On February 20, 1939, before a crowd of twenty thousand at Madison Square Garden, Fritz Kuhn, the “American Führer” of the antisemitic, pro-Hitler German-American Bund, gave a major address before a huge portrait of George Washington, calling on “patriotic Americans” to join him in Nazi Jew-hatred: “The Bund is fighting shoulder to shoulder with patriotic Americans to protect America from a race that is not the American race, that is not even a white race …The Jews are enemies of the United States.”
Imagine if Kuhn had given a similar address denouncing critics of Hitler and Nazism as “bigots” and “Germanophobes,” and claiming that anti-Nazi sentiment in the United States was a recrudescence of the ugly nativism that had victimized Catholics in America in the nineteenth century, and was leading up to a wholesale persecution and possibly even a genocide of innocent German-Americans. Imagine further that a witless American reporter had printed his statements the day after the Germans invaded Poland, or the day after the full extent of the Nazi genocide of European Jews in the Holocaust was revealed.
Imagining all that will give you some idea of the situation our new Fritz Kuhn, Islamic supremacist Reza Aslan, was in this past week, when a lengthy interview showing him whining about “Islamophobia” and defaming those who are working to resist Islamic supremacism was published the day after a jihad-martyrdom bomber killed himself in an attempted mass-murder in Stockholm — thus instantly exposing just how hollow and grotesque is Aslan’s analogy in this interview between the situation of Muslims in Europe today and that of the Jews before the Holocaust. The Jews in Europe in Hitler’s day, you may recall, never committed any terror attacks, or proclaimed their intentions to conquer the continent.
Why is Aslan a new Fritz Kuhn? To recap: Aslan is a Board member of the National Iranian American Council, a group that genuine Iranian pro-democracy forces regard as an apologetic vehicle for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thus it was no surprise that in a piece about the trouble Iran’s Thug-In-Chief, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is facing at home, he offered not one critical word about Ahmadinejad’s genocidal antisemitism, or the regime’s persecution of non-Muslims. Instead, he praised certain domestic policies of Ahmadinejad. Yes, and Hitler built the autobahn.
Aslan has called on the U.S. Government to negotiate with Ahmadinejad and Hamas — that is, with some of the most barbaric and genocidally-inclined adherents of Sharia. He has even praised the jihad terror group Hizballah as “the most dynamic political and social organization in Lebanon,” recalling the useful idiots and fellow travelers who used to praise Stalinist Russia and even Hitler’s Germany for their social services apparatuses.
“Europe’s Muslims Get to be the Continent’s New Jews,” by Arnie Cooper for Miller-McCune, December 12 (thanks to all who sent this in):
[…] M-M: So what about banning minarets and religious clothing?
RA: Let’s be very clear what’s happening here. Laws are being passed that are stripping away the rights and privileges that all the other religious communities in Europe are able to enjoy. That in and of itself is profoundly disturbing and despicably undemocratic. But the other part of it is that these laws are a joke. You know how many women wear the full-face covering? One half of 1 percent of Muslim women, yet that precludes some Islamization of Europe that requires a federal law. Do you know how many minarets there are in Switzerland? Four! There are four minarets in the entire country, yet that indicates the Islamization of Swiss society. It’s appalling, and it should be called exactly what it is: racist….
Reza Aslan has apparently never had an original thought; in all these fawning interviews he simply repeats talking points that others have originated. In this case, he is repeating the tired sand-in-the-eyes canard that resistance to Islamic supremacism — to Islam as a political ideology that must, in the words of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, “dominate and not be dominated” — is a form of racism. What race is Islam again? Islamic supremacists are found among all races, and Reza Aslan must know that. He just hopes that you don’t.
Meanwhile, he is also repeating here an argument that many Islamic supremacists made about the Oklahoma Sharia ban: that there was no chance Islamic law could come to Oklahoma, so why legislate against it? There are only four minarets in Switzerland, so why ban them? His idea here is that something is small will never grow and need not be fought against. Did he ever study logic? A bit of plutonium is small, too.
