Obsession: McCain’s Hate Campaign
Here’s a question for observers of the US Presidential elections: How do you campaign for McCain in ’swing states’, such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, Iowa, Florida, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire and Virginia?
Answer: You distribute 28 million copies of a right-wing, terror propaganda DVD in the post or bundled in newspaper deliveries to voters. The 60-minute DVD, entitled Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West landed on doorsteps to coincide exactly with the 7th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Funding is coming from a New York based group called the Clarion Fund.
The program was originally shown on Fox News in the days leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections, and far right-wing activist David Horowitz toured the country screening the film on college campuses during 2007. Mainstream religious groups have called Obsession biased and divisive. It cuts between scenes of Nazi rallies and footage of Muslim children being encouraged to become suicide bombers. Some 70 newspapers in swing states have agreed to deliver this hate-incitement.
Talking heads in the film include infamous anti-Muslim, self-proclaimed “islamophobes” like Daniel Pipes and Walid Shoebat. In 2001, Pipes claimed the “presence” and “enfranchisement” of Muslims in the U.S. presented “true dangers to American Jews.” Shoebat is an evangelical Christian who falsely claims to be a former Muslim terrorist. Last year, Shoebat told the Missouri Springfield News-Leader, “Islam is not the religion of God – Islam is the devil.”
Clarion Fund is a shadowy outfit whose financial backers are unclear. From the Huffington Post:
The progressive Jewish group JewsOnFirst.org has a thorough report on the Clarion Fund’s background and role in pushing these hate DVDs. Highlights include the film’s past ties to the Republican Jewish Coalition, Clarion’s rent-an-address location, its incorporator, New York attorney Eli Greenberg, spokesman Gregory Ross’ implausible denial that the Fund also paid to distribute Obsession at both the Democratic and Republican conventions, and Ross’ statement that the Clarion Fund will not disclose its donors’ names.
The results of this hate campaign has already resulted in an attack with pepper gas at a Mosque school in Dayton, Ohio. A number of children have been hospitalised.
Friday, September 26th ended a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West — the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail — were distributed by mail in Ohio. The same day, a “chemical irritant” was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service. The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers. This, apparently, is what the scare tactic political campaigning of John McCain’s supporters has led to — Americans perpetrating a terrorist attack against innocent children on American soil.
Will John McCain distance himself from this message?
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Filed in: Other racists, Race politics
Sid,
This is aimed at the ‘low information’ voter, as KOS describes them. As McCain becomes ever more desperate, I think we can expect to see a lot more of this shit.
If McCain were wise, a premise I would not like to support, he will distance himself from this, but make sure the ‘no smoke without fire’ boys are out in force.
This is going to get very dirty indeed.
Luckily our side has the Baked Alaska, the Caribou Barbie, The Thrilla from Wasilla to throw back at them. Which is equally cheap and nasty. McCains campaign is, I think, near imploding. Desperate times allow desperate people to act in despicable ways. Allegedly.
I don’t expect Obama to be Swift Boated successfully. He has too many bright folk working for him, and he is a consummate communicator. As are the folk that do his rebuttal adverts.
Obama ‘08!
Sid,
Did you know that in Ohio at least, voting has already started? I didn’t.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1001/uselection.html
Weird. I knew absentee votes is already underway. I suppose this explains the McCain hate campaign’s urgency.
Yup.
John McCain has a moral obligation to
1) publicly censure the Clarion Fund hate campaign in his name
2) denounce the inflammatory, anti-Muslim message of Obsession
3) do everything in his power to stop any *further* campaign activities by his supporters that have the potential to incite violence.
So far has opted for the “Do Nothing” option because its “by any means necessary” now with one month to go. And, in any case, mainstream media has chosen not to pick up on the gas attack on the school in Dayton, Ohio.
Sid,
If he does do one, then it will be in the most circumspect, grinny way. You’ve seen it, I expect.
If he does do two, it will to be to leave doubt. Deliberately.
If he does do three, it will be a fucking miracle.
Hopefully, the Palin / Biden debate will blow all of this out of the water.
There is a lot to play for here.
I’d expect to live through a Obama Presidency, I’m not so sure that a footstep away Palin Presidency would leave my atoms intact.
Seriously.
Anyway, today, KOS has Obama on 51 and McCain on 41, a 10 point lead outwith the MoE. Worst scenario, Obama 48, McCain 44.
Hurrah!
The astounding thing is that the paper that innocently reported the Dayton attack has been delivering copies of Obsession to their subscribers.
Ben
Any proof of this attack?
Dayton Police Find no evidence of Hate Crime at Mosque.
Could it be a hoax?
As BenSix has already remarked, that is the Dayton Daily News is one of 70 odd papers who have been involved with distribution of ‘Obsession’. So naturally, they will play down reports of any attacks directly influenced by the DVD. I guess they are bound to run the story since its happening in their backkyard.
That’s a weird accusation, Sid. If they wanted to protect the Obsession funders, why would they report it in the first place? Did Clarion Fund buy off the Dayton police, too?
