First, on Sunday, George Will, perhaps the leading regurgitator of conservative conventional wisdom in Washington, declared the fervor over Park 51 “an August story, that is, it’s a slow news time … And you can always tell a fundamentally weak story because it turns on sensitivity.”
Yesterday, Dr. Ron Paul chastised the tea bagger base for buying into Republican spin demonizing Islam.
And now Newt Gingrich, the biggest rat in the GOP-Tea Party, has jumped ship, reneging on appearing at an anti-Park 51 rally planned for Sept. 11 — just one week after he raised the hopes of the GOP faithful by comparing the liberal, peace-seeking Muslims behind the Park 51 Islamic center with Nazis:
“We ought to be honest about the fact that we have a right and this happens all the time in America,” he said.
“Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington,” Gingrich insisted, speaking of the museum where just a year ago a guard was killed by a white supremacist trying to enter the building with a gun.
Gingrich then went on to claim that “we would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor.”
“There is no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center,” he said.
(Note to Gingrich: there is a Shinto shrine a few miles from Pearl Harbor.)
Riding high on those comments from Gingrich, the hate group Stop Islamization of America (SIA) announced that he would be part of an all-star line-up for a rally against the Islamic community center, that included tea bagger racist-influencer Andrew Breitbart, neo-con warmonger John Bolton and a Dutch anti-Islamic extremist named Geert Wilders.
Now, SIA has learned what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the Gingrich spin machine — not only will he not be attending, the idea that he was ever going to attend was just a screw-up by an incompetent junior staffer:
[A] spokesman for Gingrich, a possible 2012 presidential candidate, told The Hill that the former leader of the House had never confirmed his appearance. Instead, one of Gingrich’s staff had agreed to send a video message from him to be shown at the Sept. 11 rally.
That has since been canceled…
[Gingrich spokesman Joe] DeSantis did not comment on why Gingrich was no longer planning to send a video message to the rally, and attempts to contact the organizers of the rally were unsuccessful.
Another blowhard, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., has also bowed out, claiming too many other commitments on 9/11.
Could it be that these two GOP pols, Gingrich and Rep. King, who’d probably like to preserve their careers in mainstream politics after this “August story” blows over suddenly became aware that the protests against Park 51 are being driven not just by SIA, but also by a group called SANE, the Society of Americans for National Existence, that seeks to outlaw the Muslim religion in the United States, and that according to reporting by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, has previously claimed that African-Americans are inherently violent and that discrimination written into the Constitution by the framers against blacks and women was a good thing.
For what it’s worth, you can lay odds that Breitbart won’t be cancelling.
Gingrich, King, Geller, Palin, Hughes, Fuchs Noose, and rw radio entertainers and politicians love to create and promote any controversy that causes trouble for the president and democrats. These folks aren’t patriots. They have no concern for the lives of our soldiers operating in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.
The only reason I can possibly think of for King and Gingrich to distance themselves from this event is that someone in the Republican Party has spoken to them, especially concerning associating themselves with Geert Wilders, who is an unabashed Islamophobe. I’ve been following Wilders through the SCLC, One People’s Project, and Lady Liberty’s Lamp blogs. He’s one nasty, xenophobic individual and is much farther to the right than most rw politicians in this country. I guess King and Gingrich decided they didn’t want to lie down with dogs for fear of getting fleas. They really don’t have to worry about getting fleas. They already have them. They are the same breed of dog as Wilders.
Gingrich is a coward and a womanizer…do you honestly think that a man such as this should be invited to anything other than this type of hate-biased gathering. If he runs for president, I am going to start a breast cancer survivers website against him. People should know that this cowardly, wimp visited his second wife when she was in the hospital recovering from breast cancer surgery and the purpose of the visit was not condolences…he visited to ask for a divorce. Women have long memories.
Although I seriously doubt that the editors of this site would even consider allowing my comments to be published, I humbly submit these observations so that if they do get published, it will give those whose knee-jerk reaction is to describe Geert Wilders as an extreme right-wing fascist some perspective on why that characterization is false or to label anyone who expresses reservations about the dangers Islam may pose to Western civilization as “Islamophobic”.
