Sunday, January 22, 2012

“Um tom radical, de direita mesmo.”

Começou o processo de escolha do candidato republicano que enfrentará Barack Obama em novembro. Significa que o Comitê do Partido Democrata para o Brasil (vulgo “escritório da Globo nos Estados Unidos”) tem pela frente grandes oportunidades para desinformar os seus telespectadores e fazê-los acreditar que os direitistas americanos são um bando de idiotas.

Não deixa de ser um avanço. Um ano atrás, os correspondentes da Globo, altamente capacitados no ofício de ler o esquerdista New York Times e repetir a coisa para o público brasileiro, estavam insinuando que certos direitistas lá, além de serem idiotas, incitam o assassinato de adversários políticos. Vocês devem se lembrar da deputada baleada na cabeça por um transtornado mental no estacionamento de um mercantil no Arizona.homoglobalis usa msm

Gabrielle Giffords é deputada pelo Partido Democrata. Com base nisso, seus correligionários na imprensa elucidaram o caso em menos de vinte minutos: ela foi vítima de um atentado tramado pela venenosa Sarah Palin, alçada ao posto de líder de um grupo de extremistas determinados a derrubar o governo do santo Obama, a quem se opõem por puro racismo.

O Jornal Nacional foi logo reproduzindo: “Muita gente está acusando o grupo extremamente conservador Tea Party, da ex-candidata a vice-presidente Sarah Palin, por incitar o confronto com os democratas”, comunicou o apresentador. Não foi informado quem era essa “muita gente”. Algumas horas depois, no Jornal da Globo, o correspondente Rodrigo Bocardi reiterou que “o Tea Party, liderado por Sarah Palin, é formado por conservadores extremos”.

É norma da redação: tudo que envolva a direita deve vir acompanhado de adjetivos como "extremista", "radical" e sobretudo "ultraconservador" (este último sempre enfatizado pelos locutores). Já a esquerda nunca leva adjetivo nenhum. Ela nem mesmo é identificada como tal. Na cabeça dos jornalistas, ser de esquerda é apenas ser normal.

Pois bem. Fui ouvir o que a Globo News está falando sobre as primárias republicanas. No Jornal das Dez, um dos apresentadores, ao chamar a correspondente, disse que os candidatos adotam “um tom radical, de direita mesmo” (portanto, não ser de esquerda já é radicalismo). A correspondente, Sandra Coutinho, concordou e ilustrou com uma informação apresentada em discreto tom de reprovação: Rick Perry, governador do Texas, “andou dizendo que a teoria da evolução é só uma teoria, e também disse que não acredita nessa história de aquecimento global”. Bem que me avisaram, esses conservadores são uns imbecis mesmo! Como ousam questionar duas verdades cujas provas de veracidade ainda não apareceram?


Bruno Pontes é jornalista.

Thursday, December 08, 2011

Aplausos para ONGs

Presidente do "Viva Rio": que tal assumir de vez o nome "Viva Bandido"?

por Peter Hof em 15 de fevereiro de 2007


Resumo: Qual seria a reação do Viva Rio se em vez do menino João Hélio a vítima fosse um "di menor", armado, que tivesse sido morto a tiros ao invadir uma residência?

© 2007 MidiaSemMascara.org


Qualquer pessoa de bom senso, que leia quotidianamente os jornais, certamente já terá observado a relação, para se dizer no mínimo estranha, entre ONGs como a Viva Rio, do Rio de Janeiro, e a Sou da Paz, de São Paulo, e as forças da marginalidade que atormentam a vida do cidadão de bem. Essas instituições vivem às custas de gordas contribuições de governos estrangeiros - a Viva Rio recebe, de acordo com o Embaixador Inglês em Brasília, 2,5 milhões de reais por ano, fora as doações de fundações estrangeiras como a Soros, Ford e Rockfeller.

A coisa chega a tal ponto que por ocasião do Referendo sobre o Comércio de Armas, de outubro de 2005, a Justiça Eleitoral proibiu que essas duas ONGs se envolvessem nas campanhas, que antecederam o referendo, devido às suas relações com entidades de outros países. E a coisa não fica por aí: as arcas do Tesouro Nacional despejam, sem nenhum tipo de controle, imensas somas de dinheiro para essas ONGs. Sempre é bom lembrar que essa dinheirama tem origem na carga tributária de quase 40% que a população brasileira, exaurida, carrega nos ombros.

Para exemplificar o que está escrito acima pincei quatro exemplos recentes:
Caso 1: Os leitores deste Mídia Sem Máscara, que também me honram com sua leitura, devem estar lembrados de um artigo intitulado " E agora, senhor Rubem César Fernandes?" em que eu manifestava minha indignação pela apaixonada defesa que o senhor Fernandes, dirigente da ONG Viva Rio, fazia do dirigente comunitário William de Oliveira. Oliveira, dirigente comunitário na favela da Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, e protegé do senhor Fernandes, estava atolado em acusações de ligações espúrias com o tráfico que domina aquela favela.

Indignado com a "injusta perseguição" que a polícia vinha fazendo a um inocente dirigente comunitário, o sociólogo (Deus deu cangurus para a Austrália e sociólogos para o Brasil) Rubem César saiu-se com esta cândida explicação sobre as mentiras do dirigente comunitário à polícia, publicada no jornal O Globo de 5/3/05: "Mentira não chega a ser crime". E a turma da patifaria resolveu levar a sério e ampliar o âmbito da declaração do doutor Fernandes: acrescentaram que também não chega a ser crime receber dinheiro para votar matérias de interesse do governo no caso do mensalão que, por extensão, também não chega a ser crime receber propina em negociatas com ambulâncias. Não chega a ser crime receber veículos Land-Rover de fornecedores do governo. E comprar dossiês falsos sobre candidatos da oposição? Crime? Nem pensar, quando muito é um escorregão de bem intencionados aloprados. Como se viu, "bons exemplos" são facilmente absorvidos por uma significativa parcela da população...
Para azar do sociólogo e do líder comunitário, o jornal O Dia - que pelo visto não concordava com o final que queriam dar à história - publicou uma série de cinco arrasadoras reportagens mostrando que acobertar roubo de armas do Exército e entregar aos traficantes rádios de comunicação comprados pela associação comunitária (muito provavelmente com dinheiro doado pelo Viva Rio), podiam ser considerados "apenas" como "pequenos desvios de conduta" só para o pessoal do Viva Rio, o que resultou na prisão de William de Oliveira.

Caso 2: Ano passado, admitam ou não as "autoridades competentes", o crime organizado efetuou uma verdadeira ação de guerrilha urbana em São Paulo. Um grande número de policiais civis, PMs e até bombeiros foram cruelmente chacinados no decorrer de poucas horas. Alguém viu ou leu alguma declaração do Sou da Paz condenando a chacina de agentes da lei? Se alguém leu por favor me escreva. Agora, bastou a polícia começar a responder ao ataque e matar alguns bandidos para que todo mundo caísse de pau nas "desumanidades" cometidas pela polícia. Não se trata aqui de negar a existência de exageros por parte de alguns maus policiais, ações essas que devem ser severamente punidas. O que não se pode aceitar é a forma como as coisas foram colocadas por uma parte da imprensa. Só faltaram dizer que um grupo de pobres desafortunados, vítimas de uma sociedade cruel e excludente, foi barbaramente trucidado por infames policiais.

Caso três: Em 8/10/2006 uma viúva de 67 anos, moradora no bairro do Flamengo, Rio, cansada de ser ameaçada por ladrões, deu um tiro em um vagabundo que tentava assaltá-la. O mundo quase veio abaixo. Um integrante do Viva Rio declarou que ela merecia apodrecer na cadeia; o senhor Antonio Rangel Bandeira, outro "especialista" do Viva Rio ouvido pelo jornal O Globo - para esse jornal, "especialista" é qualquer pessoa de uma ONG contrária ao direito de autodefesa - criticou o fato de um juiz ter soltado a viúva. Suas palavras publicadas no jornal da Família Marinho: - "A gente fica com pena, mas leis devem ser cumpridas". Pablo Dreyfus, também do sempre presente Viva Rio, declarou que o caso abre um precedente perigoso quando se solta alguém que infringe a lei, embora o tenha feito em defesa da própria vida. Para o senhor Dreyfus e o senhor Bandeira a única lei por eles aceita é da total submissão dos cidadãos de bem aos desmandos da bandidagem.

Caso quatro: O Rio de Janeiro e o Brasil assistiram horrorizados a um ato de barbárie que nem os carrascos nazistas, os mais insensíveis dos seres humanos, seriam capazes de perpetrar: uma criança de seis anos foi arrastada por mais de sete quilômetros por um carro dirigido por marginais. Um policial que chegou ao local contou que chorou ao ver o estado do corpo da criança, completamente dilacerado e não conseguiu transmitir pelo rádio a mensagem. A revolta atingiu níveis nunca vistos neste desgraçado país. O jornal O Globo recebeu em 12 horas mais de 2.500 e-mails de cidadãos revoltados contra um ato que ultrapassa todos os limites até então imaginados da selvageria. Entre essas milhares de manifestações, pincei uma do leitor Jader
Neiva Mello, publicada em 10/2/2007:

"Até agora não vi, ouvi nem li notícia que algum órgão de direitos humanos tenha ido prestar solidariedade à família do menino João. Porém já li sobre a preocupação da ONG Viva Rio para com os bandidos. É sempre assim: vamos defender os facínoras".

