in Salon defending his “contrarian” stance on Islam:
… I want to ask you how you felt the Ben Affleck/Sam Harris segment went. Did you feel frustrated as it was happening?
I think Sam and I and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Salman Rushdie and everyone who is basically making the same point, I think we all feel frustrated because I think we feel like the people who are arguing with us are not listening.
We’re liberals! We’re liberals. We’re not crazy tea-baggers, y’know, and so it’s kind of hard to be making this case — based on facts, based on polling, I think based on what everybody really knows… I mean, do the people arguing with us, would they really open a lesbian art gallery in Ramallah? [Laughs] Or Karachi? Or Cairo? I don’t know if they would back up what they’re saying with actions…
Right, but if you don’t care about being part of the liberal community, does it really matter if you’re the liberal? Is the label, group, tribe, etc., you associate yourself with important?
No. I mean, I’ve never joined the Democratic Party. I’m proud to be a liberal, I think liberal principles have always been what I’ve stood up for, but I don’t really need the affirmation of an entire community and I certainly don’t need to agree with the majority of liberals on everything. Mostly, I think we’re in agreement; and sometimes my own audience has booed me because they don’t agree with what I’m saying.
But I’ll tell you something interesting… what I think is interesting is that the audience, my studio audience, has really come around on this issue. When I used to talk about it, it was just either stony silence or outright booing and now I notice quite a shift.
Do you think that’s because of ISIS?
No. No, I don’t think it’s about ISIS, I just think it’s because we’ve explained [our position] more and explained it better…
Dude, it’s totally about ISIS, and if you’re not careful you’re gonna end up as the new Donald Trump. This is every cliche about “liberals” as smarmy eggheads who parachute into other people’s business and tell them how they’re supposed to think, if only they (we) were hip like him. I’ll repeat what I said Saturday: Stop “helping” us, Maher!
Finally, speaking of funhouse mirrors, Weigel also notes that Bill Kristol’s worthless son-in-law is using his valve in the Wingnut Wurlitzer to pimp a new James O’Keefe project. From local (Louisville) station WFPL:
… The video by James O’Keefe—who was widely criticized for deceptively editing a video about ACORN in 2009—relies on hidden camera interviews with Kentucky Democratic officials about Grimes and coal, but ultimately doesn’t prove much about where she truly stands on coal.
The video was disseminated with a headline stating that it’s Grimes’ staff members who are talking.
But O’Keefe fails to get either Alison Lundergan Grimes or any of her paid campaign staffers on video. What he gets instead are county Democratic Party officials—from Fayette and Warren counties—and a field organizer…
Grimes’ campaign confirmed that none of the people who appeared in the video were paid employees of the campaign, and released a statement said:
“The United Mine Workers of America endorsed Alison because of her unwavering commitment to Kentucky coal miners. She is the only candidate with a plan to save Kentucky coal jobs and protect the health and safety of our miners. The fact that Mitch McConnell’s campaign relies on an extreme activist with a known history of deceptive projects — one of which led to an FBI raid and federal criminal conviction — is telling as McConnell attempts to make this race about anything but the loss of 25,000 coal jobs on his watch.”…
WereBear
Gee, they have Naomi Wolf crying fascism* and being “exposed” as a lunatic. So if anyone worries about creeping fascism, they can feel like a nut who everyone will make fun of.
News or propaganda, spin that wheel.
*You see what I did there?
trnc
Excellent, to the extent that anyone would follow up on this with MM. Make him own or deny the scumbag.
Mike J
@WereBear: It’s a lot easier to expose somebody as a lunatic if they say that reporters and their grieving parents are faking their own beheadings.
Marc
@Mike J: Also, if they think two and two and one and one equals five.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
Or they could try presenting some actual evidence. The problem with what Wolf has done in this case is that she’s wildly speculating about what might be the case without presenting the tiniest shred of evidence that it actually is.
JPL
@Roger Moore: Yup. She made the news about her.
