Hey y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Alex Kane.
He's a blogger and journalist for The Independent, a free New York city-based newspaper, and a frequent contributor to the blog Mondoweiss.
I like that.
His work has appeared in Electronic Intifada, Common Dreams, Palestine Chronicle, Red Pepper in the UK, and Extra.
His blog is alexbkane, that's K-A-N-E.wordpress.com, and the new article at alternate.org today, no, the other day, is called How Your Tax Dollars Fuel the Hatred of Muslims.
Welcome to the show, Alex.
How's it going?
Good.
Thank you for having me on.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
This is a very important article.
Of course, as you say right here in your first paragraph, your introductory paragraph, there's this entire ridiculous conspiracy theory.
I mean, the Birchers would never believe in this nonsense.
I don't know, you know, what kind of David Horowitz following retard you'd have to be to ever fall for this, but somehow there is a segment on the right wing in America that believes that the Muslim world is trying to infiltrate and overthrow America and enslave us all under Sharia law, and we got to stop them.
So, you know, we all know that, and it's, I don't know how many people actually really believe in that, what the poll numbers say, really.
But you go on here in this article to explain how I'm paying for these guys to spread, whoever they are, to spread this madness around the rest of my society.
How's that?
That's right.
Well, my article was a look at this new report put out by the political research associates, which is a really great organization that tracks the right wing in the United States, and the report really documented how public tax dollars are being used to fuel Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment that has been on the rise since September 11th, in particular, and in particular, the report is about how tax dollars are being used to fund so-called counter-terrorism training for law enforcement.
So, essentially, after 9-11, there was this huge sort of explosion in public money and public attention on the threat of, you know, radical Islam and terrorism and whatever else, you know, you want to call the threat.
And as part of this explosion in money that was being used to attempt to tackle this problem after 9-11, states that were receiving money from Homeland Security, from the new Department of Homeland Security, were sending their law enforcement officers, you know, the officers that are supposed to be protecting our civil liberties and protecting, you know, fighting crime.
And yes, you know, after 9-11, perhaps fighting terror, they are going to these trainings where they're being trained by Islamophobic trainers.
And they go to these trainings and many of the trainers and a number of them are highlighted in the political research associates report.
These trainers propagate sort of anti-Muslim stereotypes and are sort of training our law enforcement to view Muslims as the enemy, to view Islam as a quote, terrorist religion.
And, you know, it's really something when you have tax dollars going to train law enforcement in this way.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
So right to my rhetorical question, what kind of idiot do you have to be to believe this?
A cop.
These are the perfect targets for this kind of stuff, right?
Especially when they got a lot of money to spend at their new local county anti-terrorism department they created with federal money lately.
Got to do something to stay busy.
You know, it's Thompson Cotta, who I interviewed in my article, who is the author of the report, the political research associates report, you know, said that it's a little hard to trace where this money is coming from.
You know, he he and his team had gone around the country speaking to local law enforcement agencies trying to find out how exactly this happened, how exactly law enforcement officers ended up being trained to view Muslim Muslim American communities as not partners in fighting terrorism, but as the enemy, essentially, from or even how about innocent bystanders have nothing to do with it, you know?
Yeah, exactly.
You know, obviously, the vast majority of Muslim Americans are law abiding and are integral part of the fabric of the United States.
And after 9-11 in particular, although I would know the process started probably in the 1980s, after 9-11 in particular, they have they have been demonized by by the right.
And this demonization has now filtered down into law enforcement.
And you're exactly right that the vast majority of people that will be affected by this kind of counterterror training are innocent Muslim Americans.
Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting to me, I think all this kind of, you know, everything's dependent on your point of view or the situation that you're in kind in a way, right.
So you and I have sort of been, you know, basically just private citizens on the receiving end of all this propaganda.
And, you know, so we kind of the purpose of it mostly is to get us to give up our rights to support wars, you know, in countries that we have no business in that kind of thing.
But if you're a cop and you're the subject of this same propaganda, like, for example, we were attacked for no reason other than how free and good we are and the pure evil of the religious motivation of those who attacked us.
That kind of propaganda to a cop translates in a whole different way.
It has an entirely different set of meanings to him.
Now, this is his excuse for taking away our rights, not giving up his own.
And, of course, getting on board for the war as well.
But this means that, you know, where you and I, it never really worked on us that we became suspicious of Muslims in our communities or anything.
This does work very well on police when they're the subject of of basically a propaganda line that began the night of September 11th.
They hate us because we're angels.
So they must be really bad people.
Indeed, and, you know, it seems that the law enforcement trainings are, you know, completely one sided and are all about thinking Muslims as the enemy, how Islam is a terrorist religion, how Sharia, how, you know, the the so-called threat of Sharia, which is really a conspiracy theory that has very little grounding in truth, how that is a threat to our civil liberties.
