The
Real Danger From NPR's Firing Of Juan Williams: Left And A
Man Wearing Muslim Garb
06 November 2010By Glenn Greenwald
I'm still not quite over the most disgusting part of
the Juan Williams spectacle yesterday: watching the
very same people (on the Right and in the media) who
remained silent about or vocally cheered on the
viewpoint-based firings of Octavia Nasr, Helen Thomas,
Rick Sanchez, Eason Jordan, Peter Arnett, Phil
Donahue, Ashleigh Banfield, Bill Maher, Ward
Churchill, Chas Freeman, Van Jones and so many others,
spend all day yesterday wrapping themselves in the
flag of "free expression!!!" and screeching about the
perils and evils of firing journalists for expressing
certain viewpoints. Even for someone who expects huge
doses of principle-free hypocrisy -- as I do -- that
behavior is really something to behold. And anyone
doubting that there is a double standard when it comes
to anti-Muslim speech should just compare the wailing
backlash from most quarters over Williams' firing to
the muted acquiescence or widespread approval of those
other firings.
But there's one point from all of this I really want
to highlight. The principal reason the Williams firing
resonated so much and provoked so much fury is that it
threatens the preservation of one of the most
important American mythologies: that Muslims are a
Serious Threat to America and Americans. That fact is
illustrated by a Washington Post Op-Ed today from
Reuel Marc Gerecht, who is as standard and pure a
neocon as exists: an Israel-centric, Iran-threatening,
Weekly Standard and TNR writer, former CIA Middle East
analyst, former American Enterprise Institute and
current Defense of Democracies "scholar," torture
advocate, etc. etc. Gerecht hails Williams as a
courageous "dissident" for expressing this "truth":
[W]hile his manner may have been clumsy, Williams was
right to suggest that there is a troubling nexus
between the modern Islamic identity and the embrace of
terrorism as a holy act.
Above all else, this fear-generating "nexus" is what
must be protected at all costs. This is the
"troubling" connection -- between Muslims and
terrorism -- that Williams lent his "liberal,"
NPR-sanctioned voice to legitimizing. And it is this
fear-sustaining, anti-Muslim slander that NPR's firing
of Williams threatened to delegitimize. That is why
NPR's firing of Williams must be attacked with such
force: because if it were allowed to stand, it would
be an important step toward stigmatizing anti-Muslim
animus in the same way that other forms of bigotry are
now off-limits, and that, above all else, is what
cannot happen, because anti-Muslim animus is too
important to too many factions to allow it to be
delegitimized. The Huffington Post's Jason Linkins
explained the real significance of NPR's actions, the
real reason it had to be attacked:
Yesterday, NPR cashiered correspondent Juan Williams
for doing something that had hitherto never been
considered an offense in media circles: defaming
Muslims. Up until now, you could lose your job for
saying intemperate things about Jews and about
Christians and about Matt Drudge. You could even lose
a job for failing to defame Muslims. But we seem to be
in undiscovered country at the moment.
There are too many interests served by anti-Muslim
fear-mongering to allow that to change. To start with,
as a general proposition, it's vital that the American
citizenry always be frightened of some external (and
relatedly internal) threat. Nothing is easier, or more
common, or more valuable, than inducing people to
believe that one discrete minority group is filled
with unique Evil, poses some serious menace to their
Safety, and must be stopped at all costs.
The more foreign-seeming that group is, the easier it
is to sustain the propaganda campaign of fear.
Sufficiently bombarded with this messaging, even
well-intentioned people will dutifully walk around
insisting that the selected group is a Dangerous
Menace.
"The Muslims" are currently the premier, featured
threat which serves that purpose, following in the
footsteps of the American-Japanese, the Communists,
the Welfare-Stealing Racial Minorities, the Gays, and
the Illegal Immigrants. Many of those same groups
still serve this purpose, but their scariness loses
its luster after decades of exploitation and
periodically must be replaced by new ones. Muslims
serve that role, and to ensure that continues, it is
vital that anti-Muslim sentiments of the type Williams
legitimized be shielded, protected and venerated --
not punished or stigmatized.
Beyond the general need to ensure that Americans
always fear an external Enemy, there are multiple
functions which this specific Muslim-based
fear-mongering fulfills. The national security state
-- both its public and private arms -- needs the
"Muslims as Threat" mythology to sustain its massive
budget and policies of Endless War. The surveillance
state -- both its public and private arms -- needs
that myth to justify its limitless growth. Christians
who crave religious conflict; evangelicals who await
the Rapture; and Jews who were taught from birth to
view the political world with Israel at the center,
that the U.S. must therefore stay invested in the
Middle East, and that "the Arabs" are the Enemy, all
benefit from this ongoing demonization.