WereBear
@Roger Moore: Guys, I’m not saying she doesn’t have some bolts not tightened all the way.
I’m saying they deliberately do not highlight anyone sane and credentialed about the US fascism issue, n’est-ce pas?
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
Who should they be highlighting?
Trentrunner
Stop giving Wolf column space. She’s thoroughly discredited, and she’s not a legitimate voice for anything anywhere at all.
Ever.
Clear?
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: Not to be That Guy(tm), but Chomsky has some decent coherent arguments on the point.
Mike J
@WereBear:
She’s been on tour trying to promote a new book. It’s not like the media went back to the 90s to dig up somebody who was now saying stupid stuff.
Suffern ACE
@Roger Moore: people who know something about fascism (pick one: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Argentina, Germany) who can explain how we are like that?
kc
@Roger Moore:
They could just google “Ferguson.”
Keith G
I saw this and began thinking, “Why is the author of the Shock Doctrine going off the deep end about the beheadings?”
Then I realized that’s a different Naomi. The fact is that I am able to forget who Naomi Wolfe is for long periods of time without any diminution to my quality of life.
FlipYrWhig
Naomi Wolf is the one who said that the Obama administration was coordinating with the cops in Oakland to rough up and discredit Occupy, because of the nefarious power of words like “coordinate” and “response.” She’s a goofball and people fall for her nonsense.
VOR
@Keith G: Naomi Klein is the author of “The Shock Doctrine”. And she is out promoting her new book too so also in the news.
Shakezula
Translation: The ISIS stuff is a false flag to distract you from Obama’s plot to cause an Ebola outbreak in the U.S. so he can institute martial law!!
Nope, she’s not a crank.
agorabum
Naomi wolf is not Naomi Klein. Noted just because I was confusing the two myself for a bit…
cokane
Your tribalist thinking really does prevent you from being able to actually address the substance of anything Maher and Harris said in that debate. You’re basically just like Affleck, shouting people down with the accusation of bigot while not listening. You’re exactly what Maher is talking about though.
Your obsession with blue team vs red team thinking just bleeds all over your writing. It shows that you’re not interested in talking about ideas, but just interested in helping the team. Thus “us”, “Donal Trump”, “every cliche about liberals” :[
Edit: I mean seriously, when have you actually rebutted anything the two of them ACTUALLY SAID? When have you even tried to scribe a defense of Muslims?
Major Major Major Major
@cokane: Er, did you mean “Islam”? Because you wrote “Muslims”.
BruceFromOhio
@Roger Moore: OK, so trying to separate taking whacks at the Wolf pinata, and nestling up to this statement:
I’ve been convinced for about 12 years, since the very first time after 9/11 that I heard a news report that contained the word “Iraq.” That spiel by what’s-his-name about fascism arriving in America wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible? Yeah, add the AK47 and it’s on, babe.
“Proof!” we cry. “Pictures, or it didn’t happen!”
OK, at the risk of incurring the ire of the more learned folk among us. Taking the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition, ” a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.”
Let’s see, working backwards, what do we have…
Forcible suppression of opposition? Republicans got that down to a science with the voter fraud crapola. Much more effective at keeping voters away than fire hoses and police dogs.
Severe economic and social regimentation? Yep, just about there with the gap between haves and have nots.
Exalts nation and often race above the individual? Scratch a tea-bagger and lo, just below the surface, it’s a bona fide racist.
A centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader? The states experiment (TX, WI) is still underway, give them just a little more time, and the Koch’s will be delivering the infrastructure to make, make, make it so.
Tack on the fact that the local police and private citizens with firearms can literally, figuratively, and repeatedly get away with murder, in broad daylight, in front of witnesses, in the modern justice system, baby, we are fucked, fucked, fucked, by whatever name you want to call it.
All the ingredients are there. With a captive Legislature and a compliant Judiciary, all America The Beautiful need now is a black swan event and a well-timed megalomaniac, and it’s all over except for the doctoral thesis.
Dissemble.
