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RESIST "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week!" Meeting Sunday

by Giovanni (wake_the_folk_up [at] yahoo.com)
Resist David Horowitz's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week"

Confront College Republicans with real facts

Bay Area-wide discussion/brainstorming/planning meeting

At UC Berkeley this Sun. Sept. 30 4-6PM at Dwinelle Hall

David Horowitz and his army of Campus Republicans are launching "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" October 22-26 on hundreds of college campuses across the country. They are ominously calling this "the biggest conservative campus protest ever." Invoking '60s 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!

The first thing that must be said is that "Islamo-fascism" is a Bush term which all thinking people should reject. It's a label concocted to whip up the xenophobia, blind patriotism, and intellectual conformity necessary for the ongoing U.S. crusade in the Middle East. Especially 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 loudmouth assholes. If we ignore them they will not go away. They have their sights set on the last remaining bastions of critical thinking - in particular, schools like SF State, UC Berkeley, and Stanford - with the aim of transforming all of society. If they can create an atmosphere at these colleges where it is OK 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 will have won, not only at these universities, but in their efforts to remake the social fabric of this country in a fascist way.

On the other hand, if we can politically confront these College Republicans and their "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week," expose their real agenda, raise awareness of the growing danger of U.S. fascism and the real fascist direction that the Bush Regime has been taking this country on - the endless war, the torture, the Patriot act and the Military Commissions act, the shredding of habeus corpus and constitutional law, the unlimited domestic spying, homeland security and the whole police state infrastructure, the Christian fundamentalism that is undermining women's rights, gay people's rights, science, and rational thought - and if we can bring forward a radical student movement that refuses to choose between Islamic fundamentalism and the Bush Regime's Christian fascist war on the world... then we can turn Horowitz's plan upside down and campuses can become the centers of intellectual ferment, activism, and organized resistance that are so desperately needed at times like these.



Who is David Horowitz?

From: http://www.rwor.org/a/102/resist-fascist-en.html

Horowitz is a self-described "battering ram" against any thinking in academia that challenges a whole range of lies this system has perpetrated. As the accompanying article points out, he's played a major role in slandering, hounding, and even ending the careers of progressive teachers.
Horowitz established his credentials with the ruling class by renouncing his involvement in the 1960s movements for social change in a series of slanderous articles, books and conferences. He "made his bones" in the '90s, by waging a high-profile campaign against reparations for African-Americans, with the theme that Black people should be grateful for slavery! Horowitz took out huge ads in campus newspapers proclaiming this vicious lie and to this day makes it a major part of his attack.

He wrote a book on the "art of political war" that Karl Rove distributed to key Republican campaign operatives. He is a vitriolic defender of everything from the extermination of the Native Americans and the enslavement of Black people, to the savage and criminal wars against Iraq and Afghanistan and the torture of those whom this regime deems to be terrorists. He has set up a website that clamors for the arrest and imprisonment of revolutionaries, radicals, dissenters and liberals and reports every slander, rumor, lie and innuendo that comes his way. And, bankrolled from the ruling class, he has organized the falsely named "Students for Academic Freedom," which literally takes notes on lectures and rips things out of context in an attempt to get professors who do not sufficiently bow down to the Bush agenda fired. The modern-day Nazi-type student groups inspired by Horowitz organize so-called "games" like "Catch an Illegal Immigrant" on campus.

In short, Horowitz defends every crime that this system has ever committed and is now preparing to justify even more, and to intimidate and silence any who would question or resist this.

Conservative My Ass--These People Are Nazis!
Add Your Comments

Comments (Hide Comments)
As a devout liberal, I want to support this teach-in. I will not support a homophobic, misogynist, hateful religion that is bent on terrorizing the world. The Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is a step in true resistance; it is a way to speak truth to this evil power that brings hate.
by Ron
I am going to have to agree with Keith. I can't stand the Bush administration but let's not kid ourselves here- it's way better than living under a caliphate. We aren't hanging gays and shooting women for looking at other men in the US. No one is going to take us seriously if we ignore, much less excuse the hatred coming out of the middle east.
by mpalmer.at.lmi.dot.net
When is Christo-Fascism Awareness Week? That would be more relevant to our experiences here in the U.S.
by Mike
Trying to compare evangelical Christians in America to the Wahhabi-types. Last time I checked, Pat Robertson -a complete douchebag to say the least- hasn't beheaded anyone on TV.
by ....
and the Republicans are the War Party, par excellence.

I'll believe they're pro-women when they stop blowing up abortion clinics... or investigate their allies who do so. Meanwhile, they cry the tears of the crocodile.
by cp
Who calls themself a 'devout liberal'? Sure, Keith.

While you're at it, perhaps you could address the same personality traits in our leader. He thinks current events were prophecied in a section of the old testament (a book held in good faith by the three judeo-christian/muslim religions) regarding gog and magog
http://www.diatribune.com/bush-attacks-gog-and-magog-iraq

Here is an article about John McCain viewing the United States as a theocratic country
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/30/MNACSH0G0.DTL
by mpalmer.at.lmi.dot.net
So call it Wahabi-Fascism Awareness Week, then, instead of branding all followers of Islam as fascists. The problem with this repugnant term "Islamo-fascist" is that it paints an entire religion as being fundamentally intolerant, misogynistic, homophobic, etc. when in fact generally speaking Islam is no more so than any other religion, such as Christianity. Certain strains of Islam, just like certain strains of Christianity, are indeed fascistic and absolutely should be attacked as such. But don't attack all followers of Islam for being fascistic when the vast majority are not.

Beheading one's enemies is not a form of punishment unique to fascism. Many cultures and religions have used decapitation as punishment, including a number of Western democracies and religions such as Christianity. The United States used beheading as capital punishment up until the 20th century, I believe, and still uses hanging in some states. France used the guillotine well into the 1970s.
Islamic fundamentalists may be oppressive towards women, gay people, and dissenting voices generally - but it's the imperialist fascists we've got in this country who are the real threat to the world.

They may not be outright beheading people on TV (though I'm not sure which govt. you're speaking of when referring to this) but they have helped unleash a massive war on the middle east, which has killed 1 million Iraqis, and displaced millions of others. Now they're beating the drums of war against Iran, while supporting government in Afghanistan which is inviting the Taliban right back into power (as if they truly opposed its politics in the first place.)

I support students organizing against this - whether it be outright counter demonstrations, or teach-ins popularizing secular & progressive movements in the middle east, or the reality of American fascists.

We don't have to pick between these two reactionary poles. Check out a piece by Iranian communist Mansoor Hekmat written after 9/11 - http://www.marxists.org/archive/hekmat-mansoor/2001/11/september11.htm
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