Eppur Si Muove: Extremist and Terrorist Cultural Exchange
There was something quite striking in the recently exposed inane neo-Nazi plot to assassinate Barack Obama, reported here. In their plan to kill 88 black people and behead 14 on the way to their goal, it struck me that these idiot criminals were actually borrowing a fair amount from their Muslim terrorist counterparts in the Middle East.
Beheading? It's not what we associate with white supremacism in the United States. The way in which the terrorist KKK spread their terror, with enormous success, in the black community, was lynchings, cross burnings, even church bombings, but beheading? Clearly this was picked up from elsewhere. These folks saw the Zarqawi videos, saw how precisely blood curdling awful and terrifying they are, and decided that surely this was the way to make their mark, and to sow the seeds of fear among America's tolerant populations of white and black alike.
One can readily see why. Unlike earlier white terrorism against blacks (I use the term terrorist deliberately, if the point of lynchings wasn't to terrorize black people to ensure their submission, then please someone tell me what the point was), this terrorism is no longer supported by any really large community in the country. I'm not saying there isn't racism, I am saying it's pretty hard to publicly hang a person in this day and get away with it very easily. So that makes the lynching hard.
Then look at these guys, they are in Zarqawi's situation. They are WHITE extremists, jealous of WHITE power, and angry at the very notion of peaceful interracial relations in the country, and the resulting discrediting of their ideology for some set of ideas they hold in such deep contempt. What they want is what Zarqawi wanted, a race war, partly for the sake of killing the other, but also to galvanize one's own group, to extremize them mainly through starting a killing cycle. And it seemed to work pretty well for Zarqawi in Iraq, so why not copy the tactics? (I'm not suggesting that the results are the same or that race in America is exactly like sect in Iraq, I am saying these guys wanted the same thing and tried to replicate the techniques to achieve their aims).
The irony of course is that these neo Nazi white supremacists aren't about to admit they got an idea from an Arab Muslim, not to anyone including themselves I surmise. So I don't think they ever consciously made the connection. In addition, they helped mask the borrowing by carefully choosing the exact numbers of people they intended to kill (88) and behead (14), which I understand from the article have significance in the white supremacist community for complicated reasons having to do with Hitler and something about preserving whites. But knowing what we know, it's hard to see how anyone could not believe that Zarqawi's successful efforts to start a sect war in Iraq had no impact on people intending to start a race war here given the similarity of technique in one instance.
The point of this is not to try to show that all extremism is uniform and monolithic, obviously different movements arise in different places with different aims and no two are exactly the same. It is however, to show precisely the impossibility of preventing cultural and ideological cross fertilization, as even the most extreme, nativist movements that seek to exclude the other borrow from those for whom they have the deepest contempt.
Thus, Bin Laden will spread his message on the Internet, using Western media of communication to fight the West, and neo Nazis will adopt the brutal methods of Islamic extremism. To pick up on a particularly annoying comment from an earlier post, Westerners will refer to "Islamism", and then it becomes adopted in the East, so that it is impossible to talk to Muslims in the Muslim world about Muslim politics without using it, even, and perhaps especially, among those who despise the West (though excluding those narrow minded folk who think all of Islam is either Islamist or inauthentic).
And to pick up another recent example, Muslim extremists will refer to "Crusaders" and the jargon, and more importantly the idea, gets picked up here, not by religious extremists, but by those critical of the Bush administration and neocon policies towards the Muslim world. Zarqawi and the crazy lefty woman at Rutgers last Friday yell at me for the same reason, abetting the "crusaders". I'm not in the US army, but I was in Iraq working on human rights which for Zarqawi is good enough, and for crazy lefty woman, I didn't tangentially and totally extraneously condemn the Iraq invasion in a speech about the legal rights of refugees under Iraqi law, which again is enough. You have only one choice, fight the Amiercan occupation of Iraq to the end. Do not try to help refugees, do not work for human rights with a university, you can only fight the occupation. And if you do not, because you aren't interested in that side of things, you are part of a "crusade", inherently and fundamentally illegitimate. The humanity of the Iraqi people isn't important, making a political point is. Another guy then jumped up and had the audacity to ask me to apologize to the Iraqi people--for talking about ways to help Iraqi refugees. Again, if you say "Iraq" and the next word isn't "crusade" you are a crusader. Yet the theory has been borrowed, from Islam's most extreme elements by people who couldn't be more different even if extreme in their own way. A Rutgers law student former soldier Kevin Murphy organized this conference as a way to find help for Iraqi refugees and Iraqis, including his own translator, who are in desperate need of attention, and so much of it went so well, but then Dan Stigall and I talk about Iraqi law, and all of a sudden, we're abetting the evil occupation. The heartfelt and very emotional story that Kevin had told early that morning about finding ways to help his Iraqi friends didn't seem to matter to this vocal minority in the room, they just wanted to talk about a crusade, sounding to my ears just like the extremists you hear in Iraq. EXACTLY the same language and dismissal of others. Any subject but the illegitimacy of the occupation is itself impure and illegitimate. Purity only belongs to those who categorically decry the war even when not asked to. But then Kevin intervened, the Rutgers police called for backup, the lefty extremists disappeared, to Fallujah or something, and the conference went on. Brilliant success of a conference, but for the 10 minutes I just highlighted for my own purposes, but for the other stuff, see the Rutgers website, it really was well run. Next time an Iraqi tells me how monolithically coldhearted and cruel US soldiers are, I'll introduce them to Kevin who volunteered so much time for this.
But back to the subject, it's all rather ironic and amusing in a way. While the extremists, the cultural bigots, the nativists, the race supremacists, and all manner of the narrow minded and stupid may prattle on as they wish about cultural purity and authenticity within any given cultural or religious or political tradition, they cannot even among themselves change this central fact. They may clamor for purity as much they wish, eppur si muove.
