Stand up for Denmark!

Tuesday, February 21st, 2006 4:14 pm by Neal

Stand up for Denmark! is the latest from Christopher Hitchens on the Muhammad Cartoons controversy. He makes great points about the extreme, “nauseating” hypocrisy on the part of the Danish mullah’s who stirred-up this can of worms. He also lambasts the US State department for it’s weak capitulation to the “American Muslims” who are successfully out-spinning the Bush administration. Hitchens begins

Put the case that we knew of a highly paranoid religious cult organization with a secretive leader. Now put the case that this cult, if criticized in the press, would take immediate revenge by kidnapping a child. Put the case that, if the secretive leader were also to be lampooned, two further children would be killed at random. Would the press be guilty of “self-censorship” if it declined to publish anything that would inflame the said cult? Well, yes it would be guilty, but very few people would insist on the full exertion of the First Amendment right. However, the consequences for the cult and its leader would be severe as well. All civilized people would regard it as hateful and dangerous, and steps would be taken to circumscribe its influence, and to ensure that no precedent was set.

The incredible thing about the ongoing Kristallnacht against Denmark (and in some places, against the embassies and citizens of any Scandinavian or even European Union nation) is that it has resulted in, not opprobrium for the religion that perpetrates and excuses it, but increased respectability! A small democratic country with an open society, a system of confessional pluralism, and a free press has been subjected to a fantastic, incredible, organized campaign of lies and hatred and violence, extending to one of the gravest imaginable breaches of international law and civility: the violation of diplomatic immunity. And nobody in authority can be found to state the obvious and the necessary—that we stand with the Danes against this defamation and blackmail and sabotage. Instead, all compassion and concern is apparently to be expended upon those who lit the powder trail, and who yell and scream for joy as the embassies of democracies are put to the torch in the capital cities of miserable, fly-blown dictatorships. Let’s be sure we haven’t hurt the vandals’ feelings.

Hitchens has a dire warning for the West: expect the shady term “Islamaphobia” to enter the debate with the purpose of spreading censorship-through-intimidation to any critic (not just the media) of radical Islam. This is the power given to the extremists by the successful censoring of the US Media. The lesson here is that censorship, like cancer, grows. Definitely worth a read. Hitchens is also calling on folks to join him outside of the Danish Embassy in Washington for a peaceful show of solidarity.

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