September 27, 2012

Moaning Mona

By now everybody knows that Mona Eltahawy -- writer for the Washington Post and the New York Times, stalwart Leftist activist, and now evidently supporter of jihad -- was arrested last Tuesday for defacing a poster. The poster was displayed (after a bitter legal fight) in ten New York subway stations; it reads:

Leftists across America and in Europe have weighed in on this controversy; while most (but not all) condemn Eltahawy's vandalization of the poster, they are in unanimity that the advertisement itself constitutes "hate speech." Even New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority considered the adverts hate speech, because Pam Gellar was forced to get a court decision requiring the MTA to display them.

I confess being puzzled: How can it be hate speech to oppose holy war against innocents?

I have yet to find a person who has even the sketchiest argument why supporting the "civilized man" and supporting Israel while opposing holy war is hateful. Most simply announce that it's hate speech, relentlessly repeat that it's hate speech, and declare that only haters could possibly disagree that it's hate speech (generally accompanied by the verbal equivalent of pounding on the table). But surely there must be some intellectual, rational, logical argument behind the idea that such a poster is hateful.

Is there a good, or at least not entirely stupid argument that the ad is hate speech? Because it seems to me that the only way to read this as an attack on Moslems in general -- is first to equate radical Islamists to all Moslems. Which would, I am sure, make these purportedly pro-Moslem Progressivists actually anti-Moslem religious bigots.

Jihad -- as used in this advert, and as commonly used by people everywhere, including Moslems -- means war waged by radical Islamists in order to bring about the imposition of sharia law. Sharia law is one of the two most oppressive, anti-liberal, sexist, theocratic, triumphalist ideologies on the planet (the other being totalitarian socialism, whether national or international). Thus if so-and-so considers anti-shariaism itself, by its very nature, to be hate speech, doesn't that mean so-and-so necessarily supports sharia? After all, if you hate all systems other than sharia, what then is left?

And anyone who supports the imposition of sharia law -- which is totalitarian and the whole point of jihad -- is by definition a totalitarian. (Similarly, a person who hates all economic systems but Capitalism is by definition a capitalist.)

I've long thought the Left was in fact totalitarian: Michelle Obama telling everyone how to eat, Michael Bloomberg telling his subjects how much soda to drink, enviro-mental cases telling us what vehicles we're allowed to utilize, ad nauseum; but is the Left now openly ready to "come out" about the totalitarian tendency of Progressivism?

Perhaps it's possible that the advert really is hate speech, even if nobody on la Rive Gauche can articulate why. If so, then a new advert with the same structure but different content should likewise be hate speech. Let's consider:

Is this hate speech? If not, then why not? Other than the most diehard Italian Americans who actually deny that la Cosa Nostra even exists, what civilized person could possibly object to this advert?

Or this one:

Is there anything in this advertisement at which even a freedom-minded German in 1943 could take offense?

I'm often at a loss to explain the leftist mindset; but this time, I am utterly dumbfounded. Can somebody point me to a non-risible argument for the original subway-station advertisement being hate speech? Because I would hate to be forced to believe that the actual offending words are "support Israel," and the only reason to consider this advert "hate speech" is rank Jew hatred.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 27, 2012, at the time of 1:38 PM

Comments

The following hissed in response by: Captain Ned

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