Tem toda a razão o referido leitor. Vejam o que declarou o amigo do marginal William de Oliveira, o sociólogo (lembram-se da história da Austrália e dos cangurus?) e dirigente do Viva Rio sobre o caso, em entrevista ao Globo (sempre ele...):

"É uma coisa sem nome, totalmente insuportável. As pessoas de meu trabalho comentaram o assunto durante todo o dia. A violência chegou ao limite da insensibilidade. O perigo é a sociedade entrar nesse clima de violência, ser dragada (sic) por esse sentimento e querer fazer justiça com as próprias mãos".

Perceberam qual a maior preocupação do sociólogo Fernandes? É de a sociedade chegar ao limite da paciência e da capacidade de suportar os golpes que leva diariamente, de ver corrupção e desvio do dinheiro que deveria ser investido em sua segurança parar nos bolsos de mensaleiros e sanguessugas e resolver fazer justiça com as próprias mãos! Para os membros do Viva Rio o que importa é que, acima de tudo, animais que executam mulheres nas ruas, que incendeiam famílias inteiras dentro de carros, que praticam tiro ao alvo em policiais e extorquem e aterrorizam toda uma sociedade, tenham seus direitos humanos respeitados. Será que para variar um pouco, e talvez conseguir mais verbas de fundações e governos estrangeiros, o Viva Rio não pode mudar a cantilena e se preocupar também com os direitos humanos das vítimas? Eles podem começar dando assistência à família de Rônei Cândido Resende, 32 anos, escrivão da Polícia Federal, que em 11/2/2007, ao ser descoberto que era policial foi executado com 9 tiros de fuzil, seu corpo foi colocado na mala de seu próprio carro que foi incendiado pelos perpetrantes, um grupo de vítimas da exclusão social.

Não lembro de ter visto durante toda minha vida uma manifestação de solidariedade e indignação como agora no caso do menino João Hélio. Reunidos na mesma dor e na mesma revolta lá estavam o Governo do Estado, o Governo da Cidade, A Cúria Metropolitana, a Sociedade de Pediatria do Rio de Janeiro, comerciantes como a Confeitaria Colombo que distribuiu fitas pretas aos clientes e pilotos de asa-delta. O site Orkut reuniu 22.255 membros protestando contra o fato. Até mesmo uma escola de samba pretende fazer uma homenagem a João Hélio no desfile de carnaval. Tudo isto não foi suficiente para fazer com que um membro sequer do Viva Rio juntasse sua voz à de milhares de pessoas em uma das raras e contundentes manifestações de uma sociedade entorpecida pela violência que a tem afligido por décadas.

Deixo aos leitores uma pergunta: Qual o ilustre leitor (a) acredita que seria a reação do Viva Rio se em vez do menino João Hélio a vítima fosse um "di menor", armado, que tivesse sido morto a tiros ao invadir uma residência?

O leitor que teve a paciência de ler este texto até aqui deve estar se perguntando a razão para o título desse artigo: Viva quem? Creio que a melhor reposta está contida na carta do leitor Rodrigo Dardeau Vieira, publicada no Globo de 12/10/2006, comentando o caso da idosa que atirou no bandido:

"Quer dizer então que a turma do Viva Rio revogou o direito de legítima defesa, quer a prisão daquela senhora que reagiu a um assalto e a considera uma ameaça à sociedade? Diante disso, proponho a imediata mudança de nome da referida ONG para VIVA BANDIDO! Fica bem mais de acordo".

Ah, a velha, mas sempre bela sabedoria popular!

E agora, senhor Rubem César Fernandes?

Em artigo publicado aqui no MÍDIA SEM MÁSCARA de 09/03/05 eu citei uma entrevista dada pelo senhor Rubem César Fernandes, diretor do Movimento Viva Rio, à jornalista Taís Mendes, publicada em O Globo de 05/03/05, pág. 21. Na referida matéria ele fazia uma apaixonada defesa de William de Oliveira, presidente de uma organização de moradores da favela da Rocinha e acusado de ligações com o tráfico. Para defender seu protégé, o senhor Fernandes comete verdadeiros absurdos e afrontas ao bom-senso ao declarar que o dirigente comunitário, que em vez de chamar as autoridades joga, ou manda jogar no mato fuzis que haviam sido furtados das Forças Armadas, é coerente com o William que conheci. E que: Mentira não chega a ser crime.

Tudo indica que até para o jornal da família Marinho, que publica num mesmo dia anúncios de prostituição e reportagens contra o lenocínio, o destempero verbal do senhor Fernandes, fiel escudeiro do jornal O Globo na campanha do desarmamento, foi longe demais.

A impressão que ficou é que para consertar as coisas, a direção do jornal escalou um jornalista respeitado: Zuenir Ventura, que na quarta-feira, 09/03/05, publicou em sua coluna semanal de 1/3 de página um artigo intitulado Versão Polêmica, onde procurou livrar a cara do dirigente da comunidade da Rocinha. Interessante que um jornalista tarimbado como Zuenir cometa um erro básico e mortal para quem pretende bem informar seus leitores: o de dar voz somente a um lado interessado, “por acaso”, o do senhor William de Oliveira. Zuenir baseia seu artigo em uma entrevista que o dirigente comunitário deu a uma outra pessoa (Xico Vargas) em um site chamado Nominimo. Entretanto nada o impediria, em nome de um jornalismo isento, que Zuenir telefonasse para o secretário de Justiça e ouvisse sua versão dos fatos, de vez que as acusações eram graves e incluíam o próprio titular daquela pasta.

Aproveitando a oportunidade única que lhe era oferecida, o dirigente comunitário posou de vítima do sistema e de uma armação da Polícia. Segundo ele, o doutor Marcelo Itagiba, secretário de Segurança Pública do estado do Rio de Janeiro não queria que o Ministro Edson Vidigal do STJ, que tinha uma visita planejada à favela da Rocinha, se encontrasse ‘com um dirigente de nada, um preto favelado’ (Atenção: isto é transcrição literal do que foi dito na matéria escrita por Zuenir). William reiterou que tudo o que querem é arruinar sua ilibada reputação e Zuenir encerra a matéria com as seguintes palavras: “Há informações que William diz só fornecer à Justiça. A ela caberá decidir se houve de fato armação política.”

A matéria de Zuenir teve pronta resposta do doutor Itagiba, publicada na seção de cartas de O Globo de 10/03/05 que negou categoricamente a frase racista a ele atribuída, e mostrou fatos e ações da PM e da Polícia Civil na verdadeira Zona de Guerra que é a favela da Rocinha.

Por uma dessas ironias da vida, no domingo seguinte, a revista Veja de 16/03/05, trouxe uma extensa reportagem intitulada O Fio da navalha, com transcrições de conversas do líder comunitário onde fica exposto todo o envolvimento de William de Oliveira com o crime organizado. Ao contrário das unilaterais afirmações de Rubem César Fernandes e Zuenir Ventura, a matéria de mais de três páginas da Veja traz testemunhos de pessoas com vasto conhecimento dos problemas das favelas: a antropóloga Alba Zaluar, que há 25 anos estuda a violência nas favelas e o domínio do tráfico, e do deputado Carlos Minc, que comprovam as espúrias ligações entre o tráfico e um substancial número de lideranças comunitárias em favelas.

O capítulo seguinte da emocionante novela aconteceu no dia 17/03/05 quando o Secretário de Segurança Pública e o senhor Rubem César Fernandes foram solicitados pelo Globo a expressar suas opiniões sobre O Caso Rocinha. Não vale a pena aqui fazer uma análise profunda do artigo do doutor Itagiba, uma vez que este se concentra em demonstrar com números a ação da polícia em comunidades como a Rocinha e outras. Do que ele escreveu discordo apenas quando diz que nos últimos dois anos mais de 30 mil armas foram retiradas das mãos de criminosos. A razão de minha discordância é a matéria publicada em O Globo que informa que a polícia apreendeu, em 2004, 880 armas (18/01/05, pág. 10). Se a afirmação do doutor Itagiba é correta, no ano de 2003 foram apreendidas 29.120 armas, o que me parece um pouco exagerado, se comparado com 2004.

O senhor Rubem César Fernandes em sua matéria (quem sabe, devido a ajuda de um ghost-writer) foi bem mais moderado do que quando faz declarações aos jornais. Até aí nada demais: ele está na boa companhia do Presidente da República que quando fala de improviso faz inveja aos melhores autores de besteirol. Ele abriu a matéria, intitulada Insurreição pela cidadania, relatando que em 2004 o Movimento Viva Rio desenvolveu 1.134 projetos em favelas e periferias pobres. Segue dizendo que estas ações foram desenvolvidas com 1.380 instituições parceiras. Ele só “esqueceu” de dizer, ou de contestar as afirmações contidas em Veja, que daquele total apenas 73 (5,3%) ações foram em parceria com entidades de moradores. Que explicação teria o dirigente do Viva Rio para o fato? Teria sido também muito interessante se o senhor Fernandes, um dos paladinos da nefanda Campanha do Desarmamento, nos dissesse quantas atividades para o recolhimento de armas, do mesmo tipo que o Movimento Viva Rio leva a cabo quase que em caráter permanente na sua própria sede, em igrejas e em outros locais da cidade, foram também desenvolvidas nas comunidades onde o Viva Rio atua, e quantas armas foram entregues pelos moradores dessas comunidades.

