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Security

EXCLUSIVE: Class Materials From Military’s Anti-Islam Class Repeatedly Cite Islamophobic Authors

By Eli Clifton and Ali Gharib on May 14, 2012 at 5:22 pm

Slide from a presentation titled: "Sharia And The Constitution"

A class taught by the military to officers at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, came under fire when a report on Wired’s Danger Room blog last week exposed it for teaching soldiers to engage in a “total war” on Islam and taking a war on Islam “to the civilian population wherever necessary.” The full set of course materials, hundreds of documents and slide shows obtained by ThinkProgress, reveal just how deep Islamophobia ran through the military instruction. The material contained dozens of citations to the work of some of America’s best known anti-Muslim bigots.

Not all of the material in the course, however, was anti-Muslim. Materials from reputable sources such as the Brookings Institution and RAND corporation also appeared among the readings, and only some of the presenters to the class used blatantly Islamophobic material. (The public affairs officer of the Joint Forces Staff College didn’t respond to repeated inquiries by press time.)

But the “Islamophobia network,” discussed in the Center for American Progress’ “Fear, Inc.” report, played a prominent role in many of the 266 documents acquired by ThinkProgress. Islamophobic “misinformation experts” — as they’re defined in “Fear, Inc.” — cited in Army teaching materials included:

Robert Spencer – 34 mentions across 8 documents (his blog, JihadWatch.org, was cited 11 times across 7 documents)

Spencer is the co-founder of Stop Islamization of America and the director of JihadWatch.org. He has argued that “traditional Islam itself is not moderate or peaceful. Spencer is prominent pseudo-intellectual in the “counter jihad” blogging community who argues that Islam is inherently violent. He says “It is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.”

Steven Emerson – 16 mentions across 4 documents

Emerson is the founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and a former journalist at U.S. News & World Report and CNN. His greatest notoriety came from prematurely declaring that Oklahoma City bombing was committed by Muslims. The actual culprit was right-wing anti-government militant Timothy McVeigh. Emerson tells his followers that “Nearly all of the Islamic organizations in the United States that define themselves as religiously or culturally Muslim in character have, today, been totally captured or dominated by radical fundamentalist elements.”

Center for Security Policy (CSP) – 60 mentions across 3 documents

CSP is led by notorious Islamophobe Frank Gaffney and produced the report, “Shariah: The Threat to America” which has served as the blueprint for “anti-Shariah” legislation across the country.

David Yerushalmi – 9 mentions across 3 documents

Yerushalmi is general counsel for CSP, a co-author of “Shariah: The Threat to America” and the founder of Society of Americans for National Existence. The Anti-Defamation League concluded that he has a “record of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black bigotry.”

Daniel Pipes – 50 mentions across 10 documents (his organization, Middle East Forum, was cited 39 times across 10 documents)

Pipes, the director of Middle East Forum, is increasingly strident about the supposed threat posed by Islam and Muslims in America. He argues, “All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.”

Finally, right-wing news publications were frequently cited in the training materials acquired by ThinkProgress. The Washington Times was cited 76 times across 16 documents; The National Review 130 times across 6 documents and Fox News 130 times across six documents.

Instructors’ reliance on far-right thinktanks and experts adds to the increasingly disturbing portrait of counter-terrorism instruction at the Joint Forces Staff College, potraying the West as at war with Islam and Muslims. The sheer frequency of citations in the course materials raises questions that hopefully will be answered by an investigation launched at the behest of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, who admirably said the questionable course material was “totally objectionable, against our values, and it wasn’t academically sound.”

Justice

Former National Review Writer Claims White Supremacy Is ‘One Of The Better Arrangements History Has Come Up With’

By Ian Millhiser on May 14, 2012 at 9:49 am

John Derbyshire

Last month, the conservative National Review fired its longtime contributor John Derbyshire after Derbyshire published a column in another publication instructing parents on how to train their children to be racists. Although the National Review did the right thing in eventually firing Derbyshire, it published the author for years despite a long history of racist and sexist views. Derbyshire argued in 2009 that women should not vote, and he proclaimed as far back as 2003 that he is a proud “racist.”

