Shades of McCarthyism resurging in the US
A movement which began in the late 1940s stretching to the late 1950s and was nothing more than a witch-hunt orchestrated in conjunction with fears of a gullible public gave birth to McCarthyism, the act of making serious but unsubstantiated charges against people or ideologies.
Spearheaded by Joe McCarthy, a Republican senator who banked on the fears of a largely naïve American public for political gains, the term “red scare” was rejuvenated a second time. Only this time Americans were told that hordes of communists were trying to take over the country. Communism was a dirty word, and the American public coined the phrase “reds” for communists.
McCarthy was often on the news, exhorting Americans to beware of the communist threat, saying they must rid themselves of all the communists before America could be a great again. Such feverish and patriotic messages served to ensure that his political star kept rising, and the level of paranoia among the citizens intensifying.
This uncontrolled paranoia had its reasons. One was that news reports confirmed that some communist countries had spies in the US, and had the makings for the atomic bomb. Following Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American public was afraid of atomic bombs, and they feared that a nuclear holocaust was just round the corner. A wave of panic started and kept alive a mushrooming industry in the construction of bomb shelters in practically every home.
Today, McCarthyism is also used to feed fears among the masses against ideologies they know very little about and are most often based on irrelevant evidence. Feeding off the ignorance of the majority of the American public about global political affairs, politicians and pundits in the US are targeting the building of an Islamic Center near Ground Zero as another scare. Only this time it’s not “red” but “Islamic terrorism”. And Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been replaced by the Twin Towers.
Let’s take a closer look at the core of this growing hysteria. While headlines from US media such as CNN, The Washington Post, New York Daily News and Fox News continue using the phrase “Ground Zero Mosque”, it is deliberately misleading as the facility is neither just a mosque nor is it right at Ground Zero.
To begin with, Cordoba House is an Islamic center, a section of which has been allocated as a mosque for its visitors. It is not located at Ground Zero as the public is being led to believe, but over two city blocks away. To understand the distance, you’d have to know that city blocks in New York are not minuscule by any stretch off the imagination.
But with the media in tow, potential political candidates like Newt Gingrich and other hard-line Republicans who incidentally are opposed to the building of any mosques in the US are touting the threats of terrorism in thinly veiled intolerance to Islam and Muslims and these messages have had an effect as a recent poll shows 69 percent of Americans are opposed to the idea of a mosque in New York, and local communities across the country are suddenly taking notice and hardening their stance on the building of mosques in their districts.
Stripped of all the rhetoric and falsehoods surrounding this controversy, this is nothing more than a continuation of an extreme ideology in the name of a policy that has survived the Bush administration; that of Christian and Jewish fundamentalism and intolerance against Islam and Muslims, and by proxy, against Palestinians and Iranians today.
Perhaps, an American writer, Brent Budowsky, summed it best when he had this to say: “Serious and patriotic people in this land we love should never create classes of Americans who should be feared or despised because of who they are, the color God gave them at birth, the faith they practice, or because they are a politically convenient object of slander by ambitious politicians campaigning for office who will do anything, including attacking the cardinal notion of the American community, to win a political campaign.
“I call on all principled conservatives and Republicans, a majority of whom agree with what I write here, to stand with Reagan and Goldwater, with Buckley and Bush, with Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, and denounce this politics of appealing to hate and bigotry and fear.
“We are a better nation than this. If there is one thing that should unite us, it is that this brand of politics has no place in the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
Indeed, the US is being cowed by the politics of those whose cowardice is masked by brazen falsehoods aimed at fanning the fears of those on whose ears their words fall. The land of the free and the home of the brave is in danger of being anything but.
(talmaeena@yahoo.com)
Comments
MAX MARRAN
Sep 4, 2010 02:19
Report abuseMuslims in the U. S. are free to worship as they please. There are hundreds of mosques in the U. S. and thousands in the West. The Cordoba house mosque can be built, no one denies that. However, the request is that Muslims be sensitive and MOVE the project.
That is all!
There is no mass persecution of Muslims period! No Mc Carthyism. There are isolated incidents, which are down since 9/11. FBI statistics show that Jews and gays are much more likely to be harassed.
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"Hate crimes against Muslims rare, FBI data shows"
...In 2008, 105 hate crime "incidents" against Muslims were reported nationwide. There were 10 times more incidents recorded as anti-Jewish during the same year, the most recent for which figures are available.
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Americans have the right to speak freely and object to the project; a project that will overlook Ground Zero because of its height. Polls show that most Americans, whether right, left or center, object, but still say that Muslims can worship as they please.
For persecution and paranoia one need only look to the Islamic world with its ridiculous conspiracy theories, where Muslims and nonMuslims are persecuted and attacked daily and slaughtered like animals in the name of religion. Yet another deadly attack just today in Pakistan that killed over 50 innocent people. Last Friday and Wednesday more people were slaughtered.
Such things are not happening in the U. S. or the west! On the occasion that they do happen, the terrorists are most always Muslims.
If the mosque is built, it will be interesting to see whether all people whether of faith or no faith will be welcome. Whether there will be gender apartheid; and most of all whether there will be salafist preaching against Jews, gays and nonMuslims.
Many Americans would like to see some quid pro quo. When will Saudia Arabia permit the building of even ONE non-Islamic house of worship?
Mr. Al-Maeena your article is shameful! Letâ™s see you put your money where your mouth is and post this letter.
STOOPID AMERICAN
Sep 4, 2010 21:13
Report abuseALLEN HAROLDS
Sep 4, 2010 21:16
Report abuseDon't worry about Max Marran, he's a just tea party bigot.
PATRICK MARTIN
Sep 4, 2010 21:38
Report abuseLet's see some more 'hate the USA' wild rants from you!
I can still remember grammar school days from the 50s, it was called: Stop, Drop and Cover!
And we didn't call them "Reds" as you state, but often something a bit more profane.
Governmental talks weren't overly productive, and there was a real possibility they may do something a LOT of us might regret.
Fast forward to today. We have Islamo-Fascism being taught in mosques all over this country. I've seen several undercover-videos of this. The typical Islamic person living in the USA refuses to assimilate and blend with local culture, so if so darn intent on retaining all Islamic ties, stay in the country you arrived here from!
We will have no Sharia Law here in the USA. Though I don't believe passed as law in our cities, we will have no people hiding their faces with a burka.
Way I see it, assimilate, or go back home!
On GZM, it is not welcome whatsoever at current location. There is not a one union construction worker who will do any work on it anyway. So then you consider importing construction workers from some Arab country - I don't think so, New York has some of the strongest unions in our country.
There was landing gear from one of the planes that assaulted WTC that landed on building where GZM is proposed to go.
Plus, there is a saying from a movie I like to misquote related to this: "If you build it we will come." And what I hear is a plan to burn it to ground level.
So build it less that two blocks from Ground Zero if you must, accepting full responsibilities as well.
As well, you have a piece in your article you totally fil to address. The Cordorba House in Spain was built to signify VICTORY of Moslems over Christians. Period. There are a variety of mosques world-wide that location was planned precisely to signify VICTORY.
WE WILL HAVE NONE OF THIS!
GEORGE
Sep 4, 2010 22:31
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