Outro ponto interessante no artigo do senhor Fernandes é a seguinte frase: Não fazemos contato direto com bandidos, nem com a polícia mineira. Está aí uma coisa que não entendi: contato direto o pessoal do Movimento Viva Rio não faz, isto pressup&oti lde;e que eles fazem contatos indiretos? Talvez seja este o papel do senhor William de Oliveira. Fazer a parte dura do trabalho para que o pessoal do Movimento Viva Rio continue recebendo generosas doações tanto do Brasil como do exterior, sem a necessidade de sujar as mãos nem correr riscos. Mais adiante o senhor Fernandes escreve: Preservamos nossa segurança (alguém diria “integridade”) à custa do risco de nossos parceiros. Como alguém pode defender alguém a quem está usando como bucha de canhão? Ainda segundo o senhor Fernandes: os integrantes do Viva Rio receberam a graça de não ter nenhuma só pessoa nossa ferida ou morta em conflito . Enquanto isso 350 líderes comunitários foram assassinados no município do Rio de Janeiro entre 1992 e 2001 (O Globo 20/03/05, pág.17). Como o senhor Ruben César Fernandes está tão orgulhoso das estatísticas das ações do Viva Rio pode acrescentar mais uma: com a segurança e a integridade dos membros do Viva Rio devidamente assegurada, a cada 32 ações comunitárias de sua ONG morre Um dirigente comunitário! Preservar sua própria segurança e integridade às custas do risco de parceiros, senhor Fernandes, tem um nome: COVARDIA.

A pá de cal sobre a pacotilha montada por O Globo, com a participação do senhor Rubem César Fernandes e do jornalista Zuenir Ventura, foi dada pela série de reportagens do jornal O Dia, que se iniciou em 24/03/05, página 3 e se prolongou pelos quatro dias seguintes. Na primeira das reportagens, em uma matéria de página inteira com direito a transcrições das conversas de William com o traficante Bem-Te-Vi e outros marginais da favela da Rocinha, a história inteira é contada. Além de celulares, o amigo querido do dirigente do Movimento Viva Rio, também usava rádiotransmissores para alertar seus parceiros do crime sobre a chegada de policiais. Estes rádios era comprados pela associação de moradores e repassados aos traficantes. Será que alguém tem uma idéia de quem fornecia dinheiro para a associação dos moradores comprar tais equipamentos?

No caso dos três fuzis roubados em 27/07/04 do Forte Copacabana, e comprados por Bem-Te-Vi por 24 mil reais, William Oliveira orientou o traficante a se desfazer das armas, jogando-os na mata junto à vizinha favela do morro do Vidigal. William fora informado de que o Exército estava preparando uma operação na favela para recuperar as armas.

Para julgamento dos leitores transcrevo a seguir o que disse William de Oliveira ao traficante: “Se liga, eu menti pros caras do Exército, disse que as armas não estavam aqui. Agora, se aparecer as peças (fuzis), até eu vou ser preso” (O Dia, 24/03/05, pág. 3). Interessante que o próprio William reconheceu que a mentira poderia levá-lo para a cadeia. Já o senhor Rubem César Fernandes, com a inocência das almas puras, afirmou sobre o caso: “Mentir não é crime”.

Na sexta-feira, dia 25/03/05 o mesmo repórter, Sérgio Ramalho, publica em O Dia, pág.12 outra extensa reportagem onde transcreve mais fitas mostrando toda extensão do envolvimento do líder comunitário e darling do senhor Rubem César com os traficantes da favela da Rocinha. Chega a ser repulsivo o trecho onde William manda um funcionário da União Pró-Melhoramentos ligar para o comandante do batalhão da PM e denunciar policiais militares que faziam uma blitz no morro (O Dia, 27/03/05, pág. 18). O crime desses policiais? Serem honestos e estarem atrapalhando os negócios dos traficantes.

As fitas com as gravações das conversas entre o líder comunitário e os traficantes foram enviadas pela 16ª DP (Barra da Tijuca) ao Instituto de Criminalística Carlos Eboli a fim de serem periciadas. Esta providência é importante, não só do ponto de vista da justiça como também para que os leitores de O Globo, que leram na coluna do jornalista Zuenir Ventura, que “ele (William de Oliveira) afirma que gravações foram adulteradas para comprometê-lo”, saibam que a verdade é bem diferente daquilo que o líder comunitário afirma a seus amigos e defensores.

Depois disso tudo o que fez o jornal da família Marinho, tão rápido em mandar ou aceitar que um de seus mais conceituados articulistas fizesse a defesa de um marginal? Nada! Sobre o assunto o jornal O Globo mergulhou no mais profundo silêncio.

Infelizmente para William de Oliveira, presidente da União Pró-Melhoramentos da Rocinha, a Justiça tem um entendimento a respeito de “coerência” e “mentir não é crime” diferente daquele do seu protetor, senhor Rubem César Fernandes. Em 17/03/05 William teve sua prisão preventiva decretada novamente. Os agentes da Polinter, encarregados de executar a prisão, foram recebidos na favela com tiros e bombas de fabricação artesanal. Ao que tudo indica o dirigente comunitário, ao desaparecer, perdeu uma oportunidade única de ser coerente com o que sobre ele havia escrito o jornalista Zuenir Ventura: usar aquela oportunidade para fornecer à Justiça as tais informações que diz possuir.

Na madrugada de 29/3/05, quando tentava evadir-se da favela da Rocinha no banco traseiro de um carro, William foi reconhecido por policiais e preso. Ironicamente, William de Oliveira vestia uma camiseta com a inscrição “A Gente Faz Paz”, camiseta esta distribuída pelo “Movimento Viva Rio”. Quem leu as matérias de Veja e a devastadora série de reportagens sobre o assunto publicadas pelo jornal O Dia, há de achar pouco ortodoxa a maneira que o líder comunitário tem de fazer paz.

Ao manifestar-se sobre o assunto O Globo foi bastante moderado, talvez porque seus leitores já houvessem assistido na véspera as declarações dadas por William ao Jornal Nacional. Ao contrário de O Dia, o jornal da família Marinho não explicou a seus leitores que a inscrição “A Gente Faz Paz”, estampada na camiseta de William, e claramente visível na foto do dirigente comunitário na página 20 de sua edição de 30/03/05, era patrocinada por sua ONG parceira, o Movimento Viva Rio.

Em “defesa” de O Globo é preciso dizer-se: desta vez, escaldados com a ri dícula reportagem de 05/03/05, a direção do jornal não correu a ouvir a opinião do seu interlocutor favorito, o senhor Rubem César Fernandes, O Coerente.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Israel’s immoral novelists

Op-ed: Italian journalist says likes of David Grossman, Amoz Oz promote vicious distortions about Israel


Israeli authors have never been shy. They have always commented on their governments and always speak about politics in their novels. But the best-selling Israeli writers are now captives of a dangerous syndrome. One can legitimately criticize Israeli governments, their errors and deafness. But a dark malaise is now driving these authors to toe the line with the worst emotions of global public opinion.
Peaceful Gesture?

Amos Oz sends book to jailed Barghouti / Zvika Brut

Acclaimed Israeli author sends Palestinian prisoner convicted of several terror attacks book with personal dedication: 'Hope to meet soon in peace and freedom'
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This is the same public opinion that in essence boycotted the tragic news about a large, beautiful and caring Jewish family destroyed in a minute, when terrorists burst into their home in Itamar with one aim in mind: To murder as many Israelis as possible.

There is now a deep chasm between the pretension of the "good conscience" of these writers and the crude realism of history. This is even sander and more significant because we are not talking about writers who hate Israel or novelists who pontificate against the Jewish State from abroad, but rather, about locals.

Amos Oz and David Grossman, Israel’s most popular authors, have a track record of genuine Zionist endeavor. But Oz just got in touch with Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian terrorist leader convicted of murdering five Israelis and planning several terrorist attacks. The Israel Prize recipient sent the Palestinian prisoner one of his books with a personal inscription wishing him a speedy release from prison: “This story is our story. I hope you read it and understand us better, as we attempt to understand you. Hoping to meet soon in peace and freedom.”

Indeed, the gap between these authors and the guillotine threatening Israel grows larger every day. David Grossman, whose son Uri was killed in the Second Lebanon War, was the first Israeli writer to explore the psychology of the Israeli occupation after 1967. Since then, Grossman’s paradigm, simply put, was always the same: Israel must end its role of occupier and oppressor if the horror of terrorism is to end.

Israel deserves better

It seems as though Grossman’s conscience as an intellectual hasn't been shaken by the Twin Towers attack, by the 1,600 Israeli civilians killed in terror attacks, by a decade of rockets on southern Israeli cities or by Iran’s atomic death cult.

Shortly after the Gaza war, Grossman called for an independent inquiry into the conduct of the IDF, paving the way for the biased Goldstone’s report. He also urged dialogue with Hamas. When Grossman went to collect a cash prize funded by the Israeli state, he refused to shake hands with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

After the flotilla incident, Grossman charged that Israel behaves like “a band of pirates.” He said the blockade on Gaza was “despicable,” attacking the Israeli government “which is prepared to embitter the lives of a million innocent people in the Gaza Strip, in order to obtain the release of one imprisoned soldier.”

Indeed, the morality of Israeli writers is not longer in tune with reality and its contradictions, Israel’s security, very existence, identity and memory. These authors’ publications attract so much attention abroad because of the baleful influence they have on Israel’s reputation, as they promulgate the most vicious distortions about Israel.



When Ariel Sharon sent forces into the West Bank to defeat the terrorists, both Grossman and Oz went to help the Palestinians with their olive harvest. Their noble generosity didn’t stop Hamas from slaughtering two Jewish girls in a nearby settlement, Linoy Sarussi and Hadas Turgeman. Now, again, after a new Jewish family was destroyed in Itamar, the writers chose to send postcards and books to the terrorists. Israel deserves better bards.

Monday, August 08, 2011

Uribe descreve Lula como hipócrita e covarde

Álvaro Uribe também assegurou que “Lula combatia (o presidente da Venezuela, Hugo) Chávez ausente e tremia frente a Chávez presente”.




O ex-presidente colombiano Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002-2010) respondeu através de sua conta Twitter (@alvarouribevel) ao ex-presidente brasileiro Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), depois que este revelou em Bogotá, em um encontro com o presidente Juan Manuel Santos que, quando foram governantes, “Não havia confiança entre Uribe e eu”.

