It Could Never Happen Here
December 5th, 2006
When radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band, the phone lines jammed instantly.
ADVERTISEMENTThe first caller to the station in Washington said that Klein must be “off his rocker.” The second congratulated him and added: “Not only do you tattoo them in the middle of their forehead but you ship them out of this country … they are here to kill us.”
Another said that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as crescent marks on driver’s licenses, passports and birth certificates did not go far enough. “What good is identifying them?” he asked. “You have to set up encampments like during World War Two with the Japanese and Germans.”
At the end of the one-hour show, rich with arguments on why visual identification of “the threat in our midst” would alleviate the public’s fears, Klein revealed that he had staged a hoax. It drew out reactions that are not uncommon in post-9/11 America.
“I can’t believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said,” he told his audience on the AM station 630 WMAL (http://www.wmal.com/), which covers Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland
“For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people’s bodies, have them wear armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver’s license on their passport or birth certificate is disgusting. It’s beyond disgusting.
“Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen … We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous.”
…
Those in agreement are not a fringe minority: A Gallup poll this summer of more than 1,000 Americans showed that 39 percent were in favor of requiring Muslims in the United States, including American citizens, to carry special identification.Roughly a quarter of those polled said they would not want to live next door to a Muslim and a third thought that Muslims in the United States sympathized with al Qaeda, the extremist group behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
What do you expect, though — this is what the right wing entertainment and media figures are telling the country that Muslims these kinds of things all of the time:
- HANNITY: Malik, I want to ask you a question, as it relates to Dennis’ column. Thank you both for being here. And he says, you know, on what grounds will those of you defending this congressman’s decision and his right to choose his favorite book, you know, would you have allowed him to choose, you know, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which is the Nazi bible? In other words, where does this stop? Is there any limitations whatsoever? Does anybody get any choice they want, Malik?
- … SAVAGE: The Islamists smell weakness in the West and are attacking us on several fronts at once: one, through outright war; two, through immigration; three, through their propaganda disseminated through the liberal media and four, through the liberal courts. Only a devastating military blow against the hearts of Islamic terror coupled with an outright ban on Muslim immigration, laws making the dissemination of enemy propaganda illegal, and the uncoupling of the liberal ACLU can save the United States. I would also make the construction of mosques illegal in America and the speaking of English only in the streets of the United States the law.
- BECK: History was made last Tuesday when Democrat Keith Ellison got elected to Congress, representing the great state of Minnesota. Well, not really unusual that Minnesota would elect a Democrat. What is noteworthy is that Keith is the first Muslim in history to be elected to the House of Representatives. He joins us now.
Congratulations, sir.
ELLISON: How you doing, Glenn? Glad to be here.
BECK: Thank you. I will tell you, may I — may we have five minutes here where we’re just politically incorrect and I play the cards face up on the table?
ELLISON: Go there.
BECK: OK. No offense, and I know Muslims. I like Muslims. I’ve been to mosques. I really don’t believe that Islam is a religion of evil. I — you know, I think it’s being hijacked, quite frankly.
With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, “Let’s cut and run.” And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, “Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.”
And I know you’re not. I’m not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.
- DOOCY: This is the pope’s first visit to a predominantly Muslim country. Now, keep in mind, it was just a couple of months ago that the pope had some comments about Islam and Islam and violence. Next thing you know, Islam turned violent and essentially proved the pope’s point.
- CARLSON: I feel sorry for these guys, sounds like they didn’t do anything wrong. They got caught up in other people’s concerns. They were victims. I’ll concede that right from the outset. But here’s what I don’t understand. It’s the use of this sad event as a political tool by the organized Islamic community that, I suppose, bothers me. Americans ought to be vigilant. They ought to be reporting things that seem out of the ordinary in airports and on airplanes. That keeps us safe. And I think groups like yours are trying to convince people they have no right to do that.
IFTIKHAR: Well, I think, Tucker, that this incident in Minnesota highlights the racial profiling and “flying while Muslim” phenomenon that we’ve seen for the last five years, where American Muslims, who are lawful, peaceful, law-abiding citizens of the United States, have been disparately caught up in the fear and stereotyping that unfortunately has become pervasive in our society. And I think that, you know, just like you said, you know, these six imams were not guilty of anything. And I think that it shows the American public that, you know, this is something that we really do need to address. You know, obviously security concerns are a –
CARLSON: I don’t know what you’re talking about. Wait a second. I know Muslim groups always make it sound like, you know, we live in a fascist country that hates Muslims. Actually, we live in a very tolerant country. I know that it’s popular to be anti-American, but the truth is, most Americans are really sort of open-minded and there isn’t a lot of racial profiling going on. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I know you’ve got a vested interest in claiming there is, but I don’t think you’re right.IFTIKHAR: Well, I mean, you know, the concept of racial profiling didn’t begin yesterday, Tucker. You know, African-American males have been pulled over disparately more than Caucasian males and, you know, the whole adage of “driving while black” was the racial-profiling adage during the 1980s. And now the millennial version of that has become “flying while brown” or “flying while Muslim.”
