[Dean's World] G. Willow Wilson: Extremists Among Us

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by G. Willow Wilson:
Extremists Among Us
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1200019663.shtml


   A few weeks ago, in a popular internet forum, a militant extremist
   made the following comment calling for an attack on civilians in
   Israel:

   âIf killing 10% [of the population] radicalized the remaining 90%,
   then they too should be killed, and thus made an example of.â

   Though most of the forumâs regulars claim to be proponents of
   democracy and the rule of law, many of them vigorously agreed with the
   statement. One even reposted the comment on the front page. For
   onlookers, it was a chilling reminder that even in an era of increased
   vigilance and security, the enemies of freedom routinely take
   advantage of Americaâs generous free speech laws to spread messages of
   hatred and incitements to violence.

   Generally speaking, I believe that people so bent on bloodshedâwhat
   some of us on the other side call armchair jihadisâdonât deserve the
   compliment of rational opposition. People like this arenât interested
   in solutions to the conflicts the world faces today. Without those
   conflicts, these fear-mongers lose what paltry significance they feel
   they have gained by shouting the loudest and calling for the most
   shocking kinds of revenge and destruction. But this circumstance was
   different. This was no jihadist chat room, no Wahhabi blog, no
   fundamentalist website. The commentator was CaliforniaJosh, the
   reposter Naftali, the forum [1]Deanâs World. And the only reason the
   rest of the DW readers were unconcerned about their call to
   exterminate civilians in Israel is because those civilians arenât
   Israeli. These so-called proponents of democracy have become so
   cynical they appear to believe that being born on the wrong side of a
   wall is a sin punishable by death.

   These two posters claim they arenât Islamophobes. I believe them.
   Theyâre not Islamophobes. Theyâre anti-American. America stands for
   the rule of law; theyâre calling for chaos. America holds that a
   military force is responsible for protecting civilians during a time
   of war; they are calling for the murder of people whose only crime is
   being inconveniently difficult to separate from the bad guys. America
   stands for life; theyâre calling for genocide. They will claim they
   love this countryâhard to believe when they publicly insult everything
   it stands for. They will claim they support the troops fighting to
   make Iraq safe, yet they call for the very sectarian bloodshed those
   troops are dying to eradicate. There is no word nasty enough for such
   irresponsible, self-aggrandizing hypocrisy. To say that behavior like
   this shames Deanâs World is an understatementâit shames an ideal
   people have died to protect.

References

   1. http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/chain_1197858557.shtml