“Lula nos maltrata e no governo fingia ser o melhor amigo”, escreveu Uribe através de sua conta no Twitter, e acusou Lula de ser “mal perdedor”, porque a Colômbia ganhou do Brasil a presidência do Banco Interamericano de Desenvolvimento (BID).

Em outra mensagem, Uribe disse: “Lula incapaz de declarar a narcofarc de terroristas”, em alusão à insistência do governo de Uribe de que os países vizinhos declarassem como grupo terroristas às Forças Armadas Revolucionárias da Colômbia (FARC, comunista). Uribe acrescentou que “Lula foi incapaz de extraditar o padre Camilo, terrorista refugiado no Brasil”, que segundo as autoridades colombianas era o representante das FARC nesse país.

Além disso, Uribe assegurou em outra mensagem que “Lula combatia (o presidente da Venezuela, Hugo) Chávez ausente e tremia frente a Chávez presente”. Finalmente, o ex-presidente colombiano afirmou que “hoje Lula confessa que me teve desconfiança, porém o investimento do Brasil teve toda a confiança”.

O que Lula disse?

O ex-mandatário do Brasil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, de visita a Bogotá, afirmou que acredita que os presidentes Juan Manuel Santos e Dilma Rousseff podem fazer muito mais “do que fizemos eu e Uribe. Não confiávamos inteiramente entre os dois (sic)”, anotou.

O ex-presidente propôs ao governo colombiano criar um fundo de garantia para investir no desenvolvimento estratégico do Sul, de maneira que se avance em novas hidrelétricas, portos e vias. “há que aproveitar o gasto para a riqueza do continente. Projetos estratégicos para daqui a 10 anos. Isto é o melhor que está acontecendo entre Brasil e Colômbia”, acrescentou Lula.

O ex-presidente do Brasil pediu para dar importância ao crédito. “Presidente Santos, você não deve ter medo de emprestar dinheiro aos pobres. Os pobres pagam”, disse Lula ao fazer um chamado à “bancarização”. Ele destacou a gestão do presidente colombiano, Juan Manuel Santos e disse que o país “está vivendo um momento de tranqüilidade extraordinária com alguns vizinhos polêmicos”.

Lula assegurou que Santos está marcando na UnaSul uma política muito importante. Segundo Lula, a lição que o mandatário colombiano deu é de que não dedicou seu tempo em brigar com os demais vizinhos, senão em fazer a paz com eles.

O ex-mandatário brasileiro ressaltou a presença de empresas do Brasil como a Petrobras, Odebrecht, Grupo Sinergy, entre outras. “Este é um sinal muito promissor das relações bi-nacionais”, disse Lula.


Publicado no La Patilla.


Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Thank you, Edward Saïd: Wikileaks, Linkage, and the Appalling State of Western Understanding of the Arab World


This is an essay I wrote back at the time of Wikileaks, and it got rejected from two different journals. I got distracted by my book, and forgot about it. I just got a nice email from a fan who asked me where I wrote the following:

The problem with middle eastern studies in the USA (a fortiori in Europe) is that it’s been colonized by Muslim and Arab scholars who have politicized the field and intimidated western scholars into ”respecting” Islam (which means giving it the honor that they feel it deserves). this hegemonic discourse makes it impossible to speak of honor-shame, the very hegemonic principle that has made Islamic studies such a retarded field.

If Western academics had done this with their own culture and religion, we’d have no academics. The appalling propaganda that passes for scholarship today — Finkelstein and abu el-Haj come immediately to mind — that would get tenured from faculty and administrators in thrall to a political correct discourse that is, to use the Marxist term, “objectively” a form of cowardice and dhimmitude, is what drives sound people to take extraordinary measures.

Today’s middle eastern studies more closely resembles the kind of atmosphere that dominated the late medieval university (inquisitorial) than a free and meritocratic culture commited to honesty. the only difference is that in pursuing this oppressive and ultimately dishonest form of “academic discourse” the people who admire “scholars” like F and e-H, actually betray the very culture they pretend to uphold.”)

It was in response to an article about tenure in Middle Eastern Studies in Inside Higher Ed. He also asked me if I’ve developed those thoughts, and I wrote back that in addition to my essay on Edward Said, there’s the following essay, which I post here.

Wikileaks, the Middle East and Edward’s Said’s Legacy

One of the most interesting revelations in the cache of recently released Wikileaks documents concerned Obama’s Middle East policy. Remarks from several and varied Arab countries confirmed in a rather dramatic way, what some experts had claimed earlier: that the Arabs wanted the US to “cut off the head of the snake,” and that for these Arab leaders the head was Iran.

On one level, this wasn’t groundbreaking news; anyone paying attention knew that Sunni Arab leaders were terrified of the power of Shiite Iran. But somehow this awareness had failed to penetrate Obama’s policy circle, which had consistently argued that in order to gain the support of the Arab world to move against Iran, the US had to “solve” the Palestinian problem. Obama explained this policy of linkage to Netanyahu in their April meeting of 2009: by swiftly reaching a “two-state solution” that gives the Palestinians a viable state, Obama could win the favor of the Arab world and the global community, enabling him to tackle problems like Iran.

Linkage had widespread approval not only in academic and policy circles, and among global “elders” like Jimmy Carter, but also among newspundits like Tom Friedman, who considers it “very logical.” A cynic might call this the narcissistic messianic approach: let’s make everyone love us, have peace prizes all around in Denmark, and then calmly and collectively tell the Iranians: “Oh, behave!”

Of course others have argued against this Rube Goldberg machine (Kramer, Shavit, Ceren, Rubin, Phillips, Weinthal). What strategy would hold urgent diplomacy (Iranian nuclear ambitions) hostage to solving a problem that has resisted the most energetic diplomatic efforts for generations? And just what kind of solution to the Palestinian problem could Obama come up with that would a) leave even a diminished Israel in peace and security and b) so enthuse the Arab world that they’d now rally around America’s banner? It’s one thing to think you can squeeze some kind of grudging truce out of that adamantine conflict; it’s quite another to think you can, in a couple of years, produce a peace that will inspire the Arab world to renounce its resentment of American hegemony.

And (predictably) as soon as Obama implemented linkage, it backfired; indeed the Palestinians saw linkage as a reason to become intransigent: no direct talks without total settlement freeze. Asked why they insisted on this, if the Palestinians had earlier negotiated peace agreements while settlement construction went on throughout the West Bank, Nabil Shaath didn’t claim they said yes (as the MSNM would have us believe), but rather responded, “We have to say ‘no’ sometime” (5:15).

And why just now? Because, as Shaath went on to explain, with linkage the Palestinians saw themselves in a position of strength and Israel in a position of alienating Obama:

Isn’t President Obama impatient with what the Israelis have done? …Wasn’t Mr. [sic] Obama’s strategy that, [by] starting with the Palestinian-Israeli peace, [he] will really get America a better image in our area, will help America achieve what it really wants to do, disentangling itself from Iraq, resolving problems in Pakistan and in Iran and in Lebanon? Isn’t that what he said? Doesn’t that make him impatient of what Mr. Netanyahu has done to him? (6:57-7:30).

Did Obama and his advisors really think that everyone in the Middle East was just waiting for the right gesture, the positive-sum magic that will make everyone happy? Have they contemplated the opposite possibility: that Arab leaders do not want an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and that our linkage may play right into their version of linkage: Blame Israel for the misery they themselves inflict. Our linkage – Israeli concessions before and in place of Palestinian concessions – enables and empowers Arab scape-goating; it aggravates the belligerent forces in the region.

Some accordingly argued that Obama should reverse the sequence: If he really wants peace (rather than a quick take-down of Israel) then taking care of the critical problem – Iran – will make it easier for Israel to make the highly risky concessions Obama wants from them. Put the pressure on the most radical and, by the standards of a community committed to peace, the least “rational” actor on the scene, undermine the culture of apocalyptic violence they encourage among their proxies in the region (Hamas, Hizbullah), so that Palestinian moderates, who want to put an end to their own people’s suffering can rally support for the difficult concessions necessary for peace.

So when the Wikileaks documents revealed no hint among the Arab leaders of a Palestinian state as a prerequisite for dealing with Iran, many noted how they undermined the rationale behind Obama’s insistence on a linkage that went, via Israeli concessions, to Arab and world cooperation against Iran. On the contrary, these cables give the impression that Obama had a strong hand to play against Arab intransigence: “if you want me to attack Iran, then these are the things I want from you.”

One might imagine that Obama had his strong hand in mind when, a day before his speech in Egypt, he visited King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, asking for a gesture towards Israel in response to their concession on settlements. Such a Saudi concession might have a powerful impact on the mood in the Arab and Muslim world; it certainly would have added dramatic luster to his Cairo speech. And yet, when King Abdullah went into a tirade at the mere suggestion, Obama played none of his strong cards. Instead he went to Cairo empty-handed and disgruntled. Tough cop is not a role Obama seems comfortable playing.

Those who follow the honor-shame dynamics here understand that the weaker the Israelis look to the Arabs, the more intransigent they become. One need not be an insider with access to high-level intelligence to understand the basic pattern that the last two decades of peace diplomacy have revealed: Israeli concessions elicit no hint of reciprocity towards a positive-sum solution. On the contrary…

And yet none of this had even a slightly sobering effect on the giddy optimism of the administration. Only two months after Abdulla’s tantrum, in August of 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a peace settlement within a year, and in January 2010, after four further fruitless months, Presidential envoy George Mitchell prognosticated “within two years.” Either these folks were pulling some clever feint (the predominant belief in the Arab world), or they are genuinely clueless (the most generous reading).

