1. Bill Levinson said:

See my page at http://www.omdurman.org/burden.html. It says that Rudyard Kipling was 100 percent right about the White Man's Burden, if one takes "White" as meaning Euro-American and not necessarily Caucasian. Of course the other side will scream to high heaven that I am a racist but I challenge them to find a single item at Omdurman.org that makes assumptions about people on the basis of their genetic origin. A person's race is his skin, which he can't change, but his culture is like clothing and there is nothing racist about calling someone's clothing ugly. A culture that sanctions femicide, rape, domestic violence, wife battering, and religious persecution is a dirt culture, a mud culture, and a trash culture.

Now I will put myself on record as saying that Palestinians, while Homo Sapiens by BIRTH, are subhuman by CHOICE. Palestinians are two-legged locusts. Palestinians are like cancer; they breed like rats and kill everything healthy in sight. If Hitler in a Headscarf, the Filth in Dirty Nightshirts, and Vermin in Turbans want to call me a racist, they are welcome do so so because I have less respect for them than I have for any domestic animal.

2. Leonard said:

Bill - it seems that you have an obsession with the late-Victorian,early Edwardian era -the period around the turn of century 19th-20th hence your repeated references to the battle of Omdurman & Gordon, and Rudyard Kipling etc. I too also admire his poetry. As a former historian I also share a fascination with this most creative time of Britsh Imperialism. But it dates back to another era.

I too have a low opinion for the self styled "palestinians", I view them in general as having a blood lust,being addicted to terror, and incapable of taking advantage of any peace proposals offered to them that are very much in their interests as they are brainwashed from birth to desire the destruction of Israel and her Jewish citizens and celebrate suicide bombers. They are very much let down by their leaders both religious and lay who incite them along that line of thinking.

But we do differed on one thing as I have pointed out on repeated occasions - I will not stoop as low as to adopt the vile language that our enemies both arab and nazi use to describe the Jews. I believe that by doing so it demeans us and reduces us to their level. Such language is also self-destructive since it can be used by our enemies to label us at racists and for propaganda purposes when we know who the true racists and antisemites are. I know you will object to my posting -but please try to contain yourself.

3. Bill Levinson said:

Leonard, as General Patton pointed out, the language of war is not polite. We are not "stooping to our enemies' level" by using epithets, we are doing what every civilization in history has done when it was fighting for its existence (or admittedly to destroy another civilization's existence). I am sure the Romans had unflattering terms for Carthaginians, and vice versa. During our War of Independence, the enemy soldier was dehumanized into a piece of clothing: a Redcoat. The same was done in the Civil War, when he became a "Bluebelly" or a "Reb." During the Second World War, our troops were not encouraged to kill Germans or Japanese, they were told to kill Krauts, Huns, and Japs. In our wars in Southeast Asia, our men were told to kill "gooks," "VC," "Chinks," and "Chicoms." The Islamofascists call us "kafirs" and "infidels" that define us as less then human and therefor not having the rights of humans (such as the right to live).

You are right, however, when you say that our opponents will accuse us of racism no matter what we say. According to the politically-correct left, your 100% accurate observation, "I view them in general as having a blood lust,being addicted to terror, and incapable of taking advantage of any peace proposals offered to them that are very much in their interests as they are brainwashed from birth to desire the destruction of Israel and her Jewish citizens and celebrate suicide bombers" is racist. You are ascribing a very negative set of characteristics like "blood lust" and "addiction to terror" to an identifiable society or ethnic group which, even though this is entirely TRUE, makes your statement racist according to the Berkleyites and their like.

So we may as well be hanged for sheep as for lambs, and go all-out by calling the enemy sand apes, jihad monkeys, and "Hitler in a Headscarf." When we are at war, we must use the language of war.

As for "demeaning us," remember that the history of this sort of thing suggests the exact opposite. Hitler was not the first person to use such propaganda to whip up enough hatred to get people to kill a real or imaginary enemy. The American Yellow Press used such methods to start the Spanish-American War. Anglo-French propagandists used them to pull the U.S. into the First World War, with vicious, dehumanizing, and indeed racist pictures of Germans. This stuff WORKS, the Islamofascists are using it against us, and we must retaliate in kind and with compound interests. Our failure to do so can in fact cost innocent lives by allowing the enemy to pursue his agenda without interference.