M-M: So what do you say to those who perceive a real clash between the cultural values of the Netherlands, for example, which is otherwise very tolerant, and those of Muslims.
RA: They said the exact same thing about Jews before they started slaughtering them. The last time we saw that kind of ultra-nationalist rhetoric and ideology that we see now sweeping through Europe, it was against the Jews. Back then, how did you define yourself as European? You do so in opposition to the Jew. Now you’re hearing the exact same conversations and rhetoric being directed toward Europe’s Muslim population. That’s not to say we can expect another holocaust. Of course not; we live in a different society now. But this rhetoric is no different than what we’ve heard before, and it needs to be called out….
Yes, it is different, and that is because the Muslims are not the new Jews. Jews never carried out terrorist attacks in Europe — in contrast to the Stockholm bombing last week, and July 7, 2005 in London, and March 11, 2004, in Spain. Jews never boasted about how they were one day going to take over (in contrast to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s boast that Muslims would soon conquer Rome and all of Europe — a boast that other Islamic leaders have echoed). The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a vicious forgery, and there was no factual basis for all the conspiracy theories about Jews scheming to control the world, any more than there is today.
M-M: But this proves that using fear to promote one’s ideas is highly effective.
RA: And the crazy thing about it is that we’re seeing that same sort of playbook, that made European Islamophobia so successful and mainstream on the continent, now being adopted by these groups like Stop Islamization of America and Jihad Watch, which are also very successful about creating a mainstream sense of anti-Muslim sentiment.
In the margins of this country there will always be racists and bigots; it’s just that they were always on the fringes; now, hence we have people like Pam Geller and Robert Spencer appearing as regular guests on mainstream television….
Actually it is Reza Aslan, with his slick deceptions and evasions in the place of honest discussion about Islamic supremacism and violence and what to do about it, and others like him who create “anti-Muslim sentiment.” It’s actually Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore, who is spreading “anti-Muslim sentiment.” Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland, is spreading “anti-Muslim sentiment.” Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood jihad mass-murderer, is spreading “anti-Muslim sentiment.” Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer, is spreading “anti-Muslim sentiment.” Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer, is spreading “anti-Muslim sentiment.” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber, is spreading “anti-Muslim sentiment.” Muhammad Atta and Anjem Chaudary and Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza and Abu Bakar Bashir and Zawahiri and Zarqawi and bin Laden are spreading “anti-Muslim sentiment.” Islamic jihadists, murdering in the name of Islam the world over, are spreading “anti-Muslim sentiment.”
But as far as the new Fritz Kuhn, Reza Aslan, is concerned, the real culprits are Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. Well, remember that the first Fritz Kuhn, at that Madison Square Garden Nazi rally, denounced President Roosevelt (whom he called “Frank D. Rosenfeld”) for his anti-Nazi stance.
We passed laws in this country limiting how many Jews could come because these political, business and religious leaders like Louis McFadden, Henry Ford and Father Coughlin were saying that the Jews were immersed in a conspiracy to take over the country. We look back at that kind of rhetoric and those individuals with shame and laughter. And that’s exactly how we’re going to look at the Newt Gingriches and the Robert Spencers of the world 10 or 20 years from now….
I doubt it. But I have no doubt that if free people ultimately prevail, that Reza Aslan and his ilk will be remembered with the same kind of revulsion and disgust evoked by the memory of Fritz Kuhn. Why? Because there is one key difference between me and Henry Ford. I’ll let these guys explain what that difference is:
“We reject the U.N., reject America, reject all law and order. Don’t lobby Congress or protest because we don’t recognize Congress. The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it. . . . Eventually there will be a Muslim in the White House dictating the laws of Shariah.” — Muhammad Faheed, Muslim Students Association meeting, Queensborough Community College, 2003
“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.” — CAIR cofounder and longtime Board chairman Omar Ahmad, 1998 (denial noted and full story explained at link)
“I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.” — CAIR spokesman Ibrahim “Honest Ibe” Hooper, 1993
“If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.” — prominent American Muslim leader Siraj Wahhaj, 2002