Others, more knowledgeable about the political players can try to figure out why neither Obama nor Clinton (who’s husband got burned by this Peace debacle in a most spectacular fashion in 2000) permitted any of these developments – the Arab urgency about Iran, the king’s temper tantrum about Israel, the backfiring of Israeli concessions – to disturb the main lines of their version of linkage.

Having just reread with students Edward Said’s Orientalism and some of his critics, I was struck by the role that his epigones have played in formulating this counter-intuitive strategy. In The Ivory Tower, Martin Kramer writes about the strong impact the book had on a generation of Western students, eager to dissociate themselves from any participation in American imperialistic hegemony, to empathize with, rather than “other” Arabs.

After all, had not Said, even as he illustrated the point, insisted that to “other” necessarily involves invidious comparison, “either in self congratulation (when one discusses one’s own) or hostility and aggression (when one discusses the “other”)…” Saïd appealed to our “common humanity” to do away with this us-them mentality to shift our attention from “cultural, religious and racial differences” towards “socio-economic categories [and] politico-historical ones (p. 325):

At all costs the, the goal of Orientalizing the Orient [what post-colonialists more generally call “othering” someone, RL] again and again is to be avoided, with consequences that cannot help but refine knowledge and reduce the scholar’s conceit. Without “the Orient” there would be scholars, critics, intellectuals, human beings, for whom the racial, ethnic, and national distinctions were less important than the common enterprise of promoting human community (328).

Never mind that most Oriental scholars had a passion for their subjects and extended far more empathic effort in understanding the objects of their study than did Saïd did in critiquing the Orientalists themselves. And never mind that Arabs tend to “other” on a scale the beggars Saïd’s complaints about Western tendencies. On the contrary, Saïd, demonstrating his asabiyya, his loyalty and solidarity with the Arab cause, had no problem “othering” those he accused of the sin:

It is therefore correct [sic] that every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric (p.68).

But these flaws had no discernable effect on the enthusiasm with which the field of Middle Eastern studies embraced his critique of its forebears, and remade itself along post-colonial lines. A pervasively flawed book became canonical for a generation, inspiring a paradigm shift that shaped Middle Eastern Studies in the USA. As a result, the field virtually became committed to not seeing what was before them. They could thus see vibrant civil societies everywhere (Syria!), even in Islamist NGOs (Hamas!), that promised democracy soon. After all, if they were humans like us, why not?

It greatly assisted all these scholars who hailed the thriving proto-democratic, civil-society movements in the Middle East, men and women who could proudly claim they were not Orientalists, that they, like their mentor Saïd, detected few traces of the imperialism that so marks the first thirteen centuries of Islam. It made sense that those who could ignore or downplay the patriarchal ferocity so dominant in the Middle East, could also turn a blind eye the enduring culture of Muslim imperialism, and the strong odor of frustrated ressentiment in the Arab discontent with modernity. For the Saïd’s post-colonial epigones, the Arabs were the innocent subaltern victims of our imperialism; not exasperated failures at implementing their own. History may have gone wrong, but post-Orientalist scholars made a profession of believing that the wrong turn was when Western imperialism prevented Arab societies from being (naturally) free, not that the Arabs had failed to maintain and expand their empire.

This approach, divorced from reality even as it spoke of the “variegated” and “layered” phenomena it tried to represent, ended up anticipating developments and concocting strategies so fantastic, that just contemplating their spread and acceptance in policy circles gives insight into the dynamics of how a certain legendary emperor could parade before his people naked. As “I will make a lot of peace in the Middle East,” the spoof animation inspired by Wikileaks– has the US spokesman say in defense of linkage, “We have consulted with many foreign policy experts, they have many Ph.D.s about the Middle East.” Along with the spectacle of Europeans acclaiming Noam Chomsky as the great American intellectual, few things better illustrate the failings of this generation of Western intelligentsia than Orientalism’s profound impact on Middle Eastern studies and beyond.

Amongst the many noxious effects of Orientalism on our scholars’ ability to understand the Arab world, was the ban it put on discussing “honor-shame” culture, so strong an elective affinity in Arab culture that even Islam’s disapproval has failed to prune back the “honor-killings” of daughters and sisters by their family. Said’s moral scorn for the patent racism involved in this cultural approach made “honor-shame” itself a shameful discourse to hold in academic circles. As Jerrold Green noted “the mere recognition that cultural factors matter labels specialists as anti-scientific heretics by their more dogmatic colleagues.” According to a reliable source, this singularly successful political correctness has even invaded intelligence services, where one had to refrain from suggesting honor-shame motivations in analyzing the data!

The greatest irony of this accomplishment comes from the fact that Saïd himself illustrates the honor-shame dynamic. The second half of his career embodies the very “oriental” traits that he forbade us to discuss. On a very basic level, Orientalism represents an aggressive effort to “save face”: Westerners have no right to look critically at the Arab world. Noted Kramer:

Instead [of serious analysis], Said skimmed across its [Oriental scholarship’s] surface in search of the most offensive quotes, presented as the core or essence of orientalism, whose gravitational field no Westerner could hope to escape.

And the offenses were precisely those that were most wounding to Arab pride. On some level, Orientalism is a cri de coeur of someone whose amour propre has been wounded by the opinion outsiders have of his people. And the generation of scholars who adopted that book as the Bible (as one of my students described another professor’s attitude), considered their most important task not to upset those for whom honor and shame meant everything.

And yet, if we don’t understand that some cultures (not only Arabic or Islamic ones) accept, expect, even require that one shed someone’s blood for the sake of one’s honor, then we don’t understand how people in those cultures “reason.” Our initial (and abiding) response, coming from a culture that has fought a long hard battle with the tendency towards violent retaliation for insult, views this behavior as irrational, as self-destructive – “their own worst enemies.” But to think along these lines turns us into “the apogee of Orientalist confidence,” guilty of the “racism” Saïd so despised.

For Westerners aspiring to study the Arab world without becoming colonial collaborators, that meant an anti-Orientalism every bit as distorting as the Orientalism Saïd condemned among the scholars. The new, non-“othering” dogma insisted that Arabs can and would behave rationally (i.e., positive-sum), in roughly the same way the Europeans did in creating the European Union.

So why not “land for peace”? It makes sense. This conflict, the “very logical” argument goes, like all others, is about “rational” grievances. Presumably it will respond to the appeal of positive-sum solutions that call for mutual self-sacrifice in order to achieve mutual gain, and bury the hatchet. Israel gives land and the Arabs give recognition and an end to the state of war produces “peace.” Win-win.

In a Saidian conversation, one cannot, without heavy moral opprobrium, suggest that it’s not about boundaries but existence, not about rational grievances, but much more about honor and shame, about the humiliation of a tiny Israel fighting off the combined might of the Arab empire, about the blasphemy of a dhimmi people, throwing off their yoke and daring to be “a free people in our own land,” in the heart of Dar al Islam. I mean, how can you solve a problem like that?

It’s a lot easier to believe that poverty causes terror (rather than vice-versa): at least we know how to generate wealth… and we dare not think about the way some cultures generate poverty. And we certainly dare not ask the obvious question: If they will kill their daughters for shaming them in their communities, and they burn dozens of homes of dhimmi Copts when one of them dates a Muslim woman, imagine what they want to do to Israel for blackening their face and shaming their religion before the eyes of the world community and of history?

Thus we end up with a foreign policy based on fantasy, mired in denial, a community of experts that refuses to process feedback that contradicts cherished truths, people who cling to PC “grand” narratives with the ferocity of true believers. Of course, they might say off the public record, everyone knows about touchy Arab honor, especially when it comes to Israel! Arabs themselves admit that Israel is a psychological problem “in the genes of every Arab.” The very notion that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the most fundamental issue in the Middle East, constitutes a acknowledgment of that massive Arab “hang-up” on an area that is a mere .002 of their own, deeply troubled portion of the globe.

Our experts and academics understand this, and even have policy solutions: do everything to avoid situations where it becomes a problem. That, of course, means leaving Israel out of as many situations as possible. In other words, whenever honor-shame dynamics rear their ugly head, back down. Like Yale University Press or the New York Met, don’t confront, don’t provoke violence.

Similarly, we never confront them on their double speak: When the positive-sum, peace oriented liberal cognitive egocentrists hear Palestinians complain about the occupation, they think “Green line,” while the zero-sum, honor-comes-from-revenge oriented Palestinian spokesmen think “shoreline.” (NB: I’m not essentializing, not talking about “the Arabs,” but specifically about those who are in thrall to an irredentist mind-set that we have difficulty imagining.) If we knew this, and worked around it without confronting it, that might make sense; but to ignore it, to make plans based on our projected understanding, to pressure Israel into concessions based on these fantasies, is either criminal negligence or malice.

Not surprisingly, with such anti-Orientalist flaws at the base of their thinking, the Obama administration’s Middle East foreign policy team got everything wrong. They expected long-term rationality in solving the Arab Israeli conflict (a quick positive-sum solution), and short-term irrationality (we won’t do anything about Iranian nuclear weapons until something is done about Israel). Instead we encountered the opposite: short-term rationality on Iran, long-term irrationality on Israel. Indeed, the take-home message of Arab behavior is that the Arab-Israeli lies at the heart of their most self-defeating behavior: it is the hardest and last thing we’ll resolve, not the first. And the idea that, if only Israel were gone, the self-destructive belligerence of Arab political culture would disappear is as loopy a messianic hope as being carried off by aliens on December 21, 2012 by hanging out in Bugarach, France.

Maybe the cultural relativists are right: Who says Westerners behave rationally?