4. Bill Levinson said:

Leonard, another way of looking at this is as follows. Suppose I see a bunch of people wearing sheets and hoods, and I call them "white trash" or "vermin." Since I am myself Caucasian, I am obviously not ascribing a set of characteristics to Caucasian skin. I am, however, making assumptions about people who CHOOSE to dress in sheets and hoods: i.e. that they are poorly-educated, lazy, violent, and racist. The track record of people who wear sheets and hoods would suggest that this observation is accurate.

A person can't change his or her skin, which has no bearing on the kind of person he or she is anyway. Wearing a sheet and hood is a CHOICE. So is cutting off someone's head while chanting to Allah, proclaiming that one has a "religious obligation" to kill Jews, or destroying greenhouses one's people were given so as to be able to raise food.

5. t said:

You are totally right Bill! I m sick of eveyone labelling Jews as racists! I thing Arabs for the most part are scum! I wouldn t feel that bad if a natural catastrophe wiped them out! Live and let livew or as Ian flemming said Live and let die.

6. rocky said:

Bill,

Islam is a choice up to a certain point. It is not a yoke that they (Moslems) can shake easily, for it is a very insidious and sophisticated form of brainwashing.

That is why Islam is sometimes mistaken for race or ethnicity.

7. Bill Narvey said:

To Bill Levinson

I am in general agreement with Leonard over his objections to your advocating the use of pejorative adjectives that are racially charged regarding Palestinians and Islamic radicals.

Westerners who are given to using the same kind of racially charged invective to describe radical Islam, radical Islamists and Palestinians as they employ in speaking of non-Muslims, Jews and Christians, undermine the credibility of both themselves and their message and do bring upon themselves accusations of racism from both Muslims and fellow Westerners.

Reaching for precedent for appropriate words to describe the radical Islamic enemy, in the words of various political and military leaders of bygone war eras that were then employed to describe enemies, is out of touch with a world that is much different today.

In Western civilization, tolerance and respect for people of different ethnic and religious background and therefore racial sensitivities are now in keeping with the multicultural ethos that has been incorporated into Western politics and culture. Canada has gone the furthest in this regard by legislating Multiculturalism, enshrining it in the Canadian Bill of Rights and ensuring that its laws are in keeping with its legislated multicultural identity.

Though I am against crudeness and racially charged words to counter the racially charged words of the Islamofacists and I include the majority of Palestinians in that group which by recent polls favor Hamas, I do advocate that Western minds would be more greatly influenced by the intelligent use of symbolism and sloganism in the propaganda war against radical Islamist ideology.

Unfortunately, there is little if any attention paid by Western anti-radical Islamist proponents in their discourse to the use of symbolism and sloganism.

8. Bill Levinson said:

Bill and Leonard, I agree that language that ascribes behavior to people because of their race should be avoided, because their behavior is a CHOICE as opposed to a genetic predisposition. How do we create words that refer to behavioral choices as opposed to race?

I have used "sand ape" and "sand Nazi" to describe the enemy on the basis that the words refer to people who have CHOSEN to behave like apes and Nazis. Maybe "sand Nazi" is the better term because it refers more explicitly to a behavioral choice and less likely to be taken as a reference to all Arabs or all Muslims. The same for "jihad monkey" because one must CHOOSE to be part of a jihad before one can be a jihad monkey. "Islamofascist" also makes a clear distinction between Muslims and fascists who use Islam to justify their behavior. Michael Savage has provided the very useful "Hitler in a Headscarf."

But the bottom line is that pejorative terms must be developed and agreed upon, not only to demonize the enemy but also to prevent moral equivalency. Referring to the terrorists in Iraq as "insurgents" places them at the same moral level as rebels (who may be good or bad), and Michael Moore has gone even further by calling them "Minutemen," or the equivalent of Resistance fighters (good guys). Whoever controls the language of the war has gone a long way toward controlling the war so we must use language that dehumanizes the enemy WITHOUT denigrating innocent people (such as peaceful Muslims) whom we have no desire to harm or alienate.

