Multiculturalism: A DHS-caused disaster

When Luther College celebrated an anti-Iraq War “art” exhibit last year featuring a 6 x 6 foot swastika made up of George W. Bush faces, I asked columnist Mark Steyn for his take. He compared it to the irony of the “9/11 was an inside job” bumper stickers: “If the government is capable of pulling that off, don’t you think they’re capable of killing the guy who had the bumper stickers printed?”

Fatuous bureaucratic agencies struggling to justify their existence should be held to Steyn’s sense-of-proportion test. If the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) really feared that “rightwing extremists” won recruits by preying on the “alienation” and “antigovernment” sentiment of moderate rightwingers, don’t you think it'd be wise not to publish a report on rightwing extremism that alienates moderate rightwingers and builds antigovernment sentiment? And if, in contrast, DHS wasn’t terrified of offending moderate Muslims into radicalization, don’t you think it would just call radical Islamists, “radical Islamists,” as it were?

Irony abounds. DHS’s recent report humiliates the rightwingers it fears are so susceptible to radicalization by including in its definition of extremists “individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.” At the same time, DHS secretary Janet Napolitano calls Radical Islam “a man-caused disaster” (fitting DHS’s 2008 push to replace the phrase “Radical Islam” with something unoffensive to Muslims, like “sectarian cult”), testifying to DHS’s fear of the violent rage of offended Muslims.

So now global warming’s hegemony as the great “man-caused disaster” has competition, which might, in a demented turn, anger and alienate the leftwing extremists. As the founder of “Air, Trees, Water, Animals” warned in a 1987 interview:

Why don’t you tell them what’s really going on? Why don’t you tell them the water’s so bad the fish can’t live in it? Why don’t you tell them that the polar caps are melting because they created so much heat with this machine? The truth is, simply, the planet earth is dying.

Such a visionary, that Charles Manson. And recall the record of leftwing extremists in times of economic woes: Perón in Argentina, Castro in Cuba, Sendero Luminoso in Peru, Stalin in Russia, even Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (their totalitarian religiosity puts them on the far left). Indeed, the double punch of the growing enviro-craze and a recession play particularly well to leftwing extremism.

DHS's "rightwing extremists" will find it harder to compete with Radical Islam for notoriety. For when it comes to being radically rightwing, Islamists put in the extra jihad. Your average rightwing misogynist expects his woman to take his last name and stay in the kitchen. Islamists do the same, plus they behead their wives for attempting divorce (see recent beheader Muzzamil Hassan, founder of an understand-Islam-before-you-judge TV program. Uh, yeah, I understand).

Your average rightwing extremist doesn’t believe in evolution. Neither does an Islamist, except when it comes to the Jews descending from monkeys. Your average rightwing extremist is a bigot. The entire Arab world swelters in Islamist bigotry, homophobia, xenophobia, and sexist superstition. Moderation in Islamist Somalia is refraining from beating your daughter when she expresses horror at your dictatorial choice of a suitor to marry her and “unsew” what was mutilated and sewn up when the girl was five. Who is naïve enough to say these traditions end at Ellis Island?

Minnesota’s Muslim Congressman, Keith Ellison, tried to speak at a Fatah-Hamas peace rally last January on the steps of the St. Paul Capitol building, but Hamas ralliers – wildly burning an Israeli flag – brought his speech to an end with boos. An Israeli was in the crowd, but the Hamas chapter leader said “Get the hell out of here you little fa***t.”

I think you get the general tenor of this. It’s anti-government, anti-CNN since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox. And since I can’t really hear much more and I think this is not really family viewing, I’ll toss it back to you.

Er, wait, that was CNN’s response to those “despicable” tea parties, not to the homo-hating, flag-burning, fear-mongering rally in St. Paul.

Surely someone in Minnesota cares that the only American suicide-bomber, young Shirwa Ahmed from Minneapolis, was the worst kind of rightwing extremist: an Islamist. Or that 35 training camps around the US are run by the worst kind of rightwing group: the Islamist Jamaat al-Fuqra, responsible for the Hotel Rajneesh bombing and murder of Danny Pearl. Or that rightwing families in Minneapolis allow girls to play basketball only when the boys aren’t around, in accordance with their interpretation of one of the most powerful guides to rightwing extremism: the Koran.

In Saudi Arabia (talk about “hatred of particular religious groups,” try being Jewish there) women get beaten for walking to the store without a man. And in Somalia (talk about “antigovernment”) there’s no government for girls to turn to when they get raped– it’s their fault for being stupid. Ah, Multiculturalism. Such seductive charm, even the stiffs at DHS fall under its spell.