In her February 10 column for the far-right conspiracy haven World Net Daily, Pamela Geller warned readers of the ever-increasing threat she and others within the so called “Counter-Jihad” movement perceive Islam poses. To anyone familiar with Geller, her continued output of hateful, anti-Muslim rhetoric should come as no surprise. However, in her column titled, “Savage Summit and its ‘Islamophobia’ Problem,” Geller went into full-on bigot mode, using language that is disturbingly evocative of Nazi imagery and doctrine.
The subject of Geller’s piece was the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Summit held in Cairo. Geller describes the 57-government OIC as “the modern-day caliphate,” stoking fears that many within the organized Islamophobia movement have of Muslims quietly gaining traction in their quest for global domination. The crux of Geller’s fear is Nihad Awad’s presence at the summit. Awad is the Founder and Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that Islamophobes like Geller and her partner Robert Spencer view as an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Anti-immigrant conduit Frank Gaffney along with House Immigration Reform Caucus members Reps. Michelle Bachman (R-MN) and Louie Gohmert (R-TX) similarly share concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration in the US Government.
Geller asserts that with his presence at the OIC summit, Awad has been “unmasked for what he really is: a Hamas operative to advance Shariah in the U.S.” Generally, this paranoid language is par for the course from Geller and her colleagues. “Here it comes,” Geller writes, “the next stage to a final solution by Islamic supremacists. They have successfully berated, cajoled, harassed and threatened Western journalists and politicians to self-enforce the blasphemy laws under the Shariah…Now they will press on to final victory: the criminalization of all criticism of Islam.”
By invoking notions of “supremacy” and using phrases such as “final solution,” Geller’s obviously alluding to Nazism and the Holocaust. Such rhetoric is as insulting as it juvenilely hyperbolic.
That in mind, asserting that Muslims and Islam are akin to Hitler and the Nazi Party is a woefully common phenomenon for “freedom fighters” of the so-called “Counter-jihad” movement:
- David Horowitz has very matter-of-factly claimed, “The Palestinians are Nazis.”
- Taking after their boss, contributors to Horowitz’s online FrontPage Magazine have frequently conflated Islam to Nazism and gone so far as to declare Hitler “Islam’s favorite infidel.”
- Pat Robertson has claimed Nazis and Muslims are alike from his television stage pulpit, The 700 Club.
- A significant portion of the rhetoric presented in the anti-Islam film Obsession that features many voices from the anti-Islam/-Muslim movement attempts to liken Islam and Nazism. Martin Gilbert went so far as to say the supposed threat of Islam is “like World War II, if we ignore it we will have millions dead.”
- In a recent television appearance, Geert Wilders compared the Quran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and advocated banning the Quran in the Netherlands.
- Debbie Schlussel likened past Nazi policies to Islam with a graphic stating, “That was then… this is now.”
This is not the first time Geller herself has played the Nazi card in her writing, either.
When the Jewish Council for Urban Affairs condemned her hate ads on city buses, she equated those who opposed her message to Nazi sympathizers by using the term “judenrat.” In a February 23 post on her Atlas Shrugs blog she employed an analogy comparing Council on American-Islamic representatives to Nazis.
Even with acknowledging the precedent of bigotry those among the “Counter-Jihad movement” have established, the practice of relating Muslims to perpetrators of the Holocaust is disgusting, always deployed for its superficial tabloid-shock value. It becomes more haunting when one recalls the horrific events last year in Wisconsin, where actual neo-Nazi Wade Michael Page opened fire on a Sikh temple and so perpetrated an act of terrorism against those he apparently believed to be Muslims.
The words of former CIA officer and consultant on terrorism Marc Sageman, speaking about such anti-Islam/-Muslim affronts in the wake of Anders Behring Breivik massacre in Norway, still uphold a solemn promise—“This rhetoric is not cost-free.”