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What's Our Response to Bannon's War on Islam?
Trump's top advisor, Steve Bannon, has essentially declared War on Islam [1].
Bannon asserts that to be a Muslim is to be the follower of an evil religion, a religion of war and violent domination over all non-Muslims. Bannon argues that all Muslim persons, no matter how "nice" they behave presently, are--simply because they call themselves a Muslim--a latent, if not overt, threat to the safety of non-Muslims.
The logical implication of Bannon's view is that we need to wage a War on Islam to force all 1.6 Muslims in the world to renounce their religion (or die or be in prison).
In Bannon's view, all Muslims in the Unites States are a fifth column that we need to treat as a hostile enemy.
HOW SHOULD WE RESPOND TO THIS?
First, we need to realize that a LOT of Americans agree with Bannon (which is why a majority of Americans support Trump's recent travel ban.) They agree because since 9/11 there has been an intense BI-PARTISAN effort to make Americans fear Muslims, using lies and manipulation.
How the Ruling Class Made Americans Fear Muslims
The Big Lie was that 9/11 was done by "19 Muslims" when in fact it was an inside job designed to make us fear Muslims.[2]
Then U.S. troops were sent to invade Iraq and Afghanistan as a conquering invading army killing innocent Muslims and torturing them (remember Abu Ghraib?) and--BY DESIGN!--learning to fear ordinary Muslims as an enemy just because they fought back as ANY people would have.
Then the U.S. government began using drones to kill more innocent Muslims in even more nations for the purpose of creating anger at the United States among Muslims [3] and inducing some to join seemingly anti-American organizations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda (which organizations do the bidding of the U.S. rulers, actually [4]). And the FBI has been working overtime trying to induce Muslims in the United States to commit terrorism and deliberately permit some to do it on their own. All of this is to ensure that Americans will be extremely frightened of Muslims.
Even before 9/11 the U.S. ruling class supported Israel's violent ethnic cleansing of non-Jews (Palestinians, who are mainly Muslims) from more than 78% of Palestine. There is absolutely no moral justification for this ethnic cleansing whatsoever.[5] Its purpose is to force the Palestinians to resist the ethnic cleansing so that they can then be falsely portrayed in the West as evil anti-Semitic and anti-American Muslim terrorists. [6]
We need to explain to the good, but very frightened, people who agree with Bannon that their fear of Muslims is the result of lies and manipulation by the American ruling class that controls us by keeping us afraid of a bogeyman enemy, which used to be Communists and now is Muslims.
The Cold War against Communism was a Big Lie, as evidenced by the fact that during the entire period of that war the American ruling class was sending enormous amounts of military equipment and technology to the Soviet Union, even while the Soviet Union was in turn providing military aid to North Vietnam and American GIs were being sent to fight the North Vietnamese! [7]
The War on Islam is just as much a Big Lie. Its purpose is to CONTROL US with fear of a bogeyman enemy, with an Orwellian war of social control.
We need to tell the Americans who agree with Bannon what the TRUTH is, all of the above facts and the facts about Muslims and Islam in the this article.
HOW CAN WE COMMUNICATE THE TRUTH TO PEOPLE WHO AGREE WITH BANNON?
The first step is to realize that most of the people who agree with Bannon are good and decent people. Last July I went to a rally of Trump supporters and asked them if they agreed with my PDR button that said "Let's remove the rich from power, have real--not fake--democracy with no rich and no poor" and 86% agreed enthusiastically and took a button I offered them and some even pinned it on their shirt right on the spot. 8% strongly disagreed. The 86% ARE OUR FRIENDS! They are not immoral people. We need to speak to them respectfully, not by accusing them of being fascists and racists and evil. We need to share important information with them.
The second step is to stop using slogans that imply disrespect of those who agree with Bannon. Declaring that we are against racism and fascism implies that those who disagree with us are racists and fascists. This is not true and it only serves to insult those who disagree with us and ensure that there will be no real communication.
Furthermore, a widely seen sign and chanted slogan at recent demonstrations was "LOVE NOT FEAR. REFUGEES ARE WELCOME HERE." This slogan frames our disagreement with those who agree with Bannon as a conflict between progressives who choose to love people in spite of the fact that some of them may wish to kill us, versus conservatives who choose not to love people when they know some might wish to kill us. This slogan only reinforces the conservatives' belief that progressives are idiots--arrogant idiots who think conservatives can't love, only fear. The pro-Trump site, Breitbart dot com, that Bannon used to run, LOVES it when progressives chant this slogan; Breitbart dot com has a field day with it, and likewise with all the progressives' signs ("Stop Racism" etc.) that imply it is racist to want to protect oneself from people who want to kill you.
