The incident about which Goldberg writes in this piece is in the video above. The reaction he received from campus officials is characteristic of the academic Left today -- witness UNC's reaction to their professor Omid Safi's defamation of me. "Left, right and wrong: A recent exchange at UCSD illustrates the reaction of those who stick to a well-rehearsed script on issues rather than thinking," by Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times, May 18:
[...] I asked UCSD, via e-mail, whether the woman in question was censured in any way for endorsing bigotry and genocide, or if the video was somehow misleading. In response, I received boilerplate about how, in the tradition of Aristotle, UCSD treasures "discourse and debate" and how "the very foundations of every great university are set upon the rock-solid principles of freedom of thought and freedom of speech."I wrote back, in part: "Thank you for your response. I must say I find it fairly non-responsive. Out of curiosity, if a UCSD student publicly called for the extermination of gays and blacks, would this be your only response as well?"
I then received an even less responsive primer on how student groups are funded on campus.
Now, I could write at length about UCSD's hypocrisy. After all, the school recently launched a "Battle Hate" campaign in response to some idiotic stunt called the "Compton Cookout" at which a fraternity held a racially offensive event off campus during Black History Month. Administrators went into overdrive, the Black Student Union issued 32 demands, the vice chancellor righteously explained to students that although the event may have been beyond the school's "legal jurisdiction," it was not beyond UCSD's "moral jurisdiction."
"We have the moral high ground!" she shouted before trying to start a chant of "Not in our community!"
Well, Albahri's statements were not only within the UCSD community, they were well inside the school's legal and moral jurisdiction. And yet in response, we don't get the familiar kabuki of official outrage. Instead we get: This endorsement of genocide is brought to you by Aristotle.
The important point here isn't the school's double standard. It's that on campuses, and in the wider intellectual culture, people can't let go of their dog-eared script. It's not that conventional racism is no longer a problem, nor is it that the civil rights era no longer resonates. But freaking out over the vestiges of familiar racism is firmly within the comfort zone of contemporary liberalism. Indeed, it's an industry. Yet when it comes to students like Albahri -- and there are many like her -- administrators become brainless and lost. Lacking an adequate script, they resort to bromides about Aristotle.
Off campus, liberals crave a comfortable plot in which bigoted "homegrown" white men are the villains while Muslims are scapegoats. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was willing to bet that the Times Square bomber might turn out to be an opponent of healthcare reform....
Ah yes, Muslima Albahri and her poor, oppressed, ‘Palestinian’ compatriots are just one more example of "the white man's burden". Racists all and thoroughly within the comfort zone of the campus liberals.
This is a good piece. Jonah Goldberg however does not mention the more fundamental and insidious problem. For many years following the Holocaust even subtle expressions of anti-Semitism or Jew-hatred were not acceptable in polite company. This is no longer the case, especially on the left and where Israel's Jews are thrown into the mix. The idea of another genocide against the Jews is no longer verboten; certainly not on the political left.
I think Jonah Goldberg is great, but I also think it's interesting that he himself says he doesn't know what the right script is. I wonder if he does know the right script, but is wary of getting too involved in these risky issues.
If thats what they want they can watch a few season of 24 staring Kaffir Sutherland.
wildjew, you said,
Surely that remains a minority position among the left, even among the leftmost portion of the left. What is however true is that many on the left don't seem to know that their relentless criticism of Israel is about 80% erroneous and slanderous. In their misapprehension of the realities, the anti-Israel left doesn't notice or particularly care that that continuous barrage of slander is helping leave Israel more vulnerable to a genocide planned by Iran and other Islamic groups in the Middle East. If another genocide against the Jews takes place, the anti-Israel elements of the Left will thus be partly to blame, if only through irresponsibility, skewed perceptions, and negligence. But very, very few people on the left even consider, much less discuss, adopting genocide as a policy.
The comparison.
Question: Front Nationale, BNP, PVV say that Muslims should relocate to Marseilles, Bradford and Amsterdam. That way they'd all be in one place per nation and thus, easier to annihilate.
For it or or against it?
Or so confused by the simple question that you say, for it anyway?
In today's moral climate you know full well that calling on campus for the extermination of Israel is perfectly OK. After all it's only discourse and open debate.
Meanwhile utter one word of doubt around Islam, or maybe draw a few pictures of Mohammed and your whole universe will come crashing down.
This is what trashes the nice little comfort zone of academic freedom and is addressed in my first question. The absolute imbalance in legal redress where Islam is ringfenced whilst for the rest, it's get over it.
Geert Wilders is now on trial for comparing Islamic terror with corresponding sections of the Koran. He is suggesting that Islam is incompatible with modern pluralistic societies and that in it's bare naked Salafist form is a danger to the West.
