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Reza Aslan, Edward Said, and Radical Chic

Sep 25, 2020 5:00 pm By Robert Spencer 33 Comments

My latest in PJ Media:

Failed CNN host and cannibal Reza Aslan raised some eyebrows last Friday when he tweeted: “If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire f**king thing down.”

Criticized for this open call to violence, Aslan doubled down on Monday, tweeting: “Been a few days since I tweeted that if GOP try to jam a SCOTUS thru B4 election we burn the f**king thing down & since the death threats & Breitbart headlines about my tweet have now stopped let me just say that if GOP try to jam SCOTUS through we burn the f**king thing down.”

Yet nothing is much less likely than the prospect of the cosseted Aslan donning a balaclava and going out to set fire to Burger Kings in the name of justice. He is, like many Leftists before him, engaging in revolutionary posturing, or what Tom Wolfe indelibly dubbed “radical chic.”

Radical chic involves the spectacle of wealthy, comfortable elitists donning the garb and aping the rhetoric of radical Leftists (remember John Lennon chanting “Power to the people”), or even engaging in revolutionary theatre. The foremost example is Edward Said, the literature professor whose seminal book Orientalism destroyed Middle East Studies in the United States by portraying even the slightest critical word about Islam or Middle Eastern culture as an exercise in colonialism and racism….

In Aslan’s world, fey and soft-handed pseudo-intellectuals vowing to man the barricades and sexagenarian professors throwing rocks aren’t ridiculous, they’re heroic. They’re the vanguard of the hordes of spoiled children who claim to be oppressed when they aren’t, and who then pretend that they are the ones who are valiantly standing on the front line against the oppressors.

They’re silly and stupid, but they’re also dangerous: Others could heed Aslan’s repeated calls to “burn the f**king thing down” and end up destroying the society that has made it so easy for the likes of Reza Aslan and the late Edward Said to gain wealth and honor and live charmed lives. Aslan is now in the odd position of hoping that no one takes his calls seriously. If they do, he could end up in the smoking ruin of the American society for which he has such contempt, his comfortable life a thing of the past, dead by his own hand.

There is much more. Read the rest here.

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Filed Under: Featured, Leftist/Islamic Alliance, Robert Spencer, Useful idiots Tagged With: Reza Aslan


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Comments

  1. mortimer says

    Sep 25, 2020 at 5:26 pm

    A violent, lawless anarchist by his own words.

    Reply
    • maria says

      Sep 26, 2020 at 4:25 am

      He should be executed. He is an animal not a human being

      Reply
      • william carr says

        Sep 26, 2020 at 5:24 am

        You insult animals. RA is not an animal he is a very flawed human being like Hitler, Goebels, Himmler etc. and a privileged one at that

        Reply
        • JANET says

          Sep 27, 2020 at 3:14 pm

          Right on!

    • juleonly says

      Sep 26, 2020 at 6:38 pm

      Gee, he sounds like a mideast Muslim.

      Reply
  2. curious george says

    Sep 25, 2020 at 5:30 pm

    Off Topic… A very cool video, Texas Reloaded, in this article.

    Republicans are knocking it out of the park with political ads and memes

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/republicans_are_knocking_it_out_of_the_park_with_political_ads_and_memes.html

    Reply
    • gravenimage says

      Sep 25, 2020 at 9:12 pm

      Thanks for that link.

      Reply
      • curious george says

        Sep 25, 2020 at 9:29 pm

        You’re welcome. It reminded me of the 1st Rocky movie. Quite encouraging.

        Reply
  3. RichardL says

    Sep 25, 2020 at 6:00 pm

    awesome. Thanks for that!

    Reply
    • curious george says

      Sep 25, 2020 at 9:31 pm

      You’re welcome. I agree, I thought it was awesome also.

      Reply
  4. Cornelius says

    Sep 25, 2020 at 6:08 pm

    >remember John Lennon chanting “Power to the people”

    Not to mention “Imagine”, “Working Class Hero”, and the entire “Sometime in New York City” album. Lennon grew up in a comfy middle class home….far different from the other Beatles, whose roots were truly working class. He went through this ‘radical chic’ period from 1970 to 72….where he magnified his own self-importance by pretending to advocate for the downtrodden….(as if “Imagine no possessions” was something he could actually climb on board with, considering it would mean dispensing with his millions).

    Interestingly, during his lost weekend separation from Yoko in ’74-’75, he largely dispensed with the revolutionary songs…but that could have had as much with the changing cultural conditions as anything else (once Nixon got our troops out of Vietnam in ’73, ‘radical chic’ had suddenly lost its chic).

    Lennon was a brilliant song-writer…..whose political views were mostly superficial, vapid, and adolescent.

    Reply
    • gravenimage says

      Sep 25, 2020 at 9:16 pm

      Spot on analysis. He needed saner creative collaborators such as Paul McCartney to keep him grounded.

      Reply
    • James Lincoln says

      Sep 25, 2020 at 9:36 pm

      Cornelius says,

      “Lennon was a brilliant song-writer…..whose political views were mostly superficial, vapid, and adolescent.”

      An accurate analysis. He was also a gifted singer and, surprisingly, and above average rhythm guitarist.

      That being said, if he were alive today, he would likely be a very influential Leftist.

      Reply
      • mortimer says

        Sep 26, 2020 at 10:33 am

        Drugs weaken brains.

        Reply
  5. Matt says

    Sep 25, 2020 at 6:13 pm

    Thank you, Robert, for so eloquently giving aslan the finger. Hopefully his “followers” and book sales have dwindled to about nobody and none.