And there is no other side.
You know, the the folks that work with Muslim communities like the Council on American Islamic Relations and many sort of civil rights organizations, they are not the ones that are training law enforcement in how to combat terrorism.
And it's also the question of should we have local law enforcement agencies combating what is essentially a foreign policy problem?
And is it effective?
Is it an effective use of our tax dollars?
And the report, if you read it, it simply says no, because the tax dollars are being used to pay these trainers that are ineffective, bigoted and anti-Muslim.
And it certainly does not keep the United States safer.
In fact, an argument could be made that it threatens our homeland security because essentially what it does is it teaches law enforcement agencies to view Muslims as the enemy.
And what that does is create a wedge between Muslim American communities and law enforcement agencies.
Then it's sort of clear that the way you fight any sort of crime or terrorism is to work in the very communities where, you know, this problem and it's a very small problem in the grand scheme of things, it's coming from.
And, you know, a poll was released, I think, a couple of months ago, and it got a lot of discussion around Peter King's Muslim radicalization hearing.
And it said, I forget the exact number, but at least a third, maybe even more of the so-called homegrown terror plots that have been disrupted in the United States came from tips within the Muslim American community.
All right.
We'll have all right there is Alex Kane.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio talking with Alex Kane.
He's got this very important piece at alternate, how your tax dollars fuel the hatred of Muslims interview with a guy from a group that did the big study about it, and I'm sorry we were interrupted by that heartbreak there, but you were talking, Alex, about the, the counterproductive nature of a lot of this training where cops are convinced, local cops are convinced that, you know, Muslims in their community are all at least suspicious or at risk for becoming extreme and therefore terrorists or whatever, and leads them to act in ways that further marginalize these communities and further drive a wedge between these communities, Muslim communities in America and the cops that the cops ought to want them to have, you know, so that they'll come to them if there really is something to worry about.
Exactly.
Um, essentially what the, the point I was making is that, and this is a point that, uh, Tom Sincada made to me very succinctly in my article on alternate, um, is that the way to combat homegrown terrorism, which in the grand scheme of things is, um, way less of a threat than say regular, you know, everyday crime and, and others, although, or lightning or bathtubs, exactly.
Um, you know, the way you do this is you work with Muslim, Muslim Americans, and these are the communities that obviously know their own people the best.
And these are the communities that law enforcement should be working with.
And you know, the, the, the way that our tax dollars are being used to fund these trainers is really driving a wedge and causing Muslim Americans to distrust the FBI and distrust the local law enforcement for good reason, because if they get, um, you know, this idea in their head that, you know, Sharia law is a threat.
Muslim Americans are interested in instituting Sharia law over the constitution that, you know, if harm promotes violence, if they get this idea, um, they're going to view Muslims as not partners in, in fighting terrorism, but instead as potential threats to the U S and that does not do anything to help the United States national security at all.
Well, yeah.
And of course, if you look at all the terrorism cases since September 11th, there was, let's see, Zacharias Moussaoui.
And, uh, I guess that guy from Denver, I forgot his name.
Pretty much all the rest of these terrorism cases in America have been bogus.
Certainly not real Al Qaeda in the country.
Even if a lone nut from time to time has been convinced by the local FBI informant to say something stupid into a microphone that they can use against him later, parade him on TV and give us a good orange alert out of it or whatever.
But, um, you know, basically it's funny, you know, when I read this, it occurs to me that maybe these cops really aren't as, you know, the average FBI agent work in these cases, maybe they're not as dishonest as I assume they are.
Maybe they're really this ignorant that they really think like, come on guys, we got to go root out extremism, you know, let's go find who's extreme out there.
And that's really the criteria they think.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, that is the message that they are getting when, um, you know, police officers are going to these trainings.
Um, that's, that is the message that they're getting.
And, um, that's exactly what they're going to think.
Hey, how many of these, uh, security companies and that go around training these cops to believe this nonsense are based out of Tel Aviv?
Well, um, you know, I'm not sure how many it would be based out of, uh, Israel, uh, or Tel Aviv, um, and, and I believe that, uh, the, the ones that the political research associates focused on are mostly those in the U S but one in particular, uh, it's called security solutions.
International, um, has links to Israeli private security.
Do you know if this is that same, uh, company that there was kind of a scandal about this in Pennsylvania where they were calling all the peace activists, terrorists and stuff?
Well, I'm not, I'm not exactly sure if it's the same one, uh, because SSI security solutions international is based in Massachusetts.
Um, so I'm not exactly sure about that, but, um, they, you know, their selling point is that they have Israeli, you know, former, um, Israeli intelligence agents, former Israeli soldiers, uh, former Israeli, you know, counter terror experts that work with them.