First off, the term “Islamophobia” is a term invented by the Council on American Islamic Relations, which is a part of the Muslim Brotherhood (according to the Brotherhood’s own documents) and an un-indicted co-conspirator in funding Hamas terrorism.
Second, “phobia” means an irrational, unreasoning, or baseless fear. Would it be irrational or unreasonable to fear a doctrine which promotes a totalitarian, misogynistic, fundamentally anti-democratic total belief system for the regulation of every aspect of human life which advocated violence against women and gays, female genital mutilation, denial of freedom of speech and the press and the genocide of the Jews? Would it be irrational or unreasonable to fear a doctrine which preaches permanent war against the non-believers until EVERYONE, believer and non-believer, is forced to submit to its laws and strictures which deny freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of the press, and freedom of conscience.
However, like it or not, that is what Islam’s authoritative sacred texts preach. Islam is not a religion of peace as many non-Muslims who have not read its sacred texts have naively and stupidly proclaimed. It is, in fact, a belief system of permanent, unrelenting war against all non-believers until the world domination of Islamic law is achieved. (For all the knee-jerk liberals who find this hard to believe, I urge you to actually read the Qur’an as I have, in particular, the Al Maudoody translation which is deemed both authentic and authoritative by Al Azhar University in Cairo, the leading authority on Islam and Islamic law.
Third, nobody has “hijacked” Islam. I defy anyone on this site to find any sacred Islamic text STILL CONSIDERED VALID today by ISLAMIC scholars that contradicts what bin Laden, Zwahiri, Al Awlaki, the Ayatollah Khomeini and the other violent jihadists claim Islam preaches.
While the vast majority of Muslims do not engage in violent jihad against non-believers, it is vital to understand that those who choose not to engage in jihad are NOT choosing to FOLLOW a religion of peace, they are choosing to NOT FOLLOW a “religion” of war. For now, at least.
In the early part of the 20th century, one man wrote a book which advocated world domination by a race of men to which he fancied himself to belong and preached genocide of the Jews. That book is Mein Kampf. Its author is the textbook definition of an extreme far-right fascist and is almost universally reviled. His book is banned in many European countries. So, how exactly, is Geert Wilders an “extreme far-right” when he opposes the misogyny, jihad, and virulent, genocidal anti-Semitism which form an integral part of Islam? Since when, then, does being OPPOSED to a belief system that denies freedom of speech, freedom of consciences, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of religion, women’s rights, and gay rights make you a far-right wing fascist? If the author of Mein Kampf and Geert Wilders stand for diametrically opposite positions, how can they logically both be “extreme right-wing faschists”? And what does that make the left and far-left who oppose Wilders?
No, Marty — We are liberals. We don’t censor ideas with which we don’t agree, and we prefer to let the sort of bigotry you’ve expressed here stand. There’s no disinfectant like sunlight. (What we censor generally are vile racist slurs that right wingers feel they must share with us.)
You say you’ve read the Koran. Have you read the Old Testament? Nearly everything you find so outrageous in the Koran can also be found in the Old Testament. As far as I’m concerned, personally, there’s not a dime’s bit of difference between Christianity and Islam. What’s different is the cultures in which they are practiced. Our culture has progressed because we have simply chosen to ignore the Bible’s bloody bits — stoning to death for adulterers, pagan/non-believers, disobedient sons, brides who are not virgins, etc.
Liberal and moderate Muslims in many cultures simply ignore the Koran’s bloody bits, too. Strategically, the only smart choice is to make the liberals and moderates our allies and let them know that we shun right-wing bigotry in our culture — which is one reason I, as one who does not adhere to any Abrahamic faith, support Park 51; the other reason is that thousands of American troops have died to preserve their right to build it — and encourage them to do the same in theirs.
The disastrous course is to do what the American right wants us to do: Bomb the hell out of them. That just creates more extremists in their culture, as it would in ours if we were being bombed by drones, day in and day out.
As to the left-right thing, Adolph Hitler, Geert Wilders and Osama bin Laden are all right-wing sociopathic fascists. There’s no debate about that.