    Reply
    • mortimer says

      Sep 26, 2020 at 10:35 am

      The most devastating attacks on Reza Aslan came from bona fide academics who faulted him on recycling untenable notions that were put forward and then refuted many decades ago.

      Reply
  6. tgusa says

    Sep 25, 2020 at 7:06 pm

    “the death threats’

    If he tries to burn the f**king thing down threats will be the least of his worries. What does the dim bulb think Americans would do in response to that?

    “since the death threats & Breitbart headlines about my tweet have now stopped let me just say”

    Translation; Now that the threats and headlines have stopped it is safe for me to come out from under my desk and respond. For a guy who wants to trigger a war he sure appears to be a wimp.

    Reply
    • gravenimage says

      Sep 25, 2020 at 9:09 pm

      Aslan threatens violence, then pretends he is the victim.

      Reply
      • tgusa says

        Sep 25, 2020 at 11:51 pm

        They all do that. Yo can find the instructions on page 27 of chapter 4 (Victimology) in the weekly updated reliably incoherent book, Progism for Dummies. You will need to cross reference chapter 2 (Instigation) to fully understand the latest process.

        Reply
        • gravenimage says

          Sep 26, 2020 at 12:08 am

          Yes. And a Muslim saying is “show a victim’s face and take over”.

  7. Bezelel says

    Sep 25, 2020 at 7:10 pm

    ” the society that has made it so easy for the likes of Reza Aslan and the late Edward Said to gain wealth and honor and live charmed lives.”
    The ingratitude of it all reminds me of barachktooey hussein obama. These types get help from unexpected places. I would like to see him actually work for a living.

    Reply
  8. Rob says

    Sep 25, 2020 at 7:56 pm

    Didn’t Edward Said once say that only Middle Easterners should be allowed to study the Middle East. To which the late Bernard Lewis responded: ‘Does that mean that marine biology can only be studied by fish?’

    Reply
    • Kepha says

      Sep 26, 2020 at 3:55 pm

      Edward Said’s _Orientalism_ was an attack on the very intellectual curiosity that helped make the Western university a magnet for people from all over the world; in contrast to the stultifying intellectual regime imposed by Islam.

      Reply
      • gravenimage says

        Sep 26, 2020 at 11:04 pm

        Spot on, Kepha.

        Reply
  9. gravenimage says

    Sep 25, 2020 at 8:57 pm

    Reza Aslan, Edward Said, and Radical Chic
    ……………

    Yes–I’ve mentioned before that we are seeing another round of destructive Radical Chic now–as bad, perhaps, as that of the 1960s and ’70s.

    Reply
    • Kepha says

      Sep 26, 2020 at 4:00 pm

      As a credentialled geezer (politely called a Senior Citizen), I think the current wave is actually worse. We have people giving a platform to avowed Marxists thirty years after the Soviet Union collapsed and Deng Xiaoping saved China as the last, best hope of 20th century totalitarianism by mowing down people in the streets. In the Sillier ‘Seventies, you had people like Joan Baez who were openly repentant and embarrassed when the Cambodian horrors came to light, owning up to the role the Western Left had played in those mass murders. At this point, the Left is unapologetic about the ruining of downtown business owners, and even dishonorable members of the US House of Representatives and Senate openly praise those fascistic “Antifa”.

      Yes, part of it is full speed ahead into the year 1968; but part of it is also an inexcusable love of destruction for destruction’s sake, and yet another part of it is willful ignorance.

      Reply
  10. Expat88 says

    Sep 25, 2020 at 10:41 pm

    And not to mention, he looks like a complete fool. I love to see the video of him doing his little dance routine! Enough said.

    Reply
  11. Larry says

    Sep 26, 2020 at 6:24 am

    Pretty bold talk from a little weenie. Also, had he been more specific about the “thing” to be burned down, he could be charged with incitement of a riot. I would love to see this guy being frog-walked in cuffs to a jail cell.

    Reply
  12. notnolib says

    Sep 26, 2020 at 6:36 am

    If I remember right, Aslan is one of allahu’s ackbarbarians. He’s just behaving as a proper ackbarbarian, following the screed of the false prophet and pig-faced dog mohammed.

    Reply
  13. Seth says

    Sep 26, 2020 at 9:55 am

    ‘likes of Reza Aslan and the late Edward Said’

    i.e., malignant tumors. Alas, Western society is riddled with this cancer. Perhaps terminally.

    Reply
    • James Lincoln says

      Sep 26, 2020 at 1:42 pm

      Seth,

      The cancer analogy is very appropriate – and primary prevention is always best.

      Cancer can be staged from 0 – 4.

      Some Western countries, like Poland and Hungary, etc., are essentially stage 0.

      I would put the United States at stages 1 – 2, depending upon the part of the country.

      Other Western countries, like France, Germany, Sweden, UK etc., are stages 2 – 3. Still hope for a “cure” with *extremely* aggressive measures, but the window of opportunity is closing fast.

      https://thetruthaboutcancer.com/understanding-four-stages-cancer/

      Reply
  14. mortimer says

    Sep 26, 2020 at 10:37 am

    A fine description of pseudo-intellectuals by Robert Spencer. They haven’t done the hard work of real work nor have they done the hard work of thought.

    Reply
  15. Cannell says

    Sep 27, 2020 at 12:55 am

    “Radical Chic” The Peruvians have a wonderful term for the same group: “Caviares.” Caviares are those who are socialists but they themselves don’t want to give up their caviar and their “caviar” lifestyle.

    Reply

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