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Dando truque nos evangélicos: um dia depois do 1º turno, governo prorroga convênio com grupo que quer legalizar o aborto

Por Leandro Colon, no Estadão:
A postura da candidata Dilma Rousseff (PT) em prometer aos eleitores não mudar a lei do aborto contradiz a atuação do próprio governo que representa. O Ministério da Saúde publicou, em 4 de outubro, um dia depois do primeiro turno, a prorrogação de um convênio que estuda mudanças na sua legislação. O projeto, segundo o contrato publicado no Diário Oficial da União, chama-se “Estudo e Pesquisa - Despenalizar o Aborto no Brasil”.

Dilma divulgou ontem uma carta em que diz ser contra o aborto e promete não tomar “iniciativa de propor alterações de pontos que tratem da legislação” sobre o assunto. O objetivo dela é diminuir a resistência de grupos religiosos que pregam voto contra a petista, por ter defendido no passado a descriminalização do aborto.

Só que a promessa vai na contramão da atuação do Ministério da Saúde nos últimos anos e tem incomodado entidades que atuam em parceria com o governo. Esse recente convênio, prorrogado até fevereiro de 2011, foi fechado no ano passado com a Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, do Rio, e faz parte do Grupo de Estudo sobre o Aborto, que reúne desde 2007 entidades civis dispostas a debater o assunto com o Executivo, o Judiciário e o Legislativo. O governo desembolsou, só para a Fiocruz, R$ 121 mil para incentivar a discussão.

Coordenador desse grupo de estudos em todo o País, o médico Thomaz Gollop lamenta a carta de Dilma e o rumo da discussão sobre o tema no segundo turno. “O enfoque está errado, inadequado, seja para qual for o candidato. O Brasil precisa se informar. Nas alturas dos acontecimentos, isso virou uma discussão de posicionamento radical”, diz. “Acho muito ruim que esse tema seja motivo de barganha. É completamente inadequado que o candidato diga o que vai ser feito.”

O projeto apoiado pelo governo trata, segundo extrato do Diário Oficial, de estudo para “despenalizar” o aborto, ou seja, não aplicar penas às mulheres que adotam essa prática, condenada por lei. Mas, segudo o coordenador, a idéia é ir mais longe e não fazer mais do aborto um crime.
(…)

Friday, October 15, 2010

Dilma defende aborto em Sabatina da Folha

Durante sabatina realizada pela Folha de São Paulo em outubro de 2007, Dilma Rousseff defendeu a desciminalização do aborto.





Aqui, a verdade sobre Dilma e o aborto. Não é um boato anônimo da Internet. Ela defendeu a legalização

Se a página não for tirada do ar, a entrevista em que a candidata petista à Presidência, Dilma Rousseff, defende a legalização do aborto está aqui. Foi concedida a Carla Gullo e Maria Laura Nevesm da revista Marie Claire. O título é “A mulher do presidente”. Eu cometi um engano aqui. Havia escrito que a entrevista era de 2007. Não é, não! É de abril de 2009, há pouco mais de um ano.

Dali a alguns meses, a Casa Civil tornaria publico o decreto com o Programa Nacional dos Direitos Humanos, que trazia a legalização do aborto como um… “direito humano”, o que certamente assombra as áreas da política, da filosofia, da religião, da moral e da lógica. E Dilma estava muito à vontade porque, como se nota, falava com interlocutoras que concordavam com ela.

Quando as tais “pesquisas qualitativas” indicaram que essa opinião poderia não trazer votos e até tirar, então a “mulher do Lula” resolver mudar de idéia e se comportar como “a mulher do pastor” — não dá pra dizer “mulher do padre” porque não fica bem…

Então não venham agora alguns coleguinhas escrever coisas como: “O PT combate o boato de que Dilma defende a legalização do aborto…” Ou: “Há uma corrente na Internet segundo a qual Dilma defenderia a legalização do aborto”…

Calma lá!

Em abril do ano passado, já candidata oficiosa, Dilma defendeu a legalização do aborto. Não é boato! O futuro do pretérito, a depender do caso, pode ser só o tempo verbal da história reescrita.

Trecho da revista:
MC Uma das bandeiras da Marie Claire é defender a legalização do aborto. Fizemos uma pesquisa com leitoras e 60% delas se posicionaram favoravelmente, mesmo o aborto não sendo uma escolha fácil. O que a senhora pensa sobre isso?
DR - Abortar não é fácil pra mulher alguma. Duvido que alguém se sinta confortável em fazer um aborto. Agora, isso não pode ser justificativa para que não haja a legalização. O aborto é uma questão de saúde pública. Há uma quantidade enorme de mulheres brasileiras que morre porque tenta abortar em condições precárias. Se a gente tratar o assunto de forma séria e respeitosa, evitará toda sorte de preconceitos. Essa é uma questão grave que causa muitos mal-entendidos.

Friday, July 30, 2010

White Liberals and Politically Correct Racism

This is a cross-post by Edmund Standing

The white liberal is an unhealthy type of creature that you will undoubtedly have encountered, if not in real life, certainly via the media. By ‘liberal’, I do not mean simply someone who has a generally liberal outlook, in the sense of a ‘live and let live’ philosophy, nor do I mean liberals in the sense of the classical liberals of the conservative tradition. By ‘white liberal’, I mean a white Western individual who is likely to come from a middle class background and have a university education, considers him or herself to be both ‘left-wing’ and socially ‘liberal’, and almost certainly reads The Guardian or The Independent. White liberals espouse an artificial and pretentious form of ‘egalitarianism’, a patronising and hypocritical approach to ethnic minorities and non-Western cultures, and – in a re-hash of the notion of the ‘white man’s burden’ – devote themselves to a delusional Messianism in which they seek to ‘save the world’ through protesting against war (in real terms, protesting against non-white people having a chance at freedom and democracy), Israel (the one truly liberal society in the Middle East), globalisation (thereby opposing the one great vehicle by which poorer nations can develop), and so on, while making themselves feel and look ‘good’ by flaunting their pious support for campaigns to end poverty in the Third World (which will do no such thing, as Dambisa Moyo, Stephen Pollard, Marian L. Tupy, and others rightly point out ), and boasting about how ‘progressive’ they are by showing ‘solidarity’ with genocidal Islamists in Gaza.

White liberals, despite viewing themselves as intelligent and open-minded, are actually some of the most illiberal and narrow-minded people in society today. Their reactions to the idea that anyone might think differently to them range from gut-wrenching despair to pure hatred of the kind seen in the most fanatical of ‘true believers’. White liberals are, by and large, incapable of serious adult debate (preferring innuendo and accusations of bigotry), or of dealing with the fact that not everyone will agree with them (despite their supposed love of pluralism and a multiplicity of different ‘voices’), and tend to see any view which deviates from their cultic leftist script as a form of irredeemable moral evil. White liberals do not base their world-view on rational analysis and sensible argument, but instead on an almost religious faith that they possess the ‘truth’, and just as we see in so many fundamentalist religious cults and sects, the devotees of the white liberal faith burn with hatred for the ‘sin’ that surrounds them, and indeed, all too often for the ‘sinners’ themselves. White liberals, who are the intellectual equivalent of stroppy, rebellious teenagers, have sought to subvert and undermine Western civilisation, and some offer support for authoritarian and even terrorist movements as part of their attack on ‘racism’ and ‘colonialism’.

White liberals approach issues of race and racism from an essentially irrational, moralistic standpoint. White liberals do not simply judge racism to be based on bad thinking and criticise it for its illogical collectivism. Instead, white liberals make the issue of racism, as with other issues, all about them. White liberals have colonised the discourse of racism and anti-racism because it offers them an opportunity to boast of the superiority of their virtue and to demonstrate their purity and holiness through ostentatious and vacuous public displays of self-flagellation. Just as early Christianity imbued adherents with a deep sense of guilt and sinfulness, so the white liberal finds in reflecting on the history of white racism the opportunity to both revel in the guilt of the sinner and to make atonement through ‘anti-racist’ initiatives, thereby offering them the opportunity to further present themselves as a holy elite tasked with saving the world. And just as at various points in the history of Christianity an overarching sense of guilt derived from an intense awareness of, and obsession with, the supposedly inherent sinfulness of human beings and of the ‘world’ led ‘holy’ men and women to conclude that the path to holiness is found in the hatred of self, world, and the human condition, white liberals indulge in a form of self-hatred which is designed to project the image of penitence and sanctity, while actually being transparently pretentious, self-aggrandising, and destructive.

Ideological white racists are collectivists who adopt the irrational position that white people form some kind of world-wide ‘brotherhood’ with a unified history and culture. The huge variations in the historical and cultural experiences and manifestations of the various majority white nations is seen to be of little importance in the bigger picture. Ideological white racists are frequently people who have made little or no personal contribution to the development and advancement of Western civilisation. You won’t find many ground-breaking inventors and innovators, great scientists, artists, composers, and so on in the ranks of the modern white supremacist movement, but you will find many bitter and insecure individuals who make themselves feel important by piggy-backing on the achievements of others. When white racist activists and ideologues talk of ‘white unity’ and ‘white pride’, they almost always claim to be ‘proud’ of the ‘superior’ achievements of white people throughout history. Ideological white racists will point to great men and women of the past and present who happen to share their skin colour and state how great the ‘white race’ is. So, you will find the absurd phenomenon of drug dealing, dole scrounging morons who somehow feel Shakespeare and Mozart can be claimed by them as great men of ‘their race’. Clearly, stating yourself ‘proud’ of things that you have not made or done just because they were made or done by people who look or looked similar to you has no rational basis.

