Emory and Irony

Recently, I linked to WFMU's Beware of the Blog. WFMU itself is a "freeform" radio station in New York, funded entirely by its listeners, broadcasting obscure and forgotten music, melanges of found-sound, and some leftist political analysis. In the latter category are weekly lectures from Dave Emory, described as an anti-fascist researcher.

Emory speaks accessibly, and has a great number of facts at his fingertips. The trouble is, many of his facts...aren't.

He describes the current war on terror as a continuation of World War 2, which with enough poetic license might be justified as a metaphor. But his description of "progressives" as blinded by inverted racism is a silly strawman, and his charcterisation of antisemitism as "the socialism of fools" is just baffling

He describes Islamic Jihad and Al Quaida as "fascist" organisations - which even allowing for the sloppy use a lot of people make of the term, is quite a stretch. Certainly a researcher of his apparent calibre should be above such lazy categorisations. But he also describes the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in the same way. This is absolute blithering nonsense.

The Muslim Brotherhood really does want to take over the world and make it "Muslim" - though what that means varies a great deal between branches. They renounce violence, except sometimes in resistance to the violence of occupying armies. Hamas could be viewed as a Palestinian political party with extensive healthcare and education projects, and a military wing that fights the Israeli army in Palestine - or the other way around.

Perhaps Mr Emory thinks wanting to convert Jews, or not be shot by an army of them, is the same as planning to gas every Jew on the planet. He also seems to think the Nazis invented antisemitism, and remain its only source.

Emory is the kind of confused liberal who accepts the rightwing media term "islamofascism", but he goes one step further by taking it literally. He quite literally believes that the German Nazi party and it's ideology went underground after World War 2, and has been secretly manipulating world events ever since, especially recently in the Middle East. He sees so-called Islamic Fundamentalism not as a product of war, colonialism and poverty, but as a linear continuation of Hitler's fascism, something hidden from its own followers.

Here is someone who knows 20th century history in detail, but only as a bundle of unconnected events. So he invents a story that ties them all together. Sad to say, that Emory seems to be just another lunatic conspiracy theorist.

Dan Brown has his Priory of Sion, Norma Cox has her international conspiracy of Jews, David Icke's got his lizards, Jeff Rense his vapour trails, and Dave Emory has his Nazi Party in Arab dress.

The irony is, WFMU does a disservice to its leftwing ideals and its listenership by giving Emory a platform, when it could easily get dozens of better thinkers whose ideas need wider dissemination.