Unreported

Remember how the movement to ban Muslims from gathering in Lower Manhattan is really a movement to preserve the sanctity of titty bars protect the hallowed shrine of Ground Zero, and is not – at all!- tied to Islamophobia?

Yeah:

Imam Abdullah Salem arrived at the Madera Islamic Center on Tuesday to find a pair of menacing signs, including one that read “Wake up America, the enemy is here.”

It was the latest in a series of incidents that the Madera County Sheriff’s Department is investigating as hate crimes. On Sunday, a brick nearly smashed a window at the center on Road 26 just outside Madera. Last week, another sign left on the property read “No temple for the god of terrorism.”

It goes without saying that the designer of this sign (it’s being credited to the American Nationalist Brotherhood) obviously has no concept of religious freedom, tolerance, or even the history of New York (Lower Manhattan used to be called Little Syria due to its thriving Arab population). And of course, Islam didn’t attack America on 9/11 – it was the action of a small group of religious extremists.

The sudden fixation on the Park 51 cultural center has nothing to do with the existential threat of ‘them turrists stealin our freedums’ and everything to do with racism, bigotry, and religious intolerance. Of course, if you point out this extremely obvious reality to a red-faced, cardboard sign-waving paranoid, they come down with a case of the vapors.

One need only examine the movement’s leadership to see it’s true. Pam Geller, the inexplicable rising star of the fringe right, has found common ground with white supremacists. Geller is known for her anti-Islam ads which she had put up on New York City buses (for a cool $10,000) that urge Muslims to leave the “falisty of Islam.” Of course, Newty and Palin love Geller, but so does one of the oldest and largest white nationalist forums, Stormfront.org:

Geller’s anti-Islamic blog posts have been shared on several occasions. In January, for instance, “Thunderbird” posted several links to Geller’s writing and that of another Jewish woman who writes for the anti-immigrant hate site, VDARE.com. “Thunderbird” asked her fellow haters whether these “notorious right wing conservative Jewish bloggers are … on our side on many issues.” A compatriot, “GE Bonaventure” replied, “Jewish Nazi’s, Fascists, right wingers etc. are small in number but they can make sense.”

…

And Geller has been defending and working with organizations that are blatantly racist and anti-Semitic. This past June, Geller spoke at an event in Paris put on by the Bloc Identitaire, which opposes race-mixing and “Islamic imperialism.” Geller also is a proud supporter of the English Defence League (EDF), describedby Salon.com as “a far-right street movement that sprang up in the United Kingdom earlier this year to protest planned construction of mosques and to stoke fear of Islam more broadly.”According to the Guardian, EDF members have been involved in violent anti-mosque protests, made violent statements that included the threat that an EDF member may one day “murder” any Muslims he can get his hands on, and has engaged in “racism” and “virulent Islamophobia.”

The defacto leadership of the Republican Party has been – for many months now – the extreme right fringe. The RNC has done nothing to control the violent, racist rhetoric sputtering from its base. In fact, GOP leaders have been completely silent while media personalities – the unceremonious leaders of the party – like Rush and Beck continue their rich tradition of being disgusting racists.

Then, when racism erupted during the Park 51 controversy, Republican politicians clutched their fans and pretended to act appalled. As though there could have been any other possible outcome after months of Republicans encouraging the most fearful, primal responses from their frenzied mob.

Geller, Limbaugh, and Beck have successfully combined hatred of Muslims with hatred of the others (blacks, Latinos, feminists, gays – you know, the fake Americans). Without the presence of adult supervision, they have coaxed their listeners and viewers into accepting that Barack Obama is a creepy foreigner who is not to be trusted. It’s okay. You don’t hate him because he’s black. You hate him because you know he’s inauthentic. You’re just perceptive! And then one morning, we all woke up and found out one in five Americans think Obama is a Muslim.

Not only do they think he’s a Muslim, but apparently they’ve been harboring latent hostility toward Muslims since 9/11. The extreme right has lassoed that hatred into a movement to reject anyone and anything that isn’t white and Christian. At one of the Park 51 protests, two Egyptian Christian men were harassed by the mob. “Go home!” someone yelled. “Get out!” another chimed in. It didn’t matter that the men were Christian. They have dark skin, and so they are part of the others.

In another protest, Kenny, a union carpenter, who happens to be black, is screamed at as he walks through a Park 51 protest. The crowd has mistaken him for a Muslim because Kenny made the mistake of WWB (Walking While Black).

Defenders of the Park 51 protesters claim that not all of their members are racist. Of course not. In any bigoted movement, I’m sure you can find at least a handful of individuals who really believe what they’re doing will protect the motherland, and they don’t have anything personally against _____, but maybe if ______ just tried a little harder to assimilate, this wouldn’t be a problem at all. And then there are the people protesting ______ because their granddaddy hated _____, and their daddy hated ____, and now they’ve taken taken up the mantle of hating _____ because it’s something of a family tradition, but they would never hurt a _____, or anything, and to tell you the truth, they once worked a job with a _____, and he was a nice enough guy.

But the occasional non-racist within a racist movement doesn’t excuse the larger body. The right’s hatred has become so conflated and muddled that it’s difficult to figure out who they hate the most. Is it liberals? Hispanics? Teh Gayz? Blacks? Muslims? Atheists? Feminists? Their hatred runs deep and broad, and it’s why I tend to label it as a hatred for otherness - anything that doesn’t fit into the white, Christian model.

They try to dress up their racism as patriotism – as though their hate will protect America, or hallowed ground, or family values – whatever the buzz words are of the moment. Really, it boils down to the ugliest kind of hate. Thankfully, we have video cameras now to capture the heart of their movement: fear and bile.