Ruviana
@Roger Moore: Read some of Dave Neiwert’s stuff. He’s thoughtful and has done his homework. And remember, when fascism comes to America, it’ll be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross (attrib. Sinclair Lewis).
ETA: Or what BrucefromOhio said.
Rusty
Everything I ever wanted to know about Naomi Wolf occurred after reading an excerpt from The Beauty Myth upon which I learned it was a subset of Susan Faludi’s Backlash which I immediately read, cover to cover, and concluded that Wolf was essentially a profiteer from another’s original work. It was no surprise to me when she moved to consulting which is almost always about hyping and selling other people’s original work.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
No, he meant Muslims. Because they’re all bad, don’t’cha know. The woman with a headscarf shopping at my local farmer’s market is just biding her time until she can behead us all.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Major Major Major Major:
Pretty sure Chomsky wouldn’t be comparing himself, or lumping himself in, with Maher.
Very sure, actually.
ETA: Also pretty sure the quality of his ideas are vastly superior to what Maher has dribbled out on the subject.
mdblanche
@Marc: Let’s see… One plus two plus two plus one…
WereBear
@Roger Moore: Lots of good stuff on orcinus. They have work by an honesta-gawd futurist there.
They could find people if they wanted to discuss the issue. But they don’t. Not until something like Ferguson, where it’s freakin’ obvious people are downright oppressed. And even then they dodge it.
Major Major Major Major
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): Maybe I hit the wrong reply button, but I meant commentary on creeping American fascism. Roger Moore was asking who it would make sense for the media to highlight on the topic.
kc
“The Beauty Myth” was published before “Backlash.”
BruceFromOhio
@Rusty:
Consulting helped put the down payment on my house, and allow me to attest, if you can do it, it’s a helluva fun and interesting way to pull down the benjamins. You have to consistently deliver business value to your clients, however, or you get run out of town on a rail.
Unless your clients are idiots, in which case it is grifters paradise. ;)
cokane
@Mnemosyne: On cue, just cudgel debate into silence with disingenuous strawmen. RACIST! BIGOT! It’s the preferred tactic of tribalists incapable of tackling complicated ideas (cf. Likud and anti-Semitism).
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@cokane:
Thanks, Derp.
Mnemosyne
@Ruviana:
Right, but remember that Niewart thinks we’re in a state of pseudo-fascism. We have a lot of the trappings, but we have not gotten there.
As I’ve argued before, IMO what we’re going through is trying to recover from the fascist government we had in place prior to WWII without anyone having to admit that we were already fascists when we started fighting the Nazis. White people don’t get it, but there’s a reason why the Nuremberg Laws were based on the US’s Jim Crow laws. That’s right, the segregated United States was the model for fascism.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
Dude, you’re the one who said we have to defend “Muslims.” Not Islam, but Muslims.
If you can’t see how fucked up that is, that’s your problem right there.
kc
@Rusty:
“The Beauty Myth” was published before “Backlash.”
schrodinger's cat
Why is Maher including Rushdie with himself and Niall’s wife?
BruceFromOhio
@schrodinger’s cat: Cross the streams, and see what comes through the gate?
Baud
I can’t believe Maher claims to be a liberal but then thinks it’s ok to disagree with other liberals….
What’s this world coming to?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I will just suggest that you may want to read more about the history of fascism as a political movement.
Note: I am not denying the connection between the Nuremberg Laws and Jim Crow laws.
cokane
@Mnemosyne: again with your over eagerness to stone the unfaithful monkey, you come up with the most disingenuous reading possible, not surprising. Yes, I expect Anne to defend Muslims and not Islam because I don’t think she’s a believer in any religion, or at the least unlikely Islam. I would expect her to say something like “Not all Muslims” or “History of US/Western oppression of Muslims.” I don’t expect her to say “Religion of peace” nor “ISIS not really Islam.”
But yes keep on trying to square that bigot circle, it just reveals your own intellectual shortcomings.