CARLSON: Oh, what a — that’s such a crock. I mean that is — I fly — you know, I fly more than anybody I know, practically. There are always people from south Asia and the Middle East on planes I fly. Nobody says anything. These guys were praying, standing up praying, and it freaked people out. I’m not defending that. I’m merely saying it’s not just that they were brown or looked Muslim, they were doing something other people didn’t understand, and it spooked the other people. I mean, don’t you understand how that could happen?
- BOORTZ: Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, these stories of this violence keep coming in. A doctor kills his wife there; somebody kills their daughter over here. The stories of this violence come in. You know what? Sooner or later, you really start to get the idea that this is not a very pleasant religion. Sooner or later, you really start to get the idea that these people are violent. And does the Quran in fact say — does the Quran say that if you leave Islam, you must be killed? Does it say that?
[...]
BOORTZ: I — I would — I would be willing to put money that Spain will be operating under Islamic law within 10 years.
[...]
BOORTZ: This is a virus. Islam is a virus. It is a deadly virus that is spreading throughout Europe and the Western world, and it is going to completely and totally change the way we live our lives in this country. And we’re going to wait — we’re going to wait far too long to develop a vaccine to find a way to fight this. We have so many things working against us. First of all, we have a Democratic Party right now that for the last six years has been focused on one thing and only one thing: demonizing George Bush.
- MEDVED: All right. Is there anyone out there who denies the proposition that Islam is especially prone to violence? Isn’t it obvious that Islam has a special violence problem? This is a crucial issue because it goes to the subject of my conversation with the president of the United States on Friday, when I had the privilege of sitting with him in the Oval Office for 90 minutes. The — the question is: Is the — the violence and the bloodshed and the horror and the misery and — and the disgusting behavior throughout the Muslim world — is that based upon some problems within Islam itself? I’m not saying here — saying that every Muslim is a bad guy or should be held in contempt or — I’m saying that Islam itself, as a system of ideas — not everybody who holds onto a questionable system of ideas is a bad person. Some people try to take those ideas and bend them in a more positive direction. But I am saying there are problems with Islam, as a faith, as a culture, as a vision of civilization, or actually a vision of barbarism in the world, there are problems with Islam that go very, very deep.
[...]
MEDVED: But, look — meanwhile, it should be obvious that part of what this entire incident underscores is that regardless of what you do and how reasonable you are, and what American policy is or what Israeli policy is, there would be a violence problem in the Muslim world because that is an inherent problem in Islam.
[...]
MEDVED: Isn’t this bizarre? Doesn’t this indicate to you just what a difference there is, I mean, a core foundational difference between Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, if you will, even Hinduism and Islam. Islam, a primitive — I’m sorry — a faith that would call for the assassination of a religious leader because of statements that he made, any religious faith that would call for killing of someone in the year 2006 because of public statements is, definitionally, a primitive religion.
- O’REILLY: The O’Reilly Factor is on. Tonight, more airline chaos today, this time on a London to D.C. flight. Is profiling of Muslims the answer? Is it time for a new strategy in Iraq? [Fox News contributor and former House Speaker] Newt Gingrich [R-GA] on that. And how should religious people fight the war on terror?
[...]
But first, a “Talking Points Memo.” More airline terror chaos. As you may know, some woman caused a commotion on a United flight from London to D.C. The plane was escorted by American fighter jets and landed in Boston. Then some incompetent announced to the press the woman had matches, fluid, and had written a note about Al Qaeda. That turned out to be false, another hysterical reaction to the undeniable threat of airline terrorism.
Now, it’s long past time for the U.S.A. to stop the nonsense and institute profiling at airports. We’re not at war with Granny Fricken. We’re at war with Muslims fanatics.
So, all young Muslims should be subjected to more scrutiny than Granny. And we should blend some Israeli screening procedures with our own.
For example, trained security people should receive the passenger list on every flight and interview those people most likely to be terrorists, folks who have traveled to Muslim countries, people who have criminal records. Passengers who are Muslims ages 16 to 45 all should be spoken with.
And if the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] doesn’t like it, tough. This isn’t racial profiling. This is criminal profiling. Israel looks for possible terrorists, not nail files. Yes, El Al [Israel Airlines] now does ban liquids, but the emphasis is on people, not weapons.