On this point, white liberals will agree. However, at the same time, white liberals advocate an inverse form of the same collectivist nonsense by proposing that whites should feel collective guilt for the negative actions of white people of the past. It’s clearly stupid for a skinhead thug to claim to feel ‘proud’ of the works of Beethoven, yet it is also equally stupid for a white liberal to claim to feel ‘guilty’ for the actions of white slave traders or marauding white colonialists. But the white liberal simply will not accept this. White liberals hold an almost universally negative view of the history of Western civilisation and claim that modern Western whites should apologise and make amends for the actions of whites of previous generations and even previous centuries. If a Mayor of London made a public speech tearfully extolling the superior virtues of white people who happened to live in London in the past most people would be shocked by this act of collectivist posturing and irrational bigotry. However, when the tables are turned and a Mayor of London makes a tearful ‘apology’ for long dead Londoners’ involvement in the slave trade, this is seen by white liberals to be a moral and righteous act.

Here’s how The Guardian reported a 2007 case of exactly this collectivist irrationality:

Ken Livingstone yesterday marked the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade with an emotional and tearful ceremonial apology on behalf of the capital city and its institutions. The London mayor wept as he told a commemorative service of the cruelties inflicted on the millions transported from Africa and the legacy that confronts them today.

Before an audience of politicians, writers and dignitaries, he twice paused during his address. As he voiced the apology, the US civil rights leader the Rev Jesse Jackson walked over and placed his arm around the mayor. Mr Livingstone completed the long awaited statement, dabbing tears from his eyes, his voice shaky.

Ken Livingstone – known as ‘Red Ken’ for the far-left views he espoused for many years of his political career – took it upon himself to express collective guilt on behalf of an entire city in his role as Mayor of London. In doing so, he acted as the archetypal masochistic white liberal idiot.

As is so often the case with white liberals, Livingstone’s pathological sense of white guilt has also affected his ability to think rationally about people who happen to have a darker shade of skin than him. For white liberals like Red Ken, criticism of any non-white person is suspected to be a cover for ‘racism’, ‘imperialism’, and so on. Consequently, when Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi – an Islamist ‘scholar’ who advocates the death penalty for gay people, the beating of wives by their husbands, and calls Hamas terrorists ‘martyrs’ – came to London in 2004, Livingstone, acting in his official capacity of Mayor of London, publicly welcomed him and went so far as to embrace him before the cameras of the media.

Rational criticism of this disgusting act of grovelling to a retrograde theocratic ideologue had no effect on Livingstone. Taking white liberal idiocy to its logical conclusion, he went so far as issuing yet another of his vacuous apologies, stating that ‘On behalf of the people of London, I would like to apologise to the Sheikh for the outburst of xenophobia in sections of the media’. Livingstone’s decision to ignore Al-Qaradawi’s reactionary views was typical of the kind of double standard adopted by many white liberals. Livingstone seems to be one of the white liberal drones who thinks that while white people have been – and continue to be – somehow collectively responsible for an endless list of crimes and transgressions, the same cannot possibly be said for someone of another ethnicity. If a white leader advocated the same things as Al-Qaradawi, white liberals like Livingstone would be up in arms, denouncing the evils of homophobia, sexism, and any other ‘ism’ that could be thrown at them, and would probably go on to issue tearful apologies and dredge up issues like slavery.

Speaking of the similar attitudes of white liberals in Canada, liberal Muslim author Tarek Fatah nailed it when he told the Canadian Jewish News:

there is a tremendous amount of white guilt. The intelligentsia in this country in a selfish way tries to assuage this guilt. It caters to the most idiosyncratic behaviour of the immigrant and practices the racism of lower expectations. It sets standards of behaviour for our community, but when dealing with immigrants and especially the Muslim community, it does not expect them to live by the same standards.

Meanwhile, the Syrian-born Muslim scholar Bassam Tibi has told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine that ‘Europeans have stopped defending the values of their civilization’ because ‘they confuse tolerance with relativism’. White guilt is an irrational, intellectually and culturally crippling pathology, yet white liberals who embrace this nonsense have a huge influence in almost all the powerful and influential sectors of our society.

For white liberals, the fear of being accused of racism is a matter of constant concern. The idea that someone might be a racist has taken second place only to the idea that someone might be a paedophile. Racism continues to be a highly contentious issue, and one in which white liberals take a particularly keen interest. However, as with everything else, most white liberals get this issue completely wrong and in doing so greatly hinder the development of an intellectually honest and rational society, and a society in which racial collectivism and prejudice is eradicated.

A good working definition of racism would be that it is the belief that one or more ethnic groups are inherently, biologically inferior to another. Racists work on the deterministic assumption that people can be collectively viewed as a single group based on ethnic ancestry alone and that membership of this group connotes certain fixed, unchanging, and unchangeable factors, such as intelligence, character, and aspirations. Racists are race essentialists – they do not see individuals but rather view ethnic groups as monolithic groups whose cultures, traditions, religions, and so on in some sense spring from their genetic make-up. While I’m far from an Ayn Rand acolyte, her analysis of racism in The Virtue of Selfishness is spot-on:

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas — or of inherited knowledge — which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.

Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.

When it comes to racism, a sensible approach would be to say that as the central assumptions which underpin it are false, racism is irrational and consequently a belief system that is of no value and is positively harmful. Many white people are hard-working and make a positive contribution to society; however, many do not. The same applies across all ethnic groups. A sensible approach to the issue of race is to judge individuals on their personal merits, not on the colour of their skin or their country of ethnic ancestry. The white racist would prefer to live next to a white dole scrounger than a hard-working Asian. This fact illustrates the fundamental irrationality of racism, and the indiscriminate collectivism upon which it is based. Racists are often seen as people who ‘discriminate’. In reality, they show themselves to be fundamentally incapable of discrimination, given the fact they see only undifferentiated masses termed ‘races’, instead of vastly differing individuals.

White liberals take a very different approach to the issue of racism than the one outlined above. White liberals do not predominantly base their positions on reason, but rather on emotions, moralism, and an almost religious devotion to concepts such as egalitarianism and ‘human rights’ (although their support for human rights varies according to whose rights are at stake). As moralists, white liberals see racism as evil and essentially ‘sinful’, and for them racism violates the holy precepts of ‘rights’ and ‘humanity’. White liberals are incapable of logically and adequately addressing issues of race and racism, because their moralism is not rationally founded.

In the Hebrew Bible, we find the idea of generational curses, in which God punishes the descendants of transgressors. For example, in Exodus 20:5, God is said to have stated: ‘I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation’. White liberals approach racism from a similar perspective. As we have seen, white liberals feel an almost pathological sense of guilt over the white racism of the past and this is central to their overwhelmingly negative assessment of the West and its history.

This combination of moralism and guilt has resulted in white liberals going from one extreme to the other. In attempting to avoid the mistakes of the past and to somehow atone for the sins of their forefathers, white liberals have adopted a position towards ethnic minorities and non-Western cultures in which they feel that it is not morally permissible for white people to criticise any non-white groups, belief systems, cultural phenomena, and so on. Consequently, white liberals are – for example – wholly opposed to asserting the superior values of Western modernity over the comparative backwardness of the so-called Islamic world, and indeed devote much of their time to promoting the idea that the West is in fact grossly deficient and shot through with ‘racism’.

Multiculturalism is the inevitable result of this white liberal outlook. Unable to assert the particular value of Western civilisation and the developments of modernity, white liberals have encouraged multiculturalism because a large part of their flawed ‘anti-racist’ strategy is the promotion of cultural relativism. Cultural relativism is the irrational position that no culture – or aspect of cultural belief or practice – can in any sense be stated to be better than another, and it is an important aspect of the pseudo-religion of ‘equality’. The simplistic idea underpinning cultural relativism is the view that if all cultures are seen as equal, then all races will be seen to be equal, and never again can whites assert racial superiority over non-whites. However, the white liberal approach to racism is wrong on two fundamental levels: firstly, it is irrational, and secondly, it is actually based on racist ideas.

The white liberal notion that ‘discrimination’ is an intrinsic evil involves an abuse of the concept of discrimination and the application of a moral principle that makes no sense, and is not even consistently followed by white liberals. Despite the fact the word is now so loaded it automatically conjures up images of bigotry and injustice, discrimination is a perfectly normal and legitimate concept. To discriminate is simply to choose one option from a series of options. The fact that railway companies no longer build steam locomotives is the result of superior advances in rail technology. When building new trains, rail companies could choose to build a new fleet of steam locomotives. Of course, they do not do this as to do so would be a step backwards and would be commercially harmful. In choosing to build trains using the latest technology, rail companies are using a process of discrimination. Go and see the managers of a rail company and try telling them that all trains are ‘equal’ and that they should not ‘discriminate’ against steam locomotives, but should rather use equal numbers of steam and electric locomotives. They would probably laugh in your face and call you an idiot. And they would be right. Even white liberals would find the notion of railway locomotive ‘equality’ completely absurd and irrational. However, when it comes to looking at beliefs, cultural practices, ways of ordering society, and so on, white liberals suddenly adopt the same irrational argument as used in my train example. All cultures are ‘equal’, they assert. To think otherwise is immoral and bigoted and shows that you are a ‘racist’.