General Patton said that, when we are at war, we must use the language of war. He said he always used the language of soldiers who are ready to kill. He didn't encourage his men to kill Germans, he said "the Nazis are the enemy" and "we are going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel." He didn't grant the enemy the humanity of being a "German," he made him a "Nazi" or a "Hun," i.e. a barbarian, even though most German soldiers were decent men who were probably drafted. I don't think we should have any ethical problems whatsoever to dehumanize individuals who CHOOSE to behave like monsters.

9. Bill Narvey said:

Bill,

I agree with your frustrations, your view that we are in a war that has been declared against Western civilization by radical Islamofacists, regardless of whether it is radicalised Islam or Islam itself as some hold, and your intent to develop a lexicon of words and phrases that Westerners would take hold of to express their anger and disgust with those Islamofacists who attack us and their ideology that in many aspects is the antithesis of our Judeo-Christian culture and society.

The West is quite unlike the Muslim world where a very large majority, while not necessarily terrorists and directly supportive of them, are aligned with radical Islam at least to the extent of hatred of Jews, Israel and America for example.

Those Westerners who are advocating a united offensive against radical Islamic ideology and the terrorism it spawns, are being hamstrung in having their efforts come to fruition by the very freedoms we stand on our soap boxes to proclaim we so arduously value and cherish.

The West and Western liberal left wing ideologues especially, seem oblivious to the fact that those very freedoms we cherish are being taken advantage of by radical Muslims for their own benefit. Further these same Westerners perversely find common cause with radical Islamic ideology in casting Israel and America in the role of evil oppressors of the lives and liberty of the underdogs in society.

Democratic freedoms are for the benefit of democracies' citizens who deserve those freedoms by exercising those freedoms within the law and for a lawful purpose. Those that do not are quarantined from deomocratic society in our prisons.

Strange that Western democracies do not see that radical Islamists who take advantage of our freedoms to carry out their anti-West/democratic objectives, deserve no better fate than our own citizens who breach our society's trust and the rights of other law abiding citizens.

Stranger and stranger that the liberal left wing does not recognize that in joining radical Islam's voice against Israel and America, that radical Islam does not distinguish between right wing, left wing or centrist Westerner and have declared all enemies of Islam.

Perhaps it is the West's arrogantly smug, but questionable confidence that Western civilization will without having to lift much of a finger, survive intact, whatever the onslaught by radical Islam.

There are a number of reasons and causes for Western dysfunction in failing to recognize that it is Western civilization that is being targeted for death by radical Islam and accordingly it is Western dysfunction that keeps the West from mounting a united offensive to destroy the threat of radical Islam.

Those Westerners who do see the threat of radical Islam, must tirelessly continue to sound the alarm to warn of the imminent danger to Western civilization that radical Islam poses and to keep trying to open their co-Westerners' eyes to the face of Islam that radical Muslims have painted.

If Western eyes can begin to open, Western minds will be more receptive to accepting explanations that do not offend political correctness and multicultural sensibilities, that the ideologies, nature and purpose of radical Islamists are an anathema to all Westerners believe in.

Once that begins to happen, Westerners will be more open to accepting certain pejorative symbolic words and phrases that become codewords for the various aspects of radical Islam and its adherents that are seeking to destroy the West and codewords to motivate Western forces to engage in and carry on the united battle that necessarily will come, hopefully sooner than later.

10. Leonard said:

I find myelf in agreement with the sentiments as expressed so well by Bill Narvey above. We operate within a multi-cultural Western liberal society where the majority of the population are still blind to the threat posed by the Terrorists and need to be won over.We must also continue to maintain the high standards adhered to within the Judao-Christian ethos and not mimic those applied by our adversaries whilst never allowing our guard to drop. In Europe the nature of the media reporting on events has been one that remains very much in denial as to the real situation even post July 7th and as a consequence the populations haven't truly woken up to the gravity of the threat posed by global jihad in the same way that America has. As a consequence of this - the use of such offensive language is liable to have the opposite effect to that intended.