It’s not that Marty Peretz doesn’t raise some issues worthy of discussing. He does. But his conclusion has to be condemned.
Why do not Muslims raise their voices against these at once planned and random killings all over the Islamic world? This world went into hysteria some months ago when the Mossad took out the Hamas head of its own Murder Inc.
But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.
There is so much wrong with this. There’s the assertion that Muslims never condemn violence, even when it is Muslim-on-Muslim violence. That’s a false assertion. There’s the assertion that Muslim life is cheap. There is the assertion that no one associated with Imam Rauf has ever said a word against random acts of terrorism carried out by Muslims against Muslims. That’s a false assertion. There’s the use of the word “brotherhood,” not to denote the Muslim Brootherhood, but to equate all Muslims with terrorists. There’s the telling use of the term “these people” to refer to all Muslims everywhere. There’s the idea that people have to be worthy of their constitutional rights and that people like Peretz ‘honor” people by acknowledging and respecting their constitutional rights. And, finally, there’s the conclusion that we ought not respect Muslims’ right to freely exercise their religious rights and right to free speech and assembly because they can’t be trusted.
I just to have ask the folks who are working at The New Republic (some of whom are doing some good work) whether or not you really want to compromise yourself this much to get that paycheck. At what point do you have to resign in disgust and seek less befouling employment?
If I didn’t think Peretz just hated Arabs I’d criticize him for lacking faith in the power of our institutions and ideals to make people embrace liberal principles. But I don’t give Peretz that much credit. He’s just filled with hate.
Is it wrong to say that Marty Peretz seems to have a mindset rather in line with the Nazis, when it comes to Muslims?
Not really. Unless you think hating a group of people and wanting to deny them some of their rights is the same as wanting to exterminate them.
“But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims.”
This and many other comments indicates HE thinks Muslim life is cheap. He’s implied many times that he’s perfectly okay with dead Muslims. Wishing someone dead and dehumanizing them constantly seems part in parcel of the Nazi mindset to me.
sure.
but until you actually come out and call for the extermination of a people, you aren’t a nazi. You might be on your way to being a nazi, but you still have work to do.
Come on, BooMan! That’s a very naive and highly simplistic view of Nazis and Nazism. Surely you don’t really believe that the only thing that defines a Nazi or a Nazi mindset, or Nazi/Nazi-like practices is exterminating peoples you don’t like. I am not an expert on the Nazis, but even the moderate amount I know about them tells me that Nazi ideology and practices did not and does not begin and end with extermination of peoples.
Wrong.
The Nazis tried to exterminate Jews and Gypsies like they were household pests. That is their defining feature. We can find other things they did and believed and make comparisons to those things. But you don’t call someone a Nazi unless they believe in extermination. If they are just filled with hate, they’re like countless other people, but they’re not Nazis.
Well, the Nazis have absolutely nothing to do with this. So what’s the point of making such a comparison. It’s distracting to refer to them. They were around years ago in Europe and any remnants are small and insignificant. It’s almost like blaming the problem on Nazis when everyone knows that very many nice, clean, educated, prosperous, middle-of-the road people in the US of A are today possessed by fear and hate of something they call Islam, they’re self-fulfilling justification for their rage.
Maybe we’re here dealing with pure and simple racism and stupid rage. In fact we are. Anti-Arab/Muslim hate. A US problem today, at this time, in this place. This is a homebred type of horrid and stupid way of thinking and doing which is all over the place. What is Peretz for and what is he against? He’s obviously against Nazis–who isn’t–and he’s for… The mere suggestion that Jewish or Israeli bigotry and racism towards Arabs (and maybe Iranians)may be the basic problem is totally beyond the pale in polite company even though it explains an awful lot about what has happened and is still happening in Palestine, in Congress, in the US mainstream media.
That may be their defining feature in your mind, but it is still a gross oversimplification, and it is neither necessary nor sufficient to define Nazism. In addition, Nazis are hardly unique even in modern history in the commission or attempted commission of genocide, so there has to be more to define them than simply that. Having said that, I do not use the Nazi epithet myself. It is rarely appropriate and even more rarely helpful to any conversation.
Frankly, in the elite and very white circles Peretz operates in I doubt these are very controversial assertions.
Rather than focusing on the hate or ignorance of one person (or magazine), what we need to confront is an entire society that at minimum is attaching no social stigma to people who made overbroad pejorative generalizations about Muslims, when such generalizations against virtually any other population would be condemned as racism and/or bigotry. Ours is a racist country, institutionally and interpersonally, but at least outside a few pockets most people now will agree that both personal and institutional bias are a bad thing.
Except when discussing Muslims. Then, people like Peretz can go on national networks and declaim that “they” are “all like that,” and nobody with any authority bats an eye. The problem isn’t just Peretz.
Put more simply, Boo answered his question by asking it. The fact that Peretz isn’t a pariah, and can keep spouting stuff like this with no fear of such a backlash, tells us what the problem is.
You are so right! Muslims – and Arabs, too – are considered fair game not just in the United States, but in Western society in general.
“Frankly, in the elite and very white circles Peretz operates in I doubt these are very controversial assertions.”