And, you know, this is a really an example of how, you know, sort of right-wing Zionist discourse in the United States really promotes Islamophobia, um, you know, the Israel lobby and the sort of dominance of Zionism in us discourse when it comes to us foreign policy really promotes this monolithic view of Islam and Islamic and Islamic phobic view of Muslims, uh, because, you know, it serves their agenda of keeping up, um, you know, the three, the over $3 billion in aid that the U S gives to Israel every year.
Um, and the diplomatic and material and economic support that the U S provides to Israel while it is occupying, uh, Palestinians who are majority Muslim.
And there, there is a very specific agenda to keep up that meme about Muslims, about how they're violent, about how they might be attacking us because they use the Israel Palestine colonial conflict and they use, you know, the, the propaganda and the stereotypes about Palestinians and radical Islam as a way to keep, uh, support for Israel at a high level in the U S and, um, SSI is the perfect example of that.
You know, and it seems like it's so transparent, but I guess it's just really not, you know?
I mean, it seems to me like if Israel was in East Asia somewhere, we'd hear nothing but, uh, the dangers of Buddhist extremism all damn day.
Everybody knows that.
Come on.
Right.
Don't we?
Yeah.
And you know, this, this was a really, this was a point made by Scott McConnell, who I believe has probably been on your show and has written for antiwar.com.
Scott McConnell wrote a really great piece for the Middle East policy journal that really made the point about how the special relationship between the U S and Israel has really affected, um, relations between Muslim Americans and their own country.
Um, he, he used the park 51 example where, you know, many of the organizations that were funding, um, the, the fight against the park 51 Islamic center in lower Manhattan were very fanatical right wing right wing Zionist groups like David Horowitz and freedom center.
And he, he made the point and this, this, uh, report, the political research associates makes the point that our, um, blind support for the state of Israel, uh, has led to, uh, Islamophobia in the United States and has led to perhaps an alienation of some Muslim Americans, um, from the U S because of our undying support for Israel while it, um, Gaza, while it occupies the West bank that expand settlements, while settlers attack Palestinians and so on.
Well, I know thinking back to 2001, I think, uh, if I remember it right, Benjamin Netanyahu was on TV in America by September 12th or 13th at the latest.
And, uh, he was quoted in Haaretz saying, you know, we're really benefiting from the September 11th attack on America.
And, uh, sure seems to continue on that way.
We support them, get ourselves in trouble.
And then the trouble just becomes the reason to support them even more.
And then, as you say, and this is the part that really gets to me, Alex, is that, uh, you know, we're talking, you know, in America, we all supposedly love all this nationalism and patriotism so much in USA and we're number one and all this, and here we're letting a foreign countries, uh, you know, their, their policy problems that ought to really have nothing to do with us whatsoever.
Divide Americans from each other.
How conservative is that?
You know, what happened to United?
We stand and all that, but no, now if you're a Muslim American, you're supposed to be some kind of, uh, you know, fifth column of, of, uh, terrorist Sharia infiltrators in the society or something.
I mean, in some ways it's not quite as bad yet anyway, but a lot of this really does remind me of the conspiracy theories about Jews in Europe in the thirties that I've read about, you know what I mean?
Where it's the template fits.
Uh, Justin Armando wrote a piece called, uh, the protocols of the elders of OPEC.
You know, we're like, oh yeah, everything is a big plot by the Islamic, uh, fifth column overseas and especially in America to destroy everything we believe in where a lot of people are really believing in this.
And, you know, I guess journalism like yours is about the only antidote we have.
Right.
Yeah, I would, I would at least hope so.
Yeah, me too.
Well, I'm sorry for just talking at you like that at the end of your interview, but I just think it's, this issue is so important.
You know, uh, I interviewed Ron Paul last week and, uh, he was talking about the danger of, uh, you know, extremely powerful people, promising easy answers and that kind of thing, and, uh, has a whole chapter about demagoguery in his latest book, um, where he warns about this kind of thing and it just seems like it's the American way.
It's so easy to turn on the weak and, and imagine that they're the source of all our problems.
You look back in history, it's always been that way in this country.
And we really need inoculation from that fear we need.
And especially on the right for any conservatives in the audience, listen to this.
We really need right-wingers to explain how this stuff about Islam is just not real, that this is not true, that our neighbors are not the threat that we're being told that they are.
Cause this could come to a real bad end, you know?
Yeah, definitely.
That's crazy.
All right.
Well, listen, I really appreciate your blogging on this and, uh, hope that was a little bit of positive reinforcement to stay on this story cause, uh, it really is an important one.
I, I really appreciate you having me on Scott and, uh, hopefully, um, I will, I will be on again in the future when another good story comes out.
So, uh, thank you very much.
Right on.
All right, everybody.
That's Alex Kane from Alternet.
How your tax dollars fuel the hatred of Muslims is the article and check out his blog, Alex B.
Kane.
That's Kane with a K dot WordPress.com.
Thanks again.