Meanwhile, it looks like this is not the first time someone has invented a hate crime against Muslims in the Dayton area:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/08/kafirphobia_americans_as_viole.html
Allen @ 11.
I’m not finding myself believing ‘American Thinker’.
There you go.
Critical faculties are quite obviously useful.
Though you seem to have suspended them in favour of what? Belief in one side of a case?
Let’s see that case go to court before you or I comment on it.
Douglas
The guys that ‘American Thinker’ was talking about seem to have died. Their co-conspirator faces ten years in jail.
Care to comment now?
On to Obsession have any of you seen it or care to debunk any of its arguments. Or do you just want it banned?.
You really don’t need to watch a documentary featuring Pipes and Shoebat before dismissing it as islamaphobic propaganda.
Ahhhh, more racism masquerading as ‘legitimate discourse’. Good to see that even a financial meltdown can’t keep the scum from their works…
Suburban Tory @ 13,
Nope. I’d rather see a coroners report than your quite obvious agenda…
But there you go, conclusion before fact.
Lets await the outcome, shall we? However inconvenient that might be for you. Shooting from the hip, eh?
On the Obsession theme, prove it, or shut the fuck up.
And how hilarious it would be to have free expression protests for Daniel “Ban the Burqa in public spaces” Pipes.
No, I just want it rubbished.
Which you so effectively do.
Young Mr Suburban Tory, sir.
No need to swear Dougie.
The guys are dead – they set fire to themselves by mistake trying to burn down their restaurant – Insurance Fraud not a hate crime.
Why don’t we await the outcome of the Mosque incident before we all jump to conclusions. It may well be that a crime has been committed – we don’t know yet. Maybe, the Huffington Post should have held fire on the linkage between Obsession and the ‘Mosque Attack’ until it has actually been proved. You know an actual tried and convicted offender who admits to having seen the film and carried out the act because of it.
Toodle Pip.
Yippikaye motherfucker
It always takes incidents like these (as well as reading comments like those on this thread dismissing the incitement of hate of Obsession) to remind me that I’m a muslim.
Imagine the Fox News/Daniel Pipes led media shitstorm had the school in question been christian and the victims white.
That a number of children were attacked with pepper gas and were hospitalised is a FACT. That there is a direct link between the DVD and this horrible act (and you don’t have to be a Muslim to feel very angry about whoever did this) is SPECULATION. You should know how to distinguish between both.
In any case, freedom of speech should not give anyone a justification for harming individuals, specially when it comes to children.
Ravi,
It is speculation, you’re absolutely right. Further investigation needs to be done. Speculation is a cheap and dirty commodity and yet we live in speculative times. And speculation can go either way.
Remember, the US went to war on speculations. The speculation that Saddam was linked with al-Qaeda was tenuous at best. Yet it was this speculation that fueled the US public’s sentiment to go with the war and invade Iraq.
I haven’t read all the thread but I predict Rumbold will be along to defend at any moment…………..
“You distribute 28 million copies of a right-wing, terror propaganda DVD in the post or bundled in newspaper deliveries to voters.”
I don’t see how this show is drastically different from other documentaries on extremism. All of them typically will show a bunch of loons who rant on about jihad blah, blah, blah. Virtually all of them make the connection between Islam and terrorism at least by implication.
Connecting extremists to nazis is not in my view hate speech. Arguing that a religion may inherently be violent is not hate speech either. That is simply your opinion on a way of life. Is there something in this that points to all muslims being terrorists or something?
digitalcntrl, this is explained here
@Sid
Funny enough I got one of these DVDs (I live in the DC metro area on the Virginia side). For anyone in the know about extremism this show is a bit ridiculous. It pushes a Hollywoodized version of reality. Of course they never actually connect the vast majority of muslims as being terrorists though the implication is definitely there.
You can see the FOX version (with a ridiculous promo) on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKt7J1U1Cs8
Very few people in America are gonna fall for McCain’s Republican scare tactics this time around. The reason is that the American economy is tanking really hard. Furthermore, I think the “October surprise” will be the U.S. stock market tanking hard in a few days at the end of October. By November 4th most american’s are not really gonna care about terrorists, they are gonna be worried about putting food on the table and making credit card payments, mortgage payments, keeping their jobs, maintaining the value of their retirement accounts. I guarantee on Nov. 4th, the American people will resoundingly tell John McCain to shove it up his a** back to f***ing Arizona.
Huffington Post blogger admits “I…shot from the hip”.
Quality journalism.
Suburban Tory,
This is what I detest.
There is no pause for breath, and it cut’s both ways, between the culture warriors that grab this as a positive or a negative. It is just grist to the mill.
I like to think that PP is better than this sort of shit.
I think it is.
An analysis of and investigation into Obsession.
Ben
Sorry to dig this up again but I thought you would like to know.
Latest news from Dayton:
Police: Can of pepper spray was found inside mosque.
One question. Has the 10 year old boy seen Obsession?
Fair scepticism, Suburban Tory.
“On to Obsession have any of you seen it or care to debunk any of its arguments.”
Yes..
CNN did a nice report on Obsession check it out…
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/14/muslim.dvd/index.html#cnnSTCVideo