Beyond that, nationalists and militarists of various
stripes who need American war for their identity,
purpose and vicarious feelings of strength and courage
cling to this mythology as desperately as anyone.
Republicans gain substantial political advantage from
scaring white and Christian voters to shake with fear
and rage over the imminent imposition of sharia law in
America. And political officials in the executive
branch are empowered by this anti-Muslim fear campaign
to operate in total secrecy and without any checks or
accountability as they bomb, drone, occupy, imprison,
abduct and assassinate at will. Add that all together
and there is simply no way that NPR could be permitted
to render off-limits the bigoted depiction of Muslims
which Juan Williams helped to maintain.
And then there's the more amorphous but arguably more
significant self-justifying benefit that comes from
condemning "Muslims" for their violent, extremist
ways. I'm always amazed when I receive e-mails from
people telling me that I fail to understand how Islam
is a uniquely violent, supremely expansionist culture
that is intrinsically menacing. The United States is a
country with a massive military and nuclear stockpile,
that invaded and has occupied two Muslim countries for
almost a full decade, that regularly bombs and drones
several others, that currently is threatening to
attack one of the largest Muslim countries in the
world, that imposed a sanctions regime that killed
hundreds of thousands of Muslim children, that
slaughters innocent people on a virtually daily basis,
that has interfered in and controlled countries around
the world since at least the middle of the last
century, that has spent decades arming and protecting
every Israeli war with its Muslim neighbors and
enabling a four-decade-long brutal occupation, and
that erected a worldwide regime of torture, abduction
and lawless detention, much of which still endures.
Those are just facts.
But if we all agree to sit around and point over there
-- hey, can you believe those primitive Muslims and
how violent and extremist they are -- the reality of
what we do in the world will fade blissfully away.
Even better, it will be transformed from violent
aggression into justified self-defense, and then we'll
not only free ourselves of guilt, but feel proud and
noble because of it. As is true with all cultures,
there are obviously demented, psychopathic, violent
extremists among Muslims. And there's no shortage of
such extremists in our own culture either. One would
think we'd be more interested in the extremists among
us, but by obsessively focusing on Them, we are able
to blind ourselves to the pathologies that drive our
own actions. And that self-cleansing, self-justifying
benefit -- which requires the preservation of the
Muslim-as-Threat mythology -- is probably more
valuable than all the specific, pragmatic benefits
described above. All this over a "menace" (Terrorism)
that killed a grand total of 25 noncombatant Americans
last year.
(McClatchy: "undoubtedly more American citizens died
overseas from traffic accidents or intestinal
illnesses than from terrorism").
The double standard in our political discourse --
which tolerates and even encourages anti-Muslim
bigotry while stigmatizing other forms -- has been as
beneficial as it has been glaring. NPR's firing of
Juan Williams threatened to change that by rendering
this bigotry as toxic and stigmatized as other types.
That could not be allowed, which is why the backlash
against NPR was so rapid, intense and widespread. I'm
not referring here to those who object to
viewpoint-based firings of journalists in general and
who have applied that belief consistently: that's a
perfectly reasonable view to hold (and one I share).
I'm referring to those who rail against NPR's actions
by invoking free expression principles they plainly do
not support and which they eagerly violate whenever
the viewpoint in question is one they dislike. For
most NPR critics, the real danger from Williams'
firing is not to free expression, but to the ongoing
fear-mongering campaign of defamation and bigotry
against Muslims (both foreign and domestic) that is so
indispensable to so many agendas.
UPDATE: In 1986, Juan Williams participated in a forum
in The New Republic regarding a column by The
Washington Post's Richard Cohen, who had justified the
practice of D.C. jewelry store owners who would "admit
customers only through a buzzer system, and [] some
store owners use this system to exclude young black
males on the grounds that these people are most likely
to commit a robbery" (h/t). Defending this race-based
exclusion, Cohen argued that "young black males commit
an inordinate amount of urban crime," and that "black
potential victims as well as white ones often act on
this awareness, and that under certain circumstances,
the mere recognition of race as a factor . . . is not
in itself racism."
Responding to Cohen's argument, Williams said: "In
this situation and all others, common sense in my
constant guard. Common sense becomes racism when skin
color becomes a formula for figuring out who is a
danger to me."
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