Suffern ACE
@cokane: and what pray tell would Maher have us do? The right is very clear about these things. Leftie anti-Islamists want to bitch, but they aren’t explicit as to what would make them happy.
Major Major Major Major
@cokane: Asking somebody to “defend Muslims” is on a population level up there with asking them to “defend the Chinese”. It makes no sense. It is impossible to do.
I’d much rather defend Islam than Communism, to extend the analogy… I really don’t understand what argument is being had here. And yes, I did read yesterday’s thread.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
You are incorrect, and she’s very open about the fact that she’s a believer (though she’s not a believer in Islam).
So when Israeli settlers attacked the IDF, you said that all Jews worldwide were equally responsible, right? After all, if all Muslims are responsible for everything done in the name of Islam, then all Jews must be responsible for everything done in the name of Judaism.
kc
“Not all men” – INVALID
“Not all Muslims” – VALID
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ve read a lot about Nazi Germany, not as much about fascist Italy. The United States was a fascist country before fascism was cool and, frankly, continued on after it was no longer cool. How was the Tuskegee Experiment any different than what Mengele was doing at Auschwitz?
Major Major Major Major
@kc: What?
Mandalay
@Baud:
My objections to Maher claiming to be a liberal are much more specific; He has a long track record of misogynistic comments, he complains about the state taxes he has to pay in California, he backs Israel in everything it does against Palestine, there’s not much daylight between him and Cheney on national security issues, and he is just deranged on religious issues.
He seems to think he’s entitled to call himself a liberal because he doesn’t like the drug laws, and he is on the right side of gay rights and environmental issues. Well that’s a start, but he has to do a U-turn on almost everything else he believes in before he can call himself a liberal.
Omnes Omnibus
@kc: Sometimes the person who says “some of my best friends are Black” turns out to be Rick Rubin.
cokane
@Mnemosyne: I’ve never said all Muslims worldwide are responsible for things Muslims do. Nor has Maher. Nor has Harris. If you want a genuine debate, it’s helpful to paraphrase arguments that have actually been made. Unfortunately neither you nor Anne want to do this.
Edit: And like Maher said in the Salon interview, it just shows that you are not listening.
Mnemosyne
Funny, I can’t find cokane’s claim that all Jews are responsible for the actions of Baruch Goldstein. Cokane, can you link me to that? Barring that, please explain for us why all Muslims are responsible for the actions of ISIL but all Jews are not responsible for the actions of Goldstein and other terrorist settlers. Charts will be helpful.
Baud
@Mandalay:
I don’t really pay much attention to him. From what I know, however, I agree with you that he doesn’t fit the traditional liberal mold.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
No? Then what did you mean by “When have you even tried to scribe a defense of Muslims?”
You didn’t say “some Muslims” or “terrorists” or “ISIL.” You said “Muslims.” No qualifier. No limitations.
ETA: And, yes, it’s true, when people attribute the actions of a small group of people to a religion that has over 1 billion adherents, I tune them out as cranks, just like I tune out people who start talking about the Illuminati or the worldwide Jewish conspiracy. I’m just funny that way.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I don’t see much of a difference between the experiments. However, fascism is not institutionalized racism. The Nazis (a fascist party with a large dose of racism baked in) modeled their racial laws on the segregation laws in the US. Yes. The racial laws, though, were not a necessary part of the Nazis being fascist.
Mandalay
@cokane:
It’s true that OPs frequently go for the low hanging fruit, and play gotcha with media figures such as Maher.
But before you get too critical of that approach, imagine that you have to post one or more OPs on BJ every day, which explain and justify your beliefs. That really would take an awful lot of time. Tom does it now and again, but I’m pretty sure that he spends hours writing, and rewriting, those OPs, which are actually wonderfully constructed essays. And then after he’s posted he gets assholes commenting “TL;DR”!
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s a little reductionist to say that Jim Crow was just institutionalized racism, though. It was an entire economic and social system that was built to essentially maintain the social structure of slavery without calling it slavery.