HAH
Beheading? It's not what we associate with white supremacism in the United States. The way in which the terrorist KKK spread their terror, with enormous success, in the black community, was lynchings, cross burnings, even church bombings, but beheading? Clearly this was picked up from elsewhere. These folks saw the Zarqawi videos, saw how precisely blood curdling awful and terrifying they are, and decided that surely this was the way to make their mark, and to sow the seeds of fear among America's tolerant populations of white and black alike.
One can readily see why. Unlike earlier white terrorism against blacks (I use the term terrorist deliberately, if the point of lynchings wasn't to terrorize black people to ensure their submission, then please someone tell me what the point was), this terrorism is no longer supported by any really large community in the country. I'm not saying there isn't racism, I am saying it's pretty hard to publicly hang a person in this day and get away with it very easily. So that makes the lynching hard.
Then look at these guys, they are in Zarqawi's situation. They are WHITE extremists, jealous of WHITE power, and angry at the very notion of peaceful interracial relations in the country, and the resulting discrediting of their ideology for some set of ideas they hold in such deep contempt. What they want is what Zarqawi wanted, a race war, partly for the sake of killing the other, but also to galvanize one's own group, to extremize them mainly through starting a killing cycle. And it seemed to work pretty well for Zarqawi in Iraq, so why not copy the tactics? (I'm not suggesting that the results are the same or that race in America is exactly like sect in Iraq, I am saying these guys wanted the same thing and tried to replicate the techniques to achieve their aims).
The irony of course is that these neo Nazi white supremacists aren't about to admit they got an idea from an Arab Muslim, not to anyone including themselves I surmise. So I don't think they ever consciously made the connection. In addition, they helped mask the borrowing by carefully choosing the exact numbers of people they intended to kill (88) and behead (14), which I understand from the article have significance in the white supremacist community for complicated reasons having to do with Hitler and something about preserving whites. But knowing what we know, it's hard to see how anyone could not believe that Zarqawi's successful efforts to start a sect war in Iraq had no impact on people intending to start a race war here given the similarity of technique in one instance.
The point of this is not to try to show that all extremism is uniform and monolithic, obviously different movements arise in different places with different aims and no two are exactly the same. It is however, to show precisely the impossibility of preventing cultural and ideological cross fertilization, as even the most extreme, nativist movements that seek to exclude the other borrow from those for whom they have the deepest contempt.
Thus, Bin Laden will spread his message on the Internet, using Western media of communication to fight the West, and neo Nazis will adopt the brutal methods of Islamic extremism. To pick up on a particularly annoying comment from an earlier post, Westerners will refer to "Islamism", and then it becomes adopted in the East, so that it is impossible to talk to Muslims in the Muslim world about Muslim politics without using it, even, and perhaps especially, among those who despise the West (though excluding those narrow minded folk who think all of Islam is either Islamist or inauthentic).
And to pick up another recent example, Muslim extremists will refer to "Crusaders" and the jargon, and more importantly the idea, gets picked up here, not by religious extremists, but by those critical of the Bush administration and neocon policies towards the Muslim world. Zarqawi and the crazy lefty woman at Rutgers last Friday yell at me for the same reason, abetting the "crusaders". I'm not in the US army, but I was in Iraq working on human rights which for Zarqawi is good enough, and for crazy lefty woman, I didn't tangentially and totally extraneously condemn the Iraq invasion in a speech about the legal rights of refugees under Iraqi law, which again is enough. You have only one choice, fight the Amiercan occupation of Iraq to the end. Do not try to help refugees, do not work for human rights with a university, you can only fight the occupation. And if you do not, because you aren't interested in that side of things, you are part of a "crusade", inherently and fundamentally illegitimate. The humanity of the Iraqi people isn't important, making a political point is. Another guy then jumped up and had the audacity to ask me to apologize to the Iraqi people--for talking about ways to help Iraqi refugees. Again, if you say "Iraq" and the next word isn't "crusade" you are a crusader. Yet the theory has been borrowed, from Islam's most extreme elements by people who couldn't be more different even if extreme in their own way. A Rutgers law student former soldier Kevin Murphy organized this conference as a way to find help for Iraqi refugees and Iraqis, including his own translator, who are in desperate need of attention, and so much of it went so well, but then Dan Stigall and I talk about Iraqi law, and all of a sudden, we're abetting the evil occupation. The heartfelt and very emotional story that Kevin had told early that morning about finding ways to help his Iraqi friends didn't seem to matter to this vocal minority in the room, they just wanted to talk about a crusade, sounding to my ears just like the extremists you hear in Iraq. EXACTLY the same language and dismissal of others. Any subject but the illegitimacy of the occupation is itself impure and illegitimate. Purity only belongs to those who categorically decry the war even when not asked to. But then Kevin intervened, the Rutgers police called for backup, the lefty extremists disappeared, to Fallujah or something, and the conference went on. Brilliant success of a conference, but for the 10 minutes I just highlighted for my own purposes, but for the other stuff, see the Rutgers website, it really was well run. Next time an Iraqi tells me how monolithically coldhearted and cruel US soldiers are, I'll introduce them to Kevin who volunteered so much time for this.
But back to the subject, it's all rather ironic and amusing in a way. While the extremists, the cultural bigots, the nativists, the race supremacists, and all manner of the narrow minded and stupid may prattle on as they wish about cultural purity and authenticity within any given cultural or religious or political tradition, they cannot even among themselves change this central fact. They may clamor for purity as much they wish, eppur si muove.
HAH
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