Derbyshire, however, appears to have learned nothing from his high-profile firing. In a column for the white nationalist site VDARE.com, Derbyshire offers unqualified praise for white supremacy:

The enemies of conservatism are eager to supply their own nomenclature. “White Supremacist” seems to be their current favorite. It is meant maliciously, of course, to bring up images of fire-hoses, attack dogs, pick handles, and segregated lunch counters—to imply that conservatives, especially non-mainstream conservatives, are cruel people with dark thoughts.

Leaving aside the intended malice, I actually think “White Supremacist” is not bad semantically. White supremacy, in the sense of a society in which key decisions are made by white Europeans, is one of the better arrangements History has come up with. There have of course been some blots on the record, but I don’t see how it can be denied that net-net, white Europeans have made a better job of running fair and stable societies than has any other group.

As a reminder, this man who now openly praises a racial caste system wrote for one of the nation’s top conservative publications for nearly 12 years.

Security

Claiming Chris Christie Has An ‘Islam Problem,’ Pipes And Emerson Demonstrate NRO’s Islamophobia Problem

By Matt Duss on May 1, 2012 at 1:20 pm

Daniel Pipes

In National Review, Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson — two key figures in the Islamophobia network discussed in CAP’s 2011 Fear, Inc report — write that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) “has a problem, specifically an Islam problem, that can and should get in the way of his possible ascent to higher office”:

In short, Christie has hugged a terrorist-organization member, abridged free-speech rights, scorned concern over Islamization, and opposed law-enforcement counterterrorism efforts. Whenever an issue touching on Islam arises, Christie takes the Islamist side against those — the DHS, state senators, the NYPD, even the ACLU — who worry about lawful Islamism eroding the fabric of American life.

A perusal of the authors’ case against Christie reveals it as comically weak, full of highly questionable characterizations and buttressed by links that don’t actually demonstrate what they’re supposed to. In a typical example, they criticize Christie for voicing support for Mohammed Qatanani, imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, “on the eve of his deportation hearing for not hiding an Israeli conviction for membership in Hamas.” They do not mention that the hearing resulted in Qatanani being cleared of charges.

Pipes and Emerson knock Christie for his concern over revelations of the New York City Police Department’s spying on New Jersey Muslims, suggesting that he should’ve shown “gratitude” for the NYPD operating outside its jurisdiction.

And of course the authors take special offense at Christie’s bold defense of New Jersey state superior court judge Sohail Mohammed against attacks by anti-Islam activists, in which Christie offered the most cogent summation of the anti-sharia movement on record: “It’s crap. It’s just crazy.”

Pipes and Emerson suggest that there is tension between Christie’s friendly relations with Muslims and his “ostentatiously” pro-Israel stance. “This makes him unusual,” the authors write, “for a pro-Israel stance typically goes hand-in-hand with concern about Shari’a.” But in asserting such a zero-sum relationship between support for Muslim constituents and support for Israel, Pipes and Emerson inadvertently demonstrate two things: First, their own ignorance about Israel. Since its founding, Israel has maintained a publicly-funded Sharia court system for the some 19 percent of Israelis who are Muslim. (Israeli society is fraught with numerous challenges, but imminent takeover by sharia law does not appear to be one of them.) And second, that their real agenda involves creating difficulty for Christie among pro-Israel voters. As with all such smear efforts, the goal here isn’t to actually demonstrate that Christie has done anything wrong, merely to create the sense that there are “troubling questions” about Christie’s views and relationships.

While Pipes and Emerson fail to demonstrate that Chris Christie has an “Islam problem,” they succeed in demonstrating that National Review still has an Islamophobia problem. Last month the magazine took important steps to rid itself of two writers who had expressed bigoted views toward African-Americans. It’s long past time that National Review do the same with those of its writers expressing similar views toward Muslim Americans.

Alyssa

Lesley Arfin, John Derbyshire, Vice, Taki Magazine, and the Lingering Cultural Capital of Racism

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 24, 2012 at 1:36 pm

At first glance, Lesley Arfin, the Vice contributor and writer on HBO’s sitcom Girls, and John Derbyshire, the former National Review columnist, have little in common. They’re a woman and a man, a naughty provocateur and a writer on, among other things, China and mathematics, whose work resonates in New York and Washington respectively. But in the last month or so, they’ve served as illustrations of the ugly fact that racism retains a certain cultural capital even among bastions of people who like to consider themselves enlightened.

