Be-Think [Please visit BeThink.org]: "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" (IFAW)

Horowitz & Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week

The week will begin with a bang as a band of ideologues invade the characteristic campus calm. Those that spread hate will invoke the term "awareness." They will prophesize enlightenment as they share words of derision. I offer only this scant information, for I too wish to advance awareness. However, mine contrasts with that of David Horowitz, Rick Santorum, Michael Ledeen, Ann Coulter, and their ilk.

A students guide to hosting Islamo-Fascism Awareness week reveals a truth that speaks volumes. According to the reality expressed in this document, academics are enemies. Scholars are friends of the President's foes. Americans, under the authority of the Patriot Act are free. Citizens of the United States are free and tolerant. Perhaps this explains why we build walls and restrict movement.

The purpose of this protest is as simple as it is crucial: to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat. Nothing could be more politically incorrect than to point this out. But nothing could be more important for American students to hear.

In the face of the greatest danger Americans have ever confronted, the academic left has mobilized to create sympathy for the enemy and to fight anyone who rallies Americans to defend themselves. According to the academic left, anyone who links Islamic radicalism to the war on terror is an "Islamophobe." According to the academic left, the Islamo-fascists hate us not because we are tolerant and free, but because we are "oppressors."

Those that wish to promote an alternative awareness offer these thoughts for your review. May I introduce the perspective of those that wish to Defend Critical thinking and Expose and Defeat This Reactionary Offensive.

David Horowitz has announced "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" (IFAW) for October 22-26, to take place on campuses around the country. Horowitz has enlisted some of the most extreme, and dangerous, ideologues as spokespeople, and is working with Christian fundamentalists, military and veteran's groups, and the entire range of conservative and reactionary student organizations in an attempt to hold what he says will be the largest conservative university protest in US history.

This is a move to deepen the already serious chill in academia by bringing together an aggressive social base and unleashing it on what Horowitz calls the "tenured left."

The World Can't Wait helps us to understand how those on the Right help to create an attractive and persuasive environment. Enlightenment encased in euphemisms has great appeal. What passes for principled patriotism can be powerfully persuasive.

David Horowitz and his army of Campus Republicans are launching "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" October 22-26 on hundreds of campuses across the country. They are ominously calling this "the biggest conservative campus protest ever." Invoking ‘60’s themes like "free speech" and combating the "oppression of women in Islam" as a cover, they plan to harass Muslim Student Associations and Women’s Studies Departments, and silence anyone that questions the Bush regime’s official narrative, including even those concerned about global warming!

Given the Bush regime’s escalating threats toward Iran, the danger of a complicit campus environment cannot be underestimated. The College Republicans can claim to be the victim of the "academic left," but people like them run this country and dominate the world. They are the ones holding "catch an illegal immigrant day" at the same time as the Bush regime’s ICE raids are ripping apart immigrant families.

This is not just a question of campus politics and a few loud mouth bigots. If we ignore them, they will NOT go away. They have their sights set on the last remaining bastions of critical thinking with the aim of transforming all of society. If they can create an atmosphere at these colleges where it is okay to be openly racist and reactionary, where progressive faculty are intimidated by ridiculous claims of "left-wing academic dictatorship," and radical dissenting ideas are ruled beyond the pale and off the table . . . then they have won, not only at the universities, but in their efforts to remake the social fabric of this country in a fascist way.

You may wish to familiarize yourself with some of the speakers. Please take a moment to peruse the prose.

David Horowitz: [American Conservative Writer and Activist]
“What about the debt blacks owe to America—to white America— for liberating them from slavery? This may not seem like a serious question to some, but that only reveals their ignorance of the history of slavery and its fate.” “Guns don’t kill black people, other blacks do.”

Rick Santorum: [former United States Senator from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania]
“And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does . . .”

Michael Ledeen: [Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing Editor to National Review.]
“One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today. If we wage the war effectively, we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria . . . That’s our mission in the war against terror.”

Ann Coulter: [American Conservative Columnist, Political Commentator and best-selling Author]
“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet- bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”

Please take a moment to do more than laugh or cry. Help stop the spread of divisiveness. For those that despise persons whose race, religion, or gender preference differs from theirs every encounter is war. Let us promote peace. May we embrace an alternative awareness and label it empathy.