One of the books that sent me down this road was The Nazis: A Warning from History (a companion book to the BBC series) where the authors detail that Nazi society was basically a slave society — they took everything from the Jews, worked them to death, and killed the ones who were no longer useful. There are some really disturbing parallels with what was going on in the US at the time and prior to the war.
cokane
@Mnemosyne: The end of your post is the heart of the issue and reveals perfectly that you have not been listening.
ISIS and its adherents is a relatively small group, yes. But they are not the sole problematic Islamists Maher and Harris were talking about. A number of retrograde policies enjoy broad support according to polling data, such as punishment for apostasy (even by non believers such as depicting Muhammad), wife obedience laws, FGM, homophobia, and verbally disrespecting the religion. These things are codified law in some cases in countries stretching from west Africa to Southeast Asia. The polling results Maher and Harris have cited include multiple countries as well as immigrant populations in European countries. These things enjoy widespread international support among Muslims, illiberalism isn’t a fringe element among the faithful.
I suggest you start with this recent Harris blog post: samharris.org/blog/item/sleepwalking-toward-armageddon
By the way Maher and Harris have both highlighted the work of ex-radical Maajid Nawaz, who has agreed with what they just said. Maher has had countless Muslim guests. So clearly nobody is talking about all Muslims, that’s just a zombie strawman of your own lazy imagination.
cokane
@Mandalay: That’s fair. I should give Anne credit for giving Maher his due response in a way, it was just her blue team, liberaler-than-thou stuff that got on my nerves.
Major Major Major Major
@cokane: you’re the one who wrote “defending Muslims”. Feel free to walk back that grammar, you do have some valid points.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne:
I agree. It also was a backward looking conservative system. Fascism, as a political philosophy/movement, was consciously modernist; it was on the right, but not conservative in the standard sense of the word. As I said, you should probably read more about fascism before going too far with your theory. I think you are extrapolating an awful lot from a few facts and commonalities. YMMV.
cokane
Lemme just add finally, since you seem so intent on adding little irrelevant asides…
If a poll showed that the majority of Jewish people all over the world supported a one-state Israel solution from the ocean and over the entire West Bank then I’d be talking about Judaism. I imagine so would Maher and Harris.
pewforum.org/2013/10/01/chapter-5-connection-with-and-attitudes-towards-israel/
But that’s not what is happening. In a poll result of US Jews, not even a majority believe that Israel is making a sincere peace effort (only 38%), just for one example.
On the other hand
pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-exec/
I suggest you take your time.
Suffern ACE
@cokane: But you still haven’t come up with anything there. There are LOTS of people who don’t share liberal values and would make horrible allies. So? I know full well, for instance, that there isn’t a single legal gay bar anywhere between Greece and Thailand. So what do you propose we do about that? Muslims are in this country are not a threat to liberalism. The biggest threat to liberal institutions are illiberal conservatives.
So again, what do you propose to do? What should the so called “liberal response” to this threat you said exists. You can spell that out. If it is a big enough threat, then what do you do? Ban women from wearing the hajab? Ban immigration from Pakistan? Go ahead…it is going to take quite a bit to convince me that what you propose is worth a further weakening of open institutions. But please. You’ve obviously read more about it than the rest of us.
Major Major Major Major
@cokane: I must have missed the part where anybody was discounting that polling other than by noting the well known notorious difficulty of accurately polling poor countries with crappy infrastructure.
ETA: again please feel free to post your actual argument that you’d like to debate.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
Here’s a poll with identifying information removed. Guess the country:
(snip)
(snip)
Who are these religious nutjobs?
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: probably a bunch of barely literate idiots who don’t understand the question. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
Gosh, what monsters! Oh, and these guys are clearly assholes who should be bombed:
I’m actually even more pissed at Harris and Maher than I was before, because they’re clearly cherrypicking that survey to support their own anti-Muslim sentiments. Fucking assholes.
kc
Wish I could find a transcript of that Real Time segment . . .
Mnemosyne
Compare and contrast time!