Derbyshire got himself in trouble first after he wrote an astonishingly racist column for Taki Magazine (about which more in a moment) about telling his children to avoid black people as if that was some sort of sensible safety guide. He presented the piece as if he was speaking difficult truths that others dare not speak, a common framing tactic of racists who like to believe that their biases are grounded in scientific evidence and want to use that delusion to attach legitimacy and a claim of the moral high ground to their bigotry. After several days of controversy, National Review, which had previously tended to turn a blind eye to or to edit down Derbyshire’s more appalling proclivities, fired him.

Lesley Arfin seems to have been less commonly-understood to be a racist until, in response to charges that the show for which she works, Girls, is strangely white for a story set in Brooklyn, she tweeted “What really bothered me most about Precious was that there was no representation of ME.” She subsequently added and scrubbed an apology. And evidence has quickly emerged that the tweet was hardly an isolated, insensitive mistake. Arfin is apparently the kind of person who thinks it’s clever to compare President Obama’s skin color to shit, or to say in an interview that the word “nigger” is the one that makes her feel proud to be a writer. Elspeth Reeve, in an elegant piece at The Atlantic Wire, suggested that Arfin’s comments spring from a common well, that this is “where this vein of hipster racism starts. It tests the idea that anything wrapped with enough irony can be transformed into something else. The more uncool the raw materials are—trucker hats, ugly T-shirts, mustaches, smoking crack—the better the trick.”

That’s true to a certain extent. But while there’s no inherent cultural capital in trucker hats or mustaches, there is a strong, if narrow thread of thought that is interested in making sure that racism stays nominally acceptable, and not because it demonstrates the ability of those thinkers to turn something ridiculous into a trend. Much in the same way that John Derbyshire peppered spectacularly illogical racist advice to his children with links to anecdotal stories meant to gloss his nonsense with a scientific veneer, Gavin McInnes, the co-founder of Vice (and Taki Magazine columnist, it’s worth noting), responded to the criticism of Arfin’s behavior by suggesting that the people who were uncomfortable with Girls’ whiteness were deluded race-mongers desperate to turn a buck. “You can’t continue a mythical Cold War forever and it’s likely the days of randomly tarring and feathering people for ‘racism,’ real or imagined, are coming to a close,” he wrote in a post defending Arfin. “Not because it’s morally wrong, but because people are no longer buying it. And when people aren’t buying something, you can’t make money.” These two strains of thinking are complimentary and mutually reinforcing: people who see racism are deluded and have impure motives, while people who seek to assert racial difference are acting out of a disinterested commitment to scientific truth in the face of terrible opposition.

But there’s nothing brave or bold about clinging to racist ideas, to your supposed right to wound other people by being nasty and childishness. It’s the reverse, a desperate clinging to modes of thought that protected your own privilege and save you the inconvenience of having to engage with people in a way that might require compromise and growth. The immature and fearful people who huddle around the campfire of racism aren’t keeping a flame of secret knowledge alive. They’re hiding from a world they’re unable to cope with.

Security

Time For The National Review To Take A Stand Against Islamophobia

By Eli Clifton on Apr 11, 2012 at 5:48 pm

The National Review has been cleaning house over the past week. Last week the conservative publication fired John Derbyshire for a racist rant and today the magazine terminated its relationship with Robert Weissberg for his ties to a white nationalist group.

But while the National Review has decided to very publicly purge itself of white supremacists and racists, bigotry toward Muslims appears to go unchallenged in the pages of the magazine and on its blog, National Review Online (NRO). NRO contributing editor Andrew McCarthy, who accused President Obama of standing with the Muslim Brotherhood against 9/11 families in his post “The President Stands With Sharia,” told Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) hearing on the radicalization of American Muslims:

What “radicalizes” Muslims is Islam — the mainstream interpretation of it. The “radicals” propagating it do not need the “captive audience” provided by the prison environment. The “radicalization” is happening in plain sight.