In reality, white liberals do not really consider all cultures to be equal. They may say they do, but even white liberals are not actually that stupid. White liberals to do not want to live in a society ruled on theocratic lines; they don’t want to be enslaved to following ancient writings of ignorant men; they don’t want their daughters to be genitally mutilated; they don’t want to be forced into arranged marriages; they don’t believe men should be in a position of ‘authority’ over women; they don’t accept sexism, misogyny, and anti-gay prejudice; they don’t think the answer to criminality is to enact barbaric laws involving public whippings, amputation, stoning, and beheading; they don’t think people should be executed for ‘crimes’ such as homosexuality and ‘sorcery’. The West was once based around all these principles, however, a slow development away from rule by religious authority and unelected leaders, and a society ordered along brutal feudal lines and permeated with superstition, took place in the West over a number of centuries, and was particularly accelerated thanks to the Enlightenment. The often hysterical reaction to Christian fundamentalists exhibited by white liberals, and their support for the notion that harshly criticising and even ridiculing Christianity is admirable and ‘progressive’, shows where they stand when it comes to traditional Western religion and religious authority. Because of its long history in the West, white liberals tend to perceive Christianity as somehow a ‘white’ religion (despite the majority of practising Christians in the world today being non-white and non-European), and as a result are more than happy to see it dissected, neutered, and pilloried. Naturally, white liberals do not consider criticism of Christianity and theocratic Christian groups to be a form of ‘anti-white racism’, and they are right, as it isn’t, and has nothing to do with race.

Given white liberals are very clear about the way in which they wish to live, and the rights they consider essential – free speech and expression, freedom from sexism, freedom from homophobia, democratic rights, individual rights, freedom from religious authority, freedom from State oppression, and so on – you might expect them to take the position that every citizen in the West (and indeed the whole world) should share a respect for, and enjoy the benefits of, these freedoms. However, because of white liberals’ bizarre misunderstanding of what racism is, they suddenly throw out any universal commitment to such values when they find that non-white societies and ethnic minority groups in majority-white societies do not respect these freedoms. The clearest example of this bizarre and hypocritical attitude is currently found in the way white liberals approach Islam and Muslims. According to the white liberal anti-racist creed, to criticise Islam, to state that Muslims living in the West should abide by the social mores of the West, and even to criticise political Islam (Islamism) is an act of ‘racism’. How can this be perceived to be racism? According to white liberals, criticism of Islam is ‘racist’ because the majority of Muslims in the world – and in the West – are non-white, and Islam is a religion that emerged in a non-white land (the Arabian peninsula). For the white liberal, criticism of Islam, because it is a predominantly non-white belief system, must by definition in fact be based on racist contempt for non-white people, because Islam is ‘their culture’ and to criticise ‘their culture’ is to criticise ‘them’. White liberals, haunted by memories of slavery, colonialism, and white supremacist ideologies of the past, have concluded that cultures and races are integrally intertwined. Islam, they believe, is a non-white and ethnic minority belief system, which is therefore an extension of the non-white and ethnic minority communities that adhere to it. In the light of the white colonialism and racism of the past, white liberals claim, white people have no right to pass judgement on other cultures, and to do so is to engage in a racist ‘cultural imperialism’.

The notion that criticism of a culture, cultural practice, or ideology is a form of racism is, ironically enough, actually predicated on a racist outlook. When white liberals cry ‘cultural racism’, they are merely engaging in a politically correct form of a racist idea which originally formed the basis of many theories of white supremacy. Early Western proponents of notions of the inferiority of non-white people, racial hierarchies, and so on, initially based their beliefs on assumptions derived from anthropology, before going on to create full-blown pseudo-scientific racial theories that drew on such bogus ‘scientific’ methods as craniology and phrenology. These anthropological racists came into contact with various non-white peoples through exploration and colonialism. Upon finding that many non-European peoples were living in societies bereft of the technological and philosophical advances found in the West, white supremacists concluded that the reason these peoples lived in primitive conditions which lacked any evidence of modernity was not that they – for various geographical and sociological reasons – had yet to go through the radical changes from living in pre-modern societies to living in modern technological and industrialised nations that had recently occurred in the West, but rather was a result of an inherent intellectual and sociological deficiency in their ‘race’ that derived from their genetic make-up. According to the Western theorists of white supremacy, the cultures of non-white peoples were external manifestations of an innate racial essence, and it was quite impossible to hope that these peoples would ever advance from the state in which they were found, because they were biologically incapable of ever advancing or developing. Such thinking provided an ‘intellectual’ justification for slavery, for example, in that it adjudged black people to be a lesser form of being, lacking intellectual potential and aspirations, and consequently a being whose ‘natural’ role was to live in subservience to white people. When white liberals claim that criticism of Islam or Islamic politics – so-called ‘Islamophobia’ – is a form of racism, they are making exactly the same connection between culture and race. In this white liberal form of racism – the racism of lower expectations – it is seen to be bigoted to suggest that non-white people should leave behind the very same primitive ideas that once held sway in the West (fanatical devotion to religion, intolerance of critical thinking and other beliefs, persecution of gay people, and so on). Yet the true bigot here is the white liberal, who assumes that cultural ideas that have developed in non-white societies are somehow integrally intertwined with, and innately derived from, the racial groups in those societies. The racism of lower expectations views non-white people as inferior to white Westerners, but masks this racist assumption in politically correct language about ‘diversity’ and ‘respect’ for cultures.

If white liberals really believed that all cultures are ‘equal’, you would expect to see them spreading out across the world, queuing up to gain entry to countries such as Iran or Saudi Arabia. In fact, most white liberals certainly do not hike off around the world, seeking to make their homes in Islamic States. The major traffic between Islamic States and the West comes in the form of a steady flow of immigrants trying to gain entry to the West because they know they will have a better life here. Societies that attempt to organise themselves using Islam as their foundational philosophical basis are demonstrably vastly inferior to the West. One need only glance at the human rights records of Islamic States such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran to see that this is the case. None of these States has a properly functioning democracy or the freedoms we take for granted in the West such as freedom of speech and expression, freedom of belief and religious adherence, freedom of association, gender equality, and freedom of choice in personal and sexual relationships. The legal systems in these States are barbaric, prejudiced, and corrupt. Law enforcement does not adhere to any proper system of due process. Saudi Arabia is ruled with an iron fist and is marked by institutional superstition, as seen, for example, in its execution of people accused of ‘witchcraft’ and ‘sorcery’. Yemen fiercely clamps down both on individual freedom and the rights of political groups. Arbitrary house searches and arrests are common, and capital ‘crimes’ include homosexuality. Child marriage, meanwhile, is promoted by Yemeni clerics, who cite Muhammad’s marriage of a child as the authoritative precedent for this practice. Iran is governed by a Holocaust-denying Islamist lunatic who incites hatred of the West and grants police the right to detain individuals for such bogus ‘crimes’ as ‘Satanism’ or having the wrong hairstyle. Iran also executes gay men, including teenagers.

To state that life in Western democracies is demonstrably better than life in Islamic States should hardly be controversial, yet many white liberals cannot bring themselves to acknowledge what they must logically believe to be the case, because to do so would be to ‘discriminate’ and to engage in ‘cultural imperialism’, ‘Islamophobia’, and ‘racism’. Yet who is the racist here? – The honest individual who notes that modern Western civilisation is superior to that of Islamic States, or the white liberal who enjoys the freedoms of the West but claims that we cannot ‘impose’ our ‘Eurocentric’ perspective on others, because to do so would be to claim that peoples and races living in Islamic States are themselves inferior? The subtext is rather clear in the white liberal’s cultural relativism: Islamic States are the way they are because they are the creation of non-white peoples, and therefore to criticise political Islam is to pass judgement on the ethnic groups in those States. A sensible person who is not clouded by racial prejudice should be able to see that Islam and Islamic States have nothing to do with race, and everything to do with culture. Culture does not derive from race, and therefore to criticise a culture cannot be seen as a racial criticism (unless that criticism is articulated in the language of genuine ideological racism). To assume that it can be seen as that is actually to endorse the view that culture does derive from race and that therefore the backward, superstitious, and authoritarian nature of Islamic societies is actually the result of non-white peoples being inherently backward and superstitious.

The same issue applies to white liberals’ approach to Islamists living in the West. When Islam, Islamism, and Islamists are criticised, many white liberals work themselves into a frenzy, frothing at the mouth about supposed ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘racism’. In doing so, white liberals seem to be seriously proposing that non-white immigrants and children of immigrants are inherently predisposed towards theocratic and illiberal outlooks. White liberals practice the racism of lower expectations in their dealings with immigrant communities. When Islamic groups are shown to be sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-freedom, and anti-Western, white liberals do not oppose them – instead they support the bigotry and backwardness of Islamic extremists in immigrant communities by announcing that such prejudices and anti-freedom views and ideologies are ‘their’ culture and are no better or worse than the predominant culture in the West. The fact that white liberals are being racist in doing this is easily illustrated by the fact that when white racist parties and organisations promote anti-democratic views and hatred for minorities such as gay people, white liberals immediately condemn them. When the Christian Right comes out with views that are backward, superstitious, and opposed to personal freedom, white liberals start ranting about theocracy and ‘fascism’. White liberals are happy to attack bigotry, irrationalism, and extremism when it comes with a white face – they don’t claim that ‘far-right’ homophobia and anti-Semitism is somehow ‘different but equal’ to white liberal views, nor do they start making excuses about ‘understandable grievances’ when white supremacists rave about Jewish conspiracies or Christian extremists bomb abortion clinics. If virulent criticism of white racist ideologies and religiously conservative Christianity is not seen by white liberals to constitute a form of ‘anti-white racism’, then why on earth should criticism of political Islam be seen as a form of ‘racism’? The only way in which opposing political Islam can be spun as a form of ‘racism’ is to claim that Islam constitutes an expression of a racial ‘essence’, as opposed to being one cultural form among many. To claim that criticism of Islam is ‘racist’ is to claim that Islam is derived from biology. This is nonsense. It is the same as the white supremacist claim that Western civilisation is great because the ethnicity of its progenitors is great. When white liberals claim criticism of Islam or any other non-white belief or culture is racist they show themselves to be racist to the core. White liberals have a condescending approach to non-white people because in actual fact they do not view them as equals at all. White liberals are the true racists, and their ‘tolerance’, relativism, and obsession with calling other people racists is in fact an attempt at covering up this very fact.