That mouth piece of the right wing, Republican, Conservatives, Tea Partiers everywhere has more fear to sell. This time beck is preaching the coming global caliphate which he says we are now wittnessing in Egypt and North Africa. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/04/glenn-beck-egypt-caliphate-conspiracy-theory_n_818564.html Just when you thought you heard it all, it gets even more bizzare.
Fox Fire Not really. Just the latest variation on the theme. The form of this conspiracy theory has been around for a while; we should not be surprised that it encompasses Islam at some point. In the 1990s, anti-papist Christians circulated amongst themselves a book by Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood. The subtitle was, "Pope John Paul II Versus Russia and the West for Control of the New World Order". Somewhere in that mess of words you'll find pagan sympathetic Catholics cooperating with the witches, who are cooperating with the Marxists to overthrow Western, democratic capitalism. The thing is that you can always find, somewhere, a megalomaniac. So, yes, somewhere there is a man who calls himself a Muslim who dreams that he can somehow unite all the Muslims under a single holy authority. We ought to pay him no more attention than is necessary, which means, "Is he wearing a bomb? No? Okay, whatever." That's how we treat other megalomaniacs. As long as they're not strapping on, we don't care. Ah, one might suggest, but what of the Islamist megalomaniacs who are strapping on? Well, yeah. As with anyone else, sure, that's important. But at no time do we ever take the megalomania itself seriously; that is, at no time do we really believe these whackjobs represent a viable sociopolitical movement. And no, we have no reason to believe Muslims are any different on this count. It is our own ignorance of diversity, our own failure to appreciate the subtlety of cultural nuance, that renders Islam so frightfully monolithic to Beck's audience. Quite clearly, the Beckian view of Islam exists in a fairly guarded territory. While it certainly gets play in the main threads of public discourse, it certainly cannot withstand the scrutiny of equal application. Watch Americans get apoplectic when anyone treats our own cultural dispositions in a remotely similar manner. But we are currently at an extreme point in the metaphysical arc of the figurative pendulum that swings eternally from side to side ... er ... right. It's hardly a new theme. It just gets more play because so many people just want to believe. One wonders how Fox Mulder will be received in Hell.
Humans tend to think ourselves as being an intelligent and rational species, but then all one has to do is look at beck/conservatism and its devotees to see that is clearly not the case.