Worldwide survey of Muslims:
Re-quote from block above:
Hey, who are those assholes in the second block? They sound just like those scary, scary Muslims that Pew surveyed!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@kc: RCP Partial Transcript.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@kc: I believe DeBoer typed one up as well. You shouldn’t need a librarian to google things for you.
smintheus
@Trentrunner: And she never was. First met Wolf back in the mid 80s when we were in grad school, and my immediate impression was she had a screw loose.
kc
@Major Major Major Major:
I did google; didn’t see it.
Asshole.
kc
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Thanks!
Kropadope
@cokane: Maher and Harris did an excellent job knocking down that strawman they erected. This blue team BS is comes from that same strategy.
No one said that there weren’t bad Muslims in the Middle East doing awful things or that they have a society where a lesbian couple could open a business. What Affleck and the others were trying to get across is that these awful tendencies don’t derive from their Islam faith. They weren’t able to expand beyond that, thanks to Bill’s strawman, but I would say the factors bringing about this extremism include deep, durable, structural poverty; constant fear of death; leadership that is completely backwards-looking or exploitative; and a lack of agency due to those previous factors and the American role in bringing those factors about.
Then to turn around and say that the others weren’t listening or had a tribal response was pure projection on Maher’s part.
Mnemosyne
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Thanks for the transcript. When you combine it with the Pew survey that cokane linked to, you can see that Harris is at best very seriously misrepresenting what the Pew survey actually says.
The actual survey:
Also, if Harris is shocked to find out that majorities of Muslims think that wives should obey their husbands, he really needs to get the log out of his own eye and take a look at what white evangelical Christians right here in the good ol’ US of A think about the same topic. Hint: you could easily switch the names and get the same results.
Major Major Major Major
@kc: sincere apologies. I was in a mood and had no relevant reason to be an ass.
Kropadope
@Kropadope: Oh and I missed this, but of course a large contingent of Muslims, even in Europe and the US, think things like drinking alcohol and making visual depictions of their prophet are immoral. That doesn’t mean that they will get violent about it or try to pass a law about it. They may not even want to pass a law about it. I’m not entirely comfortable with the morality of abortion, but I think it should be legal as a matter of public policy, no question. I wouldn’t even raise the issue except to illustrate that policy preferences needn’t always derive from personal morality.
kc
@Mnemosyne:
Didn’t Harris write a whole book criticizing Christianity? (Though as far as I know, he dirsnt limit his criticism to white Christians.)
Omnes Omnibus
@kc: Harris and Maher are anti-religion in general.
kc
@Major Major Major Major:
Thanks; no worries
Mandalay
@Kropadope:
This.
Hitchens painted himself into a corner over Islam after 9/11, and ended up sounding deranged whenever he discussed it.
Maher is going down the same path.
kc
@kc:
“Dirsnt;” sheesh. “Didn’t.” Can’t edit on iPhone.
Anne Laurie
@cokane:
I am an animist, not a Muslim; it is not my job to “defend Muslims”, if by that you mean “defend Islam”. I am, however, of the philosophical tribe loosely described as liberal, so it is my job to defend our much-maligned political philosophy from those — like Maher — who pretend they’re on “my team” even while espousing extremely illiberal ideas. He (or you) doesn’t get to define “Muslims” as “those people who agree with ISIS” any more than Rush Limbaugh gets to define feminists as “those sluts who want the taxpayer to cover their birth control costs”.
Mnemosyne
@kc:
Harris criticizes all religions, but not equally. He reserves special venom for Islam and frequently talks about how Islam is much more dangerous than any other religion. He’s very slightly toned things down in the past couple of years to sound more respectable, but in 2005 and 2006 he was basically advocating straight-up religiously based genocide.
Remember the hysteria about the Park51 Islamic center in New York City? Harris claimed to be leading the charge against it from the left.
