Opinion/Editorial: Patriotic Bigotry Now, Ethnic Cleansing Next?

America, the country that was founded upon the principles of liberty and religious freedom, is in danger. This danger does not come from forces such as ISIS or al-Qaeda like the right would have you believe, but from the right itself.

There is a fringe movement within the extreme right-wing that looks at anyone who does not conform to their type of ideology as the other and they consider them traitors, since they view themselves as “patriots”. These nationalistic and flag-waving individuals speak passionately about the Constitution like they are the sole-defenders of it, yet they are destroying it.

Any brief survey of right-wing websites will lead the reader to believe that at any moment China and Russia will invade the United States. Every American Muslim is performing stealth Jihad. Blacks want to kill whites, and Mexicans take all of our jobs. However, a majority of their vitriol has been targeted towards the American Muslim population.

It would be one thing if these comments were just ignorant statements about what they believe the Qur’an states due to their programming by Fox News. However, these people are constantly making threats about killing Muslims wherever they find them.

Recently a manifesto was released by the same people supporting Jon Ritzheimer. In this manifesto, they discuss taking America back for the “patriots” and cleansing the USA of people they believe as not worthy to be Americans. This intolerance led to these people going to a mosque in Phoenix, Arizona with assault weapons and images of the Prophet Muhammad meant to demean and antagonize Muslims.

A brief look at history will show that this same type of rhetoric, to blame a minority group for the perceived ills of their society always preceded an ethnic cleansing. An excellent example of this is by the German government demonizing Jews causing a climate where the German citizens supported ethnic cleansing of the Jews, leading to the holocaust.

People will say, “This can never happen in America”. I am sure that if you spoke to Germans 20 years before the start of the ethnic cleansing that they would have said, “This can never happen in Germany”. Everyone knows that this did happen except for Holocaust deniers.

The demonization of the Jews in Germany began with the media depicting the Jews for the source of all of their problems. They were blamed for the economic collapse and were an easy scape goat for Hitler to use in his rise to power. Placing the blame on the Jews and promoting ultra-nationalism led to a fervor that created a climate to take place.

So how does this happen? What are the steps that are used to allow for people to have another people ethnically cleansed?

The first step used in ethnic cleansing or genocide is to have political control. The people who want to annihilate another people must first gain political control of the region in which they want to decimate the other populace.

The second step requires to socially weaken the group being targeted. This can be done by killing of scholars, intellectuals, and religious leaders that will speak out against the genocide.

The third is to change all cultural elements of the targeted people’s and to make them conform to another culture, wiping out all elements of their culture.

The fourth step is to attack their religious institutions and to persecute followers of that religion.

The fifth step is to morally weaken their base by introducing alternative lifestyles forcing the people to accept. The Germans did this by placing pornographic films in Poland. The Poles were forced to take payments in cheap alcohol for agriculture.

The sixth step is to make it economically impossible for the targeted group to have a decent job making their life difficult. The Jews right to work was taken by the Nazi government of Germany.

The seventh step is biological. This is obtained by the rape of the women of the targeted group as well as the massacre of the men, as well as other means to decrease the birthrate of the targeted group. The men will be killed and the women raped. Also imprisoning the men of the targeted group will achieve this goal. This can be seen in the USA with the high incarceration of African-Americans as well as the Palestinians by the hands of the Israeli government.

The final and most drastic step is to just kill people from the targeted group. This has been accomplished throughout history by tainting food and water supplies, mass executions, and exposure to diseases.

In planning for ethnic cleansing, the oppressor will first seek to destroy the “national pattern” of the oppressed group; after this is done the oppressor will seek to impose its own national pattern on the oppressed group.

Most of these ethnic cleansings result due to one group trying to monopolize their power over another group. They believe that the other group must die so that others can live well.

What we are seeing now is the beginnings of what one might call ‘retributive genocide’. This allows the oppressor to rationalize their intolerance by blaming their victim. We have seen this many times in the USA since 9/11 by people murdering Muslims and others whom they thought were Muslim for retribution due to the attacks. It is always human nature to demonize those whom you do wrong too.

The Fox News media machine is spinning a case that all Muslims are potentially violent, that they practice ‘Taqiyya’ and are not to be trusted. They have the support of many right-wing cheerleaders such as former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and Fox News political commentator Allen West, whom many view as a true American patriot, simply because he vilifies Muslims.

There are also many other websites that scare Americans into believing that Muslims want to enforce Sharia law on all Americans or cut their heads off. There are also people from intelligence agencies from around the world that perform false flag operations to criminalize Muslims in the eyes of the world. This has resulted in a growing population views Muslims with hostility and make threats.

So how do we combat this? First of all, we should not allow the news or people with an agenda like Allen West or Pamela Gellar from defining who Muslims are or what we believe. However, this is very difficult to do when they tell their followers that all Muslims are liars due to this false ‘Taqiyya’ that they push.

Secondly we should get involved in interfaith groups as well as have open-houses inside of our places of worship to invite non-Muslims.

If these steps do not work, then I suggest that Muslims leave the United States and make Hijra to a Muslim country where we can live without fear. It is very discomforting that we must watch the news vilify us, or read comments from people blaming all Muslims for the acts of terrorists and make threats. It gets tiring when it is difficult to get a job because you are Muslim. It is even more difficult for Muslim women that choose to wear their hijab or headscarf.

Nobody can understand what Muslims go through. I have personally had multiple death-threats just for speaking out against terrorism by people who say I am lying. The ironic thing is that these same people will ask why don’t Muslims speak out, but when they do they either say they are lying or threaten them to try to hush them up.

We are truly in the beginning stages of ethnic cleansing. Hopefully, the American people will not let it get to this point. Civil rights and liberty need to be for all people, anything less than that is hypocrisy.