It’s a genuinely tough call. One certainly tempted to ignore David Horowitz’s “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week,” which kicked off yesterday, because it’s just too absurd to even bother. Or one could marvel at “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week,” and offer a reminder of just how far gone today’s conservative movement really is.
Let’s go with the latter.
I don’t think Hallmark has started producing greeting cards to mark the occasion quite yet, but far-right activists, led by Horowitz, have created “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” to, well, the name probably says quite a bit about the point of the endeavor. In case there’s any doubt, here’s the basic pitch:
In the face of the greatest danger Americans have ever confronted, the academic left has mobilized to create sympathy for the enemy and to fight anyone who rallies Americans to defend themselves. According to the academic left, anyone who links Islamic radicalism to the war on terror is an “Islamophobe.” According to the academic left, the Islamo-fascists hate us not because we are tolerant and free, but because we are “oppressors.”
Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is a national effort to oppose these lies and to rally American students to defend their country.
As Ron Chusid noted, “It’s just getting harder to keep track of all those holidays. I mean, is Sweetest Day, which just occurred, a real holiday, or just an excuse to sell more candies and cards? Now I learn that this is Islamo-Fascism Awarness Week. Is this a real holiday, or just an excuse to sell more right wing paranoia?”
All evidence, again, points to the latter, though I don’t think Horowitz & Co. are “selling” claptrap, so much as they’re peddling it for free, hoping no one notices how nonsensical their materials really are.
As for the folks behind this week’s “festivities,” Josh Marshall offers a helpful primer.
In case you’re not familiar with Horowitz, he’s probably most charitably described as a rather entrepreneurial self-promotion artist, though perhaps more accurately as one of the great buffoons of the modern American soapbox. I should probably say, as a matter of disclosure, that I’ve had a couple run-ins with Horowitz, one in person. And he’s probably one of only two people I met in Washington, or really in any of my dealings with people through TPM or any other professional writing I’ve done, who was just as nasty and whacked in person as anything you see on TV. It’s no act.
Horowitz’s basic MO is finding the silliest opponents he can find, goading them into a shouting match and then working himself into a frenzy about how the “left” is out to get him and then taking the moment of attention to shake the trees for some more right-wing money for his next show. Money, that is, for his Center, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, which I only found out today he has recently had renamed in honor of himself.
Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week materials claim that the “nation will be rocked by the biggest conservative campus protest.” The same materials note that 200 campuses will participate in all of this — and then lists fewer than 100 colleges and universities that are actually featuring IFAW events.
In any case, several far-right blogs are excited about all of this; Rick Santorum has been given something to do; and you, too, can look for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week events in your area.
Frankly, the occasion and accompanying materials are not nearly as offensive as they should be, in part because they’re so hard to take seriously. As Josh noted, the “feature presentations” listed on this page of Horowitz’s “terrorism awareness project” website “are so clownish and ridiculous that you may actually find them entertaining.”
Apparently, it’s what modern conservative thought has come to. What a shame.