You cannot be serious. Peretz and his “Israel uber alles” approach, and his hatred for Muslims? I cannot imagine anywhere that the kind of garbage he dishes out regularly would be acceptable.
And what is this crap about “elites”? This faux populist garbage is the territory of wingnut wacks. I’m shocked to see anyone here talking about “elites”.
I can’t help wondering what issues Marty Peretz raises that you consider worthy of discussing.
The effect of Muslim immigration on European society, politics, and culture, as well as the effect of living in Europe on the values and beliefs of Muslims. The same issue could be discussed here in the US.
Of course, there’s not any point in discussing these things with Peretz, but they are topics worthy of discussion by people with good faith.
OK. Yes, those things are worthy of discussion, but as you said, never on Peretz’s terms.
I think it obscures the issue to call Peretz a nazi. Overt hate for constructed minority groups didn’t begin and end with the nazis. They were just notable for it. I think we need a better term under which to classify this general phenomenon. “Racism” is too bland now. “Eliminationist” is closer but too intellectual. Other terms, like “anti-semitism” and “blood libel” are also close but too specific to the jewish experience. I actually checked Wikipedia and there seems to be a lack in the language. Fomenting hate falls under discrimination but is more specific. Peretz is not calling for genocide but he is suggesting that the individuals of Islam are either collectively at war with us, whatever “us” means (basically Israel but shhhh), or sub-human animals with implacable destructive tendencies. Beasts In other words. His rhetoric inevitably tends toward the “Muslim problem-solution” axis.
Not inevitably. There are measures short of genocide that would satisfy Peretz. Like, simply disallowing Islamic immigration, for example, which was done for a time to the Chinese. But, yeah, ingrained in Peretz’s logic is a call for a Final Solution to the Muslim problem.
Even the Nazis did not necessarily seek to eliminate all Jews from the face of the Earth, just from their sphere. There was support for Zionism among Nazis as one means toward their goal of making Germany Judenrein.
Really? Adolf Hitler was a big proponent of Zionism? There was talk about moving the Jews because not everyone was so impolite as to suggest shooting and gassing them, but the Nazi regime was interested in killing them wherever the found them, including areas that no one would call ‘Germany.’ Most of the Jews were killed were not from Germany, or even areas that might be considered ethnically German.
The experience of being the subject of eradication is a searing one that ought to be respected as pretty nearly unique.
“their sphere”, which includes the parts of Europe they invaded and occupied – i.e. the areas from which most of the Jews were killed.
3. The experience of being the subject of eradication is not unique to the victims of Nazism even in modern times. When one looks at the entirety of human history it is not unique at all. I think that fact ought to be acknowledged and respected. I think all peoples, ancient and modern, who have been subjected to extermination or attempted extermination are entitled to exactly the same consideration and respect.
Okay, give me an example of another serious effort to exterminate a people.
I’m not talking about ethnic cleansing. I am not talking about mass killing. I am talking about the explicit goal and a massive coordinated and sustained program to carry it out.
You argue that the Nazis would have been happy merely to remove them from their sphere, but all their boxcars were headed towards their sphere, not out of it. Jews were allowed to leave for a while in the 1930’s, but that policy was reversed and they were not allowed to leave.
You might cite some significant genocides, like the Armenians suffered. Or you might cite recent outbreaks of ethnic and religious violence in Bosnia or Rwanda, but those were not serious and sustained attempts at eradication.
Moreover, they were more territorial than ideological killings.
If you are going to persist in using the cheap and dishonest tactic of putting words into my mouth, then I have nothing more to say to you. I have never suggested that the Nazis “would have been happy” to do anything. I said there were Nazis who supported Zionism as one means of ridding themselves of the Jews. You could have disputed this well-documented fact, but you chose a dishonest response instead, and I am done.
If you are going to minimize the Turks’ attempt to exterminate the Armenians, then you are the one who is not showing proper respect, and I am REALLY done.
The Armenian Genocide was definitely the closest analogy to the Holocaust. I don’t intend to minimize it.
I think you missed the most telling part of Peretz’s screed — his “gut”, through which he “senses” what “these people” will do. Here is the very heart of racism, anti-semitism, nativism, and all the other primitive seeds of inhumanity. It is an unarguable argument, validated only by the alleged passion and “status” of the gut-container. It echoes the suburbanite’s gut feeling that the black guy in the parking lot is up to no good, or that the Jew will try to cheat you, or that the dark guy might try to blow you up.
It’s truly frightening that a sophisticated editor of a sophisticated magazine can abandon all reason for the sake of a descent to the most stunning primitivism imaginable, without significant pushback or consequences. We are truly lost.
but never again while Peretz is associated with the magazine. I cannot stand his “Israel uber alles” stuff.
When does Peretz become a pariah? When we do the work of making him one. When I first read that quote a couple of days ago I decided that i will add The New Republic to the short list, including Politico, of sites to which I will never knowingly follow a link – no matter who it is who’s writing I will miss. If I were more of a proactive blogger, I would never knowingly link to anything on TNR. And I will try to convince others to follow my example. When Peretz is no longer associated with TNR, I will change my practice, assuming TNR still exists.