I notice that right-wing ideologue and red-baiting anti-intellectual David Horowitz (of the newly founded "David Horowitz Freedom Center") took time out of his busy schedule to submit a letter to the Tufts Daily (Oct. 17) in response to a Daily op-ed piece of mine that criticized the so-called "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" Horowitz has been organizing with the hopes of generating more support for war in the Middle East by vilifying Muslims.
In his letter, Horowitz stated that "Leupp appears unaware or unconcerned that it is Islamic fascists who have attacked us." In fact, as someone who each year teaches about the history of fascism, I reject the deliberately misleading application of that term to people who are actually quite different from fascists.
Even al-Qaeda, vicious though it is, is a very different sort of phenomenon from the movements that acquired state power in Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary and elsewhere in the early 20th century. Contemporary analogs to those movements can be found close to home, boasting Christian credentials and using Nazi-like fear-mongering and extreme nationalism to generate support for endless war.
And just as the Nazis conflated Jews and Communists and Slavs, and tried to whip up fears of conspiracy after the Reichstag fire of 1933, so some neoconservatives in this country have tried since Sept. 11 to link secular governments in Muslim countries, and Iran's Shiite regime, to al-Qaeda.
Horowitz wants to label any Muslims opposed to U.S. policy, including Palestinians of all stripes, as "fascists" in order to better vilify them as the Bush administration contemplates the expansion of its "war on terror." And then he insists that he's not anti-Muslim - he just wants to help Muslims overcome their rampant Islamofascism!
Horowitz states that I do not want "our military to defend us against the fanatical jihadists who blew up the World Trade Center." Thus he depicts my opposition to the war in Iraq and the likely coming attack on Iran as support for jihadists. That's how Horowitz operates, by vilifying and simplifying.
Horowitz's buddy and fellow neoconservative Islamophobe Daniel Pipes will apparently be speaking at Tufts Cohen Auditorium Wednesday at 7 p.m. as part of the "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" propaganda campaign.
According to Horowitz, "During the week of October 22-26, 2007, the nation will be rocked by the biggest conservative campus protest ever ... 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."
In other words: this "awareness week" is designed to defend what Bush calls a "war on terror" at a time when public support for the invasion of Iraq - based on lies - has plummeted, and when Americans are becoming more skeptical about administration claims about "terrorist threats" from Iran and elsewhere and turning their attention to real problems. This is fear-mongering, pure and simple.
I recommend all concerned turn out for Pipes' appearance. I understand that audience members will have to pass through a metal detector and no backpacks will be allowed. This seems a deliberate effort to encourage a fear mentality. How many other speakers on this peaceful campus insist on such measures?
Let us call Pipes out on his endorsement of Japanese-American internment camps during World War II, and his suggestion that these may serve as a model for dealing with Muslims in the U.S. today. Call him out on his opposition to any Palestinian state. Call him out on his vicious statements about American Muslims as "dangerous" and "suspect" in general.
Please join the Tufts Coalition Opposed to the War in Iraq (TCOWI) and other campus organizations to protest Pipes' scheduled appearance at Cohen Auditorium tomorrow evening.
Gary P. Leupp is a professor of history at Tufts University.