The denigration of Islam and Muslim Americans isn’t limited to McCarthy’s screeds. A number of noted Islamophobes are regularly given free rein to guest post on NRO’s site or write in the magazine, including:

  • Robert Spencer, who just last month concluded that “Islamic supremacists” may have subverted the “U.S. defense against jihad terror,” because the man who heads the Central Intelligence Agency’s Counterterrorism Center — and is credited with crippling Al Qaeda and other militant networks in Pakistan — was identified as a Muslim in a Washington Post profile.
  • David Horowitz, who, in an interview last year, stated, “What has the Arab world contributed except terror?…The theocratic, repressive Arabic states do no significant science, no significant arts and culture.”
  • Daniel Pipes, who, in the pages of The National Review in 1990, wrote, “All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.”

    • The National Review has been notified of the Islamophobic statements made by a number of their contributors in the past. To date, they appear to have decided to do nothing. Perhaps now is the time for The National Review to take a hard stance against all bigotry, intolerance and racism.

    Alyssa

    John Derbyshire, Rich Lowry, National Review, and Editors’ Responsibilities

    By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 9, 2012 at 3:08 pm

    The long-overdue firing of John Derbyshire from National Review for writing a confoundingly racist guide for white parents about how to speak to their children about their social interactions with black people has raised has raised a number of questions about how editor Rich Lowry ought to have handled Derbyshire, whose thoughts in this area are not precisely new. Ta-Nehisi wants to know why it took so long for Lowry to reach this decision after Derbyshire described himself as a racist and homophobe in 2003. And Dave Weigel asks ” If you’re going to have anti-black sentiment, would you rather have it dumb and exposed or would you rather have it subtle? The authors of stories about how Trayvon Martin looked really scary in his fake grill and tweets don’t add oh, and this is because black youths are scary. Even if they’re unarmed. Derbyshire came out and did it.”

    These questions go together, and both have serious implications for how editors, and other purveyors of valuable cultural capital, ought to allocate it. On the question of outspokenness, I have no particular wish to see people I care about harmed by the ugly speech of others. I know first-hand that calling out shockingly blunt speech like Derbyshire’s—or on a much lesser level, Lee Aronsohn’s—can be a terrific traffic driver. But hearing it and feeling that outrage is also mentally exhausting. The argument is, however, that such unadulterated, un-prettified speech gives us an opportunity to see racism, sexism, and homophobia as it truly is, an experience that I imagine is more of an education for straight, white dudes than for women, people of color, or gay folks. But it’s true that there are a lot of straight, white men in positions of cultural authority. I’m not immune to the idea that it’s good for them to be exposed to moments of uncomfortable clarity that require them to draw firm lines in the sand about what ideas they are and aren’t willing to be associated with, and what people they are and aren’t willing to credential.

    The problem is that suggesting that such authority figures need those shocking moments absolves them of responsibility to constantly be thinking about these kinds of questions. Sure, the requirement that racists, sexists, and homophobes pretty up their ugly thoughts—whether via Charles Murray-like stabs at scientific legitimation or pretentions of concern—may make those sentiments less immediately obvious in prose. But isn’t that precisely the kind of thing that we hire magazine editors to detect through deep and perceptive readings? You shouldn’t get credit for elucidating the line when the lack of one is causing you discomfort. You should get credit for weeding out noxious ideas precisely when it would be less convenient for you to do so, but because you feel it’s important to make clear the damage that those roots are doing below the soil.

    Justice

    National Review Fires Derbyshire

    By Faiz Shakir on Apr 7, 2012 at 8:18 pm

    National Review editor Rich Lowry does the right thing, announcing that John Derbyshire will no longer be writing for the influential conservative outlet:

    His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.

    Lowry and the National Review deserve credit for finally cutting ties with Derbyshire’s long record of hateful rhetoric.

    Justice

    In 2009, Derbyshire Argued Women Shouldn’t Vote: ‘Women Voting Is Bad For Conservatism’

    By Faiz Shakir on Apr 7, 2012 at 5:05 pm

    The National Review’s John Derbyshire isn’t just an avowed racist and a homophobe. He’s also a misogynist. In 2009, he authored a book that contained a chapter titled “The Case Against Women’s Suffrage.” In it, he argued the country would be better off if women didn’t have the right to vote. He discussed his views in a Sept. 2009 interview with Alan Colmes:

    DERBYSHIRE: Among the hopes that I do not realistically nurse is the hope that female suffrage will be repealed. But I’ll say this – if it were to be, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep.