If progressives instead had signs that said things such as "9/11 was an inside job designed to make us fear Muslims" it would start to make people who agree with Bannon think maybe progressives know some things worth finding out more about. If progressives' signs said that the War on Muslims is an Orwellian War of social control, not a war against a truly dangerous enemy, this too would pave the way for some real communication, so sorely absent now.
There are lots of facts about Islam and Muslims (see this article for some) that we need to communicate to people who agree with Bannon. So let's start doing that, instead of hurling implied insults at those people.
LET'S CHALLENGE BANNON'S SCREWY "LOGIC"
Bannon cites some words in the sayings of Mohammed and some historical actions of Muslims to make his case that non-Muslims cannot be safe until a War on Muslims forces all 1.6 billion Muslims to renounce their religion (or die or be in prison). The "logic" here is to assume that some sayings of Mohammed or some actions of some Muslims in the past, cherry picked to be the most frightening sayings and actions, of course) tell us how most Muslims today will behave.
This is absurd! It's the same as arguing that the Popes' launching of several Crusades in the past show how warlike all Christians today are. It's the same as arguing that the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews called for by God in the Old Testament's Deuteronomy shows that all Jews are ethnic cleansers today. (Yes, many Jews today DO support Israel's ethnic cleansing, but that is because their upper class leaders have used lies and manipulation to make them fear Palestinians[8], not because to be a Jew means to be an ethnic cleanser!)
Bannon's screwy "logic" is behind Trump's recent announcement that he is going to publicize a list of all the crimes committed by illegal immigrants, and only illegal immigrants (of course). This will make some people think illegal immigrants are a particularly criminal category of people. In fact they are not. If Trump publicized all the crimes of blond, and only blond, people it would likewise cause some to think blonds were a particularly criminal category of people. This is Bannon's "logic" towards Muslims. We need to point this out in our demonstrations, in a respectful (to the many good and decent people who support Trump) manner.
We need the American public to know the truth: that if the U.S. government really wanted Americans to be safe from Muslims it would stop killing innocent Muslims around the world and stop supporting Israel's ethnic cleansing and apologize for having done so in the past; and it would use the FBI to protect us from the very few truly criminal Muslims instead of continuing to use it to ensure that Muslim terror will occur in the United States. If this happened, the vast majority of Muslims would be even more determined than most of them already are today to help Americans be safe from the few crazy Muslims who would wish us harm.
THE RULING CLASS HAS AGENTS AMONG US WHO WANT US TO FAIL
There are people in the progressive camp who have been promoting a strategy that is, in fact, designed to fail. This strategy is for progressives to demonize the Americans who voted for Trump and who may agree with Bannon about Muslims. This strategy is designed to make the ruling class's divide-and-rule strategy succeed, to get each half of the public demonized in the eyes of the other half.
Progressives need to stop ignoring the fact that most Americans support the recent Trump travel ban and many--perhaps most--agree with Bannon about Muslims. Getting a huge number of progressives out to a demonstration is NOT the goal. Winning over the people who presently disagree with us is the goal. A big demonstration aiming to win over the good and decent people who believe ruling class lies is a good thing. A big demonstration that demonizes those it disagrees with, and that provides fodder for Breitbart dot com, only helps the ruling class!
IT'S TIME TO THINK ABOUT HOW TO WIN, NOT JUST HOW TO VENT ANGER
THE STAKES ARE ENORMOUS AND WE ARE ON A PATH THAT LEADS TO FAILURE
WE MUST CHANGE FAST, OR WE WILL LOSE
[1] See http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/31/bannon-odds-islam-china-decades-us-foreign-policy-doctrine/97292068/
[2] See http://newdemocracyworld.org/culture/goat.html
[3] See http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/war/drone.html
[4] See http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/old/War/Inventing-enemy.htm
[5] See http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/palestine/existence.html
[6] See http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/war/gaza2.html
[7] See http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/war/sutton1.html
[8] See http://spritzlerj.blogspot.com/2007/09/how-jewish-elites-use-anti-gentilism-to.html
Also see Links to Some Facts about Muslims & Islam at http://www.newdemocracyworld.org/culture/muslims2.html
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