Shorter me: the one thing that Glenn Greenwald and I agree on unreservedly is that Sam Harris is an Islamophobic asshole.
eemom
Naomi Wolf was a college classmate of mine. She is, and always has been, a glorified narcissistic twat…..but this latest is a new low for her. Appears 5+ decades of hair tossing has finally jarred her brain loose.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Your year?
ETA: Never mind. Of course she was in your year. I just point out that hair tossing is sometimes necessary not an affectation. At least it is when my hair gets in my eyes.
Calouste
@schrodinger’s cat: I guess to add some gravitas to his comments, but if you rely on American Enterprise Institute employee Hirsi Ali, someone who’s perfected the grift of being the anti-Muslim Muslim, to support your argument, you’ve already lost.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Calouste: There’s little doubt that Ayan went over to the dark side. But given her personal history, it’s not an unreasonable nor totally unexpected turn. Her book is worth reading even if you disagree with her stridency (and I do). Reducing her to a grifter is a bit unfair, IMO.
[edit:] Fixed URL.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt
Hate to break it to the crew, but “fascism is coming” isn’t a fringe belief, it’s just paying attention.
We’ll take as a working definition the one from Robert Paxton’s work “The Anatomy of Fascism”:
Having read that definition, contemplate these articles for a moment:
Ted Cruz etc record ads calling for voters to “restore American values”
Huckabee urges voters to “make this a nation once again that unapologetically bows its knee before a holy God”
To be sure, we haven’t advanced to where squadristi or brownshirts are *openly* attacking people who disagree. (Well, except for the vanguard of forced-birth terrorists. And the entire police force.) But make no mistake – we’ve seen since 2009 just how many Tea People would be first in line to crack some “liberal” skulls.
In fact, Paxton makes it quite clear that looking for “Nazis” as-such is a terrible way to evaluate for fascist tendencies; each culture and political era is capable of producing its own particular “flavor” of fascism. You may already be familiar with one of the first – started right here in the USA during Reconstruction, with a campaign of racial terror and intimidation, better known as the KKK…
Cervantes
@Matt:
A good book, I agree.
Cervantes
@BruceFromOhio: America is slipping into fascism? The question is certainly worth discussing, I agree.
Even if I might phrase it differently: Are fascist ideas and elements in American political culture gaining strength?
kindness
I’d like to like Naomi but find I can’t. She is all to proudly just another idiot.
CONGRATULATIONS!
She’s not the only one asking those questions. Pat Lang is pretty convinced that the videos are, at least to some extent, faked.
As far as America creeping in to fascism, well, boys and girls, we’re already there. Now we’re just talking about degrees.
BruceFromOhio
@Cervantes: Juxtaposing Citizens United against Ferguson, what happened to Trayvon Martin, and the shitty conduct of elections in Ohio, I’m not certain the nuances make that much of a difference in the end. Democracy dies, and my children live in peril for their upbringing.
And once the shooting really starts, it just goes on and on and on while Rupert Murdoch laughs all the way to Hell and back.
brantl
What was Maher wrong about? There is a substantial presence of extremist Muslims, that take the parts of the “holy book” just the way that they want to, and do what they want to do to other people, just as fundamentalists have done in many religions. There are many violent parts in the Koran, just as their are in the Bible. As far as I know, there are no violent portions to Buddhism, or Hinduism, Taoism or several other religions, are there?
Cervantes
@BruceFromOhio:
Some ways of looking at it (“America is slipping into fascism”) suggest that “fascism” is a thing that “America” as a whole either will or will not slip into.
Other ways of looking at it point to ideas or elements that may already have taken root in America even though the overall system is not (yet?) fascist.
You may not find such distinctions useful, I understand.
Sondra
Funny thing, but I was watching Maher’s show and didn’t think this “thing” with Affleck was a big deal. Maher often says provacative things that are “Politically Incorrect”. See what I did there? Just to get a rise out of his guests.
My take was that he and Sam were more about all religions not just Muslims. He has certainly said some of the same things about the Catholic Church re, the Crusades and has implied much worse re. child molesting Priests.
Sometimes i think we must have been watching different shows.