Evidence for the pluralist question is easy. Ask how many faiths are allowed to practice in Saudi Arabia. Ask of the choice of leaving Islam. Ask of the numbers of Jews living in Gaza. Those answers will disabuse any but the willfully blind of any misconception regarding this faith.
On danger, well where to begin? Try thereligionofpeace site and it hurls itself in your face. The figures are unmissable.
Yet Wilders along with too many to list excepting an honourable mention of Kurt Westergaard, are villified by politicians, academies and the perennial PC brigade as racists, unworthy of the space they actually occupy on this earth.
If the airily noble, free for all freedom of discourse is so paramount in the minds of these universities why the disparity?
The answer? It's not freedom they desire. They are ideologues who worship at the shrines of Lenin and Marx and Mao and we all know what freedom meant in their corners of the globe.
In the normal course of things, trends, ideas, lifestyle and opinions start off in America, then migrate across the Atlantic. This time it's the reverse. The laisseze faire European model has caught the attention of your soi-dissent classes and it really has caught fire. This case is a mere exemplar.
Meanwhile back here in Mark Steyn's islamoland the natives are getting restless, we don't like it and the blowback has begun.
People are talking, the masses reacting. Muslim friendly Labour has been kicked out. Wilders is enjoying massive support. Europe is moving to the centre right. Could it be that the US, reversing the norm will follow? I'd like to think so.
Interesting times, indeed!
logdon,
Your diatribe is incisive and accurate. Except for the following:
The universities have their Marxists, without doubt, but that's not the shrine at which the majority of professors worship. The shrine -- or rather one major organizing principle for most professors today seems to be the PCMC ethos, on which Hesperado has been rather enlightening around here. One can perhaps call the majority of professors social democrats, and to the left of the American public as a whole, but Leninists? That's sort of like calling George W. Bush a devout follower of Hayek and Mises.
Hayek and Mises being, as I understand, the most rigorous and brilliant prophets of libertarian or laissez-faire capitalism.
traeh how are we to know that surely (it) remains a minority position on the left? George Santayana authored the phrase: "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
In the late nineteen thirties, a Fortune magazine poll revealed that though an overwhelming majority of Americans were aware of what the Nazis were doing to the Jews, "83% opposed lowering (strict) anti-immigration quotas to admit refugees," thus consigning the Europe's Jews to their fate at the hands of the Nazis. The British closed the gates to "Palestine." The nations did not want any Jews. Now one spoke out. No one protested.
Today Americans are either complacent or agnostic (or worse) about US efforts to undermine Israel's security; agnostic or complacent over US policy whose intent is to leave Israel's Jews defenseless at the hands of murderous Islamic killers.
I know this is true, because I call in on conservative talk radio. "Conservative" radio mind you! Not leftist talk radio. SILENCE. Abraham Lincoln wrote, "To sin by silence when they know they should protest, makes cowards of men."
I believe almost to a man and women (with very few exceptions) Americans are not bothered at the prospect of another genocide against the Jews. And what of the left? For a few days and weeks after the 9/11 Muslim-terror atrocities in New York and Washington, there was some sympathy for Israel's position vis-a-vis Islam, Islamic terrorism, and the jihad against Israel. This sympathy has all but evaporated as Americans support US policy aimed at the destruction of Israel. Did the conservative right not support Bush's immoral policies in the Middle East? Where are and were his detractors? Can you name any?
Now we are back to the prospect of genocide. I am not as sanguine as you. I cannot afford that luxury given our history.
Over here it's Frankfurt School, still Marxism but an overthrow of the institutions from within rather than open revolt.
Google Neather as to how the tentacles of Islam in Britain have been vastly and deliberately increased by wholesale immigration and immigrants who will all vote for the left.
Here's her 'concentration camp'.
Gaza's new Olympic-size pool
From Ma'an:
Gaza's first Olympic-standard swimming pool was inaugurated at the As-Sadaka club during a ceremony on Tuesday held by the Islamic Society.
Gaza government ministers, members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, leaders of Islamic and national governing bodies, as well as club members and athletes were among those at the opening ceremony, where Secretary-General of the Islamic Society Nasim Yaseen thanked the donors who helped realize the project.
Yaseen praised the As-Sadaka club for a number of wins in international and regional football, volleyball and table tennis matches.
As-Sadaka athletes performed a number of swimming exercises in the new pool to mark its opening.
It is astonishing how similar Gaza is to Buchenwald, isn't it?
Let's hope that the Free Gaza flotilla is bringing in some much-needed goggles.
Islam is the proof of the falseness of Multiculturalism The Left has no defense against it but to appease. Baltars all.