Michelle Malkin and the resurrection of fascism
Or, One brunette who believes blondes shouldn't be singled-out
Sept. 19, 2004 Arab American Media Services/Permission granted to reprint
By Ray Hanania
There is definitely a growing market for hatred in America.
One of the Donald Trumps cornering this new market is Michelle Malkin, the daughter of Philippine immigrants who probably has several autographed portraits of Ferdinand Marcos hanging in her office.
Malkin is a "white man" wannabe, the new face of neo-fascism in this country.
Malkin is one of those who believes the best way to eliminate intolerance is to simply eliminate the people who you don't want to tolerate. If you didn't have someone to not tolerate, you couldn't be intolerant. Therefore you have eliminated the sickness.
This precise definition of Malkin's philosophy might even work to eliminate racism -- if we could just get rid of Black people, we wouldn't have racists. Of course, the list of people Malkin hates is far broader than simply people from Africa and would take a lot of work to achieve that goal in its purest sense.
Malkin preached her philosophy of righteous disdain during a carefully managed appearance at Berkeley where she was pimping her new book, "In Defense of Internment," a title that might better translate into "Mein Kampf" for her generation that seeks to be free of bothersome dissent.
About 200 people, mostly students, listened to her as she stood in front of an American flag that was placed on the wall behind her, obviously to counter the ridiculous impression that in calling for increased detention of Americans she is in fact against everything that Old Glory represents.
I wasn't among the nearly one thousand who protested against her outside of her carefully managed appearance to keep out the tough questions. I watched her speech on C-SPAN. As I did, I noticed that during her speech, the American flag kept trying to fall off the wall, as if it were rolling in the premature grave Malkin hoped to bury its fundamental rights in.
Her ranting was similar to a monologue by right-wing comedian Dennis Miller, who she admires, except that her endless reiterations of why people should be jailed lack both humor or punchlines.
She said that contrary to popular belief, she is one of the biggest critics of President George W. Bush. Of course, maybe she meant in terms of height against other Filipinos her age.
That's a joke, of course. The kind that Malkin might argue would be more than enough to justify someone coming under the scrutiny of the FBI or who might earn the designation as "terrorist."
Bush isn't profiling enough, Malkin protested. Malkin argued repeatedly that not enough was being done to intern Arabs and Muslims and other potential terrorists; under Malkin's definition, a terrorist is anyone who is Muslim or who supports Muslims, is Arab or has Olive skin, or relatives or descendants in the Middle East.
To quote her, "If all of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11th were short, young Filipino women screaming Hail Marys … Fer sure! Barf me out! Totally!"
Lest you might think she was serious about criticizing Bush, she quickly noted that "I think Kerry would be worse." She said something even nastier about Ted Kennedy but I couldn't understand her words, which were distorted by sarcasm.
One of my favorite comments, which she made repeatedly during her speech was to compare the U.S. Constitution to "land mines." It's filled with them, she argued.
And when the issue of those thousands of people who have been rounded up and jailed and uncharged and denied the right of legal defense, she expressed with a distinguishable sigh and huff how she really felt sorry for employees of the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI because they were overburdened with an endless and thankless job.
I can fully understand that. I don't know how many times I recall Heinrich Himmler make the same argument. Despite his best efforts, he just couldn't keep up with the never-ending discovery of more non-Aryans. Every time the German's conquered and occupied a new country. And religious profiling seemed to be his only answer!
Malkin brushed off a complaint about Timothy McVeigh from an audience member who tried to circumvent the carefully controlled forum. Malkin only answered questions submitted on index cards screened for acceptability, and only after she declared with true patriotism, "I'm not afraid to take on questions from the audience."
McVeigh, she said, was merely a "straw dog" used to distract from the real threat and the real terrorism from the Middle East. Until Sept. 11th, McVeigh had actually murdered more civilian Americans than any other single Islamic terrorist.
Thank God for the skin heads, White racist militias, neo-Nazis and Malkin that Osama bin Laden came along. I can just hear Malkin's whine reverse as her biggest fan base found itself being scrutinized, profiled and then interned fearing another Murrah Federal Building massacre.
Never mind that the FBI and police chased down every possible Arab and Muslim lead in trying to respond to McVeigh's terrorist act and that McVeigh was caught by accident when he was stopped for a broken taillight.
As she pandered to fears, racism and paranoia, Malkin proved that hate mongering has a kinder and gentler side in appearance.
The reason why terrorism has been so successful, she preached, was because of the New York Times, and a coterie of bleeding heart liberal columnists who she spent a lot of time naming and attacking as "intolerant."
If she could only get rid of those people, she could concentrate on doing America's work rounding up more of those Mohameddans, and Islamic-loving "reds."
In Malkin's cleansed world, Joe McCarthy would probably be appointed leader for life of the new American Civil Liberties Union.
Hey. If you just get rid of civil liberties, we wouldn't have to be burdened by an organization seeking to protect them.
Brilliant, Michelle.
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