The Worst Person In The World
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | 10/1/2007
Last Friday, on his MSNBC television show, Olbermann named me ?The Worst Person in the World.? ?The Worst Person? is a regular feature of Countdown, for which Olbermann is the host, and the same program featured an attack on a previous ?worst person,? Fox anchor Bill O?Reilly. Olbermann called O?Reilly ?unhinged,? while slandering him as a racist despite the lack of any evidence that would justify such a defamatory claim.
It was a performance familiar from the witch-hunting left. What act of mine, you might wonder, qualified me for such a distinction? Had I provided a prestigious platform for the president of Iran, the Persian Hitler whose agents are presently killing American troops in the Middle East and who has openly called for the elimination of the Jewish State? Had I perhaps produced a full page ad in the New York Times, which declared the leader of our troops in Iraq a traitor? Did I perhaps come up with the pun "Less Petraeus, more Betray Us" as a not-so-clever way to tarnish an American hero? No, as a matter of fact, Keith Olbermann did that.
What I did to deserve this distinction was organize a nation-wide campus effort called ?Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week,? which will be held on over 100 campuses on October 22-26. This is shaping up as the largest conservative student protest ever and has the anti-American left in a frenzy. Its purpose is to alert the academic world to the dangers America faces from Islamic terrorists such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for example, the recent guest of Columbia University, whose president called him a ?petty tyrant? when in fact he is a global menace. An even more damning sin of mine, it seems, was to make a theme of the Week?s events ?the oppression of women in Islam.?
To dramatize the barbaric treatment of women in some Islamic countries, I selected the above photograph, which I had been told was of a woman being buried up to her neck in preparation for an Islamic stoning in Iran. In fact, it was a still photograph from a 32-minute Dutch film called The Stone which was made to dramatize the barbaric treatment of women in Islamic countries such as Iran. The film was made by Mahnaz Tamizi about an Iranian man who has an affair with a married woman. When they are found out the man is jailed but ? in accord with the nice distinctions of Islamic law -- the woman is stoned to death.
The subject and brief duration of the film indicate that its purpose was to spread a message about the oppression of women in Islam ? precisely the purpose of our Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. In other words, the photo we used was perfectly appropriate for a week of events designed to make Americans aware of the terrible oppression of women under the Islamic law that Islamo-fascists seek to impose everywhere, and that already exists in Iran. According to Amnesty International, for example, despite Iran?s agreement to end the practice in 2002, two women were stoned to death in May 2006 and another seven were sentenced to death by stoning in the same year.
So what is the problem? If it were just a matter of our misunderstanding that the picture represented an actual stoning this would be a truly minor issue. In fact, however, it is the focal point of a campaign by the left across the Internet whose target is the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week itself. (E.g., see here, and here; and here.)
In the words of Mr. Olbermann: ?Keep plugging away Mr. Horowitz. Let?s go on spending billions to stoke up religious hatred and send our kids to die on the battlefield.?
Ralph Luker, who blogs on the History News Network, explains, ?Beginning October 22, David Horowitz and Frontpage Rag will bring ?Hate Your Neighbor Week,? to a campus near you.? Well that?s true if your neighbor happens to be bin Laden, or Zawahiri or Ahmadinejad.
In other words, there are no Islamo-Fascists who stone women under their interpretation of Islamic law, and the institution of such laws is not an agenda of the Islamic jihad against us. In fact there is no jihad or holy war against us, waged by Islamic fanatics. In fact, as George Soros and other Democrats maintain, George Bush created the terrorists by declaring war on them. Anyone who denies this, or has the temerity to mention that we have been attacked by Islamo-fascists who regard murder as martyrdom and a path to heaven is a ?.(drumroll)?racist. Someone stoking up religious hatred. (Now you can understand Olbermann targeted Bill O?Reilly on the same program.
This is, in fact, the sum and substance of what has become classic campaign by the left, directed now against Islamo-Fascsm Awareness Week. Every leftist campaign eventually becomes a witch-hunt a on the prowl for racists, sexists, homophobes, and?. Islamo-phobes under the bed. This one is no different: ?Using Racism to Sell War: The West v. Islam?? is not the title of Keith Olbermann?s next Countdown segment (though it might be). It is the title of a meeting on the Columbia University campus to organize a protest against Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week
The meeting is being put together by a Bolshevik organization (and proud of it) called the International Socialist Organization, which has conducted violent attacks on conservative campus speakers in the past. The announcement for this little planning session on the Columbia/Barnard website is instructive: ?In the summer of 2006 Bush declared that ?Islamic Fascism? is the biggest threat facing the U.S. today. In October this year, David Horowitz will tour campuses with his ?Islamofascism Awareness Week.? From the hysteria surrounding Ahmadinejad?s NYC visit to a spike in horrific hate crimes, the vilification of Arabs and Muslims is on the rise. Islamophobia provides a justification for the U.S.? ongoing wars and must be opposed at every chance. Come be a part of a discussion about the roots of this racist ?clash of civilizations? theory and what we can do to challenge it.?
In other words: America has not been attacked by Islamo-fascists, nor are there such fascists. All talk of ?Islamo-fascism? is a form of religious hatred, a means of justifying America?s racist wars of aggression against Arabs and Muslims. This is the message of leftwing flak-catchers for America?s enemies, Keith Olbermann among them.
Leon Trotsky once described the world Communist Parties and their progressive allies as ?frontier guards for the Soviet Union.? For 70 years of Cold War, the Communist and the progressive left made America the bad guy, and complained about ?cold warriors? in America being too harsh on totalitarians. They presented Communism as the voice of the oppressed and lent them ?critical support? as the counter-weight to American ?imperialism,? the great oppressor.
Today, Keith Olbermann and leftwing activists are performing the same service to the Islamic totalitarians. They are attempting to defame a Week designed to educate America?s students about the enemies they face in the global war on terror. Instead making Americans aware of the threat from Islamic terrorism, they are telling Americans to ask ?Why do they hate us?? as though there were some answer other than the fact that they are religious fanatics who regard America as ?the Great Satan.? Today, Keith Olbermann and the progressive left are acting as frontier guards for the Islamo-Fascists who want to kill us.
The scurrilous slander campaign that has been launched against Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week casts an illuminating spotlight on the war at home. The left in America has taken its stand. Just as progressives ran interference for the Soviet empire during the Cold War, progressives are today running interference for the Islamo-Fascists.
They ran interference for Saddam Hussein before the war in Iraq, and if successful would have prevented the overthrow of the one of the world?s most monstrous regimes. They are running interference for the terrorists who are fighting our troops in Iraq, attempting to force an American retreat, just as they did in Vietnam. If successful, they will have provided the Islamo-Fascists in the Middle East ? in particular Iran ? with oil rich Iraq as their new military and political base. And they have run interference at home for religious hate groups ? Islamic hate groups --whose agendas include the oppression of women and gays, Christians and Jews and any infidel who stands in their path. This is why the brave young students who are organizing Islamo-Fascism Week deserve everyone?s support.