    COLMES: We’d be a better country if women didn’t vote?

    DERBYSHIRE: Probably. Don’t you think so?

    COLMES: No, I do not think so whatsoever.

    DERBYSHIRE: Come on Alan. Come clean here [laughing].

    COLMES: We would be a better country? John Derbyshire making the statement, we would be a better country if women did not vote.

    DERBYSHIRE: Yeah, probably.

    Listen here:

    In an Oct. 2009 interview with Thom Hartmann, he clarified his stance, arguing that women should have the right to vote but simply shouldn’t exercise it. As he stated, “the proposition that women voting is bad for conservatism, and as a conservative, of course, I think that’s bad for society.” Listen here:

    But remember, anyone who tells you there’s a conservative “war on women” is spouting pure “fiction,” according to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.

    Justice

    Derbyshire In 2003: I’m A Proud ‘Racist’

    By Faiz Shakir on Apr 7, 2012 at 3:33 pm

    Over at the conservative blog RedState, diarist Leon Wolf notes that in a 2003 interview, the National Review’s resident racist John Derbyshire proudly proclaimed his lack of tolerance for African-Americans:

    I am not very careful about what I say, having grown up in the era before Political Correctness, and never having internalized the necessary restraints. I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one, and those things are going to be illegal pretty soon, the way we are going.

    The National Review has tried to distance itself from Derbyshire’s views, but the magazine has gone silent on whether it will take any action. As Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates writes to National Review: “‘Derb’ told you what he was in 2003. And National Review continued to employ him. That’s who they are.”

    RedState’s Wolf states, “[Derbyshire] is not, as his defenders at the execrable Taki mag say, confronting the world with uncomfortable truths, he is proudly declaring himself to be a racist and arguing that it is correct to be racist.” Thus, says Wolf, “The longer this drags on without a definitive severing of the relationship, the more damage will be done to National Review. I cannot imagine what sort of deliberation is required to make this decision, but I hope, for National Review’s sake, that it can be completed before the weekend is over.”

    Update

    At the Daily Caller, conservative pundit Matt Lewis writes, “In one fell swoop (actually, Derbyshire has a history of flirting with this sort of thing, but it has finally caught up with him), he has done more harm to the conservative cause than any liberal ever could. … I believe in free speech — especially unpopular speech. But that doesn’t mean National Review has to subsidize it.”

    Justice

    National Review Tries To Distance Itself From Derbyshire, But Silent On Calls For Firing Him

    By Faiz Shakir on Apr 6, 2012 at 11:46 pm

    After the National Review’s John Derbyshire penned an unbelievably offensive and racist screed in Taki’s Magazine advising white Americans to stay away from black Americans, a firestorm has predictably erupted over whether his views will be sanctioned by the larger conservative movement. Derbyshire told ThinkProgress that his column urging the majority of Americans to “avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally” was not satire, but in fact a “social commentary.”

    On the National Review’s website, editor Rich Lowry called Derbyshire’s column “appalling” and asserted that “no one at National Review” shares his views. But Lowry did not indicate whether Derbyshire would continue to be employed. Does the National Review have a no tolerance policy for racism?

    For the National Review, which has frequently complained about unfair accusations of racism, this ugly moment provides an opportunity to demonstrate leadership. As National Review contributor Josh Barro writes in Forbes:

    [T]his is the problem for Lowry and other conservatives who want to be taken seriously by broad audiences when they write about racial issues. Lowry wrote a column containing advice for black Americans. Why should black Americans take him seriously while he’s employing Derbyshire? If Lowry wants NR to be credible on race, he should start by firing John Derbyshire.

    National Review staff have been taking turns trying to distance themselves from Derbyshire. Here’s senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru:

    And National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg said a similar thing (National Review contributor Robert George retweeted this):

    The New York Daily News’ Alexander Nazaryan writes, “An editor at the supposedly esteemed National Review, [Derbyshire] is a perfect poster boy for what conservatism has degenerated into.” The National Review can begin to change this perception if it takes action.

    Update

    Over at RedState, diarist Leon Wolf notes that in 2003, Derbyshire called himself a proud “racist.”

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