High-tech swabs are very effective, but you can’t use them on all the customers. There simply isn’t time. So, selective, not random searches should be in play in the U.S.A.
But the major change America must make is switching from the hourly-wage people at the security points to trained security people at the check-in counter. That’s where terrorism will be stopped.
Criminal profiling is used by just about every police officer in this country, whether they admit it or not. It’s called common sense and using your head.
The wrongheaded notion that you can’t scrutinize Muslims, even though the terror war is driven by them, is beyond dumb. It’s self-defeating and acutely dangerous. Profiling must begin now. And that’s the “Memo.”
[...]
O’REILLY: It’s OK for Granny — it’s OK for Granny to sacrifice, but it’s a waste of time, and it impacts negatively on the whole transportation industry to spend any amount of time on Granny. But it isn’t a waste of time to profile Muslims between the ages of 16 and 45. That should be done automatically by professionals.
And nothing nasty, just do what the Israelis do, speak with them, all right. If you feel that there’s some kind of — if they’ve got a Iran stamp on their passport, yeah, you’ve got to talk to them. You don’t disagree with that, do you?
RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR. (nationally syndicated columnist): I agree with this much of it, Bill. I think Americans are always looking for simple solutions. On immigration, we want to build a wall and then go home and go back to sleep. On this issue, we want to simply profile this group of people, as you said, and somehow that will end it. There are no simple solutions to this.
O’REILLY: Not going to end it, it makes it harder for the terrorists to operate. Look, you said they’ll find surrogates. OK? And I agree with you.
NAVARRETTE: Yeah.
O’REILLY: It’s hard to find surrogates. Once you go out of your little circle, the odds that somebody will inform on you rise dramatically. You know that.
And as for the wall down on the border, it’s not going to solve the problem. It makes it harder for the coyotes to get them across.
And the United States government has a responsibility to protect us from terrorists, from illegal immigration. And to make it harder to do these things is a good thing, Mr. Navarrette. It isn’t tearing apart the fabric of our society. It’s smart, and it’s good. I’ll give you the last word.
NAVARRETTE: OK. Good. I think it is tough. I don’t think it’s smart. I think smart is something that gets at the problem, doesn’t base it on assumptions like this. I’m sorry. Racial profiling just doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked out in the past.
O’REILLY: Terror profiling, not racial. Terror profiling.
- IMUS: I’m fine, baby, how are you?
DIETL: Well, it’s good to be here with Colonel Jacobs. I had him up in Rao’s [restaurant in New York] the other night, and we were discussing the war. And, you know, he has some points here that I have to respect as a Congressional honor — a Medal of Honor winner. But there are some other opinions that I got over here. And I think I should bring my opinions out cause I’m like a kind of street-fighting guy. What really lies here is 500 years ago the Ottoman Empire. Today, every Muslim family is told to have six to eight children. In Europe today, there are 12 million Muslims in France. There are 12 million from Turkey in Germany. It’s a influxitation [sic] of the Muslim Empire that’s taking over Europe. Now follow me on this one. Right now, we have –
IMUS: I’m gonna try to do that.
DIETL: Right now we have a problem –
IMUS: Let me take some more acid that I have left over from –
DIETL: Right now we have a problem, and the problem’s coming right out of Syria. We should make a parking lot out of Damascus, because they have a pact together with Iran, with that other guy over there, the religious leader that steps upon woman’s freedom, steps upon people freedom. They put a religious fanatic in charge of these countries, and they do not let people live in democracy and the freedoms that we all enjoy in America. What we should do is start them up, light them up, because then they’ll send planes over to help Syria. And they have to fly over our no-fly zones, and we could pop them out like popcorn. And we could wipe them out because this is a war right now. In Iraq is a holy war going on right now, fighting these fundamentalists who want to see us dead. And the reality is, in America we have two children per family average. In Europe, it’s 1.7 family members. Everybody thinks I’m nuts and I’m crazy when I’m talking about — when you have eight children, you can let two of ‘em go get blown up because you always got six more. And this, the fanatics — not all Muslims — but the fanatics feel as though they can afford to let go two children, they got six more.
IMUS: [heavy breathing]
DIETL: We have a holy war that’s going on right now in Iraq and Iran, and I think what we gotta do right now put the line in the sand, and I think the colonel will go along with me, we gotta go in and level out this guy over here in Damascus. Cause the problem here is coming out of Syria. All those missiles, the poor Israeli boat that got blown up. What do you think blew it up?
Gee, where would anyone get the idea that Muslims are uniquely dangerous and deserve drastic measures against them to keep them in line?
Original link via Dave Niewert, who has the first of what looks to be a interesting serious on eliminationist rhetoric up now.
Categories: Culture, Media, Politics, Terrorism | 13 Comments
