Pamela “Craziest Bitch On The Internet” Atlas approvingly quotes some nutbar here:
The reality is that the Palestinians in the disputed territories are different from us, because the majority of them are evil. By that, I mean that the problem isn’t just their leaders and the terrorist thugs, the problem is the average person on the street. The butcher, the school teacher, the traffic cop — the majority of them are vile, sick, twisted, evil excuses for human beings and that’s why there is no peace in the region.
So far, so good – your standard eliminationist rhetoric, rendering the proposed enemy subhuman, et cetera et cetera, cheeseburger cheeseburger cheeseburger. But then it takes a whole new twist:
Which leads to a very basic question: if this was happening to Americans, how far would we be willing to go to stop it? The truth is, we already know the answer to that question because our ancestors have had to deal with this sort of savagery when Indians tortured and murdered American settlers. Our response was, depending on the situation, to slaughter them and/or force them to move.
Today, in our very civilized world, we look back with shock and horror at what we did to the Indians — and indeed, some of them didn’t deserve what they got. All too often, our ancestors didn’t make much of an effort to distinguish between friendly, peaceful Indian tribes and murderous, cannibalistic savages. On the other hand, their strategy of massacring our enemies was one that has been used throughout the ages and it has been proven, time and time again, to work — and it certainly worked for us.
Look, I generally avoid commenting on the Israel/Palestine situation, for the very simple reason that it is enormously complex and enormously controversial and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to say anything particularly clever that will magically make things better, but I am willing to go on the record as saying that the centuries-long extinguishing of Native Americans was, you know, very bad, and that comparing suggested policy to it in a light where killing lots and lots of Injuns is viewed as an honest-to-god Good Thing is more or less the definition of absolutely fucking insane.
(There are some who might care to compare the respective body counts between the Native Americans and the settler-Americans in this “protracted war” between the “murderous, cannibalistic[1] savages” and the good god-fearing white folks, and then the body counts of the Israelis and Palestinians. Absent of all other considerations and recriminations for crimes both real and imagined, one thing can be unambiguously stated as fact: the body counts for the Native Americans and the Palestinians were/are much, much higher than their opposite numbers.
[1] One might also note that the cannibalistic savages bedeviling the brave settlers were not, in fact, cannibalistic at all.
Related Articles
21 users responded in this post
Well, shit. I didn’t know they were EVIL, that puts a whole different slant on killing them all. Too bad the Israelites don’t have the gumption to do what it takes for the Promised Land.
Wait, what?
1) They are pro-Israeli, it seems.
2) Their opinions are pretty much nazi.
I *know* that I leave myself open to Godwin’s Law. But I also spot what should be a huge paradox. Jews have been vilified and massacred, and then a sympathizer urges Israel to vilify and massacre another people. I guess that the problem with Hitler was not the aggression, the hatred and the massacres of civilians as such, but that they were directed at the wrong people.
And – in case anyone took the above statements wrongly – I consider myself a friend of Israel, and my immediate family has members who fled Nazi persecution. And among the reasons that my family survived was the help of a few “wimpy humanitarians” and certainly not aid from the kind of persons who were willing to accept demonizing or dehumanisation of entires peoples.
Ugh, absolutely vile rhetoric you quoted there, MGK…as someone who generally leans towards Israel, the idea of the average Palestinian being ‘evil’ is just sickening….as is a comparison to the ‘noble white man’ wiping out the ‘murderous savage.’
Just an afront to human decency is said craziest bitch on the internet
As an aside, this also TOTALLY explains my sudden URGE TO KILLLLLLLLL
OH MY GOD LOOK OUT EVERYBODY MDK HAS A TOMAHAWK
Oh great, another Randian opens their mouth. Or types on the keyboard, as the case may be.
I absolutely do not understand how someone can say things like that and believe it’s a reasonable or justifiable opinion. I just… do not.
This is incredibly outrageous.
But it’s actually not the most outrageous thing I’ve read today, because Crooked Timber gave a head’s up about an “argument” proposed by Satoshi Kanazawa which goes like this:
1) Americans are losing the War on Terror because they don’t hate Muslims enough;
2) Ann Coulter should be President;
3) If the USA had dropped 35 nuclear bombs on the Middle East straight after 9/11, that would have concluded the War on Terror “without a single American life lost”.
It just gets more delicious when you realise that this is the same guy who published a scientific paper claiming that Asians can’t make original contributions to the sciences. No, you didn’t read his name wrong.
Milkman Dan: “Oh great, another Randian opens their mouth. Or types on the keyboard, as the case may be.”
The world of political comment would have been better off if they’d just beaten their head against the keyboard.
Even if the differences aren’t what the people MGK cited are, there have to be differences between us and them. Otherwise things couldn’t be half as complex as they are. Can’t have a cultural mosaic if all the pieces are the same size and color, right?
Which leads to a very basic question: if this was happening to Americans, how far would we be willing to go to stop it?
What’s funny is I use this statement all the time to ask (fellow?) conservatives to think about the Palestinians’ point of view.
As crazy as Rand’s cult of personality quickly got, I’m still a fan of her philosophical essays, even when I don’t agree, so I find it odd that a racist (collectivist thinking), closet premillenialist Christian (mystic, nationalist thinking) would feel free to invoke Rand’s work as the title of her blog. Mind-boggling.
I’ll just keep quietly donating to the fervent Jewish organizations in America that oppose unfettered violence by Israel.
The truth is, we already know the answer to that question because our ancestors have had to deal with this sort of savagery when Indians tortured and murdered American settlers. Our response was, depending on the situation, to slaughter them and/or force them to move.
My one sentence long, overly simplistic response to that: “They (the colonists) started it.”
Additionally: “fuck her.”
I *know* that I leave myself open to Godwin’s Law.
Man, I wish people would stop implying that “violating” Godwin’s Law causes them to lose an argument or whatever. Godwins Law is predictive, not proscriptive:
As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
Oops Dayv…seems I got a few facts mixed up.
Oh well…I’ll live with it.
These homicidal blogumculi are Nobodies in the grand scheme of the real world, right, snarling into their little Webbed slam-books without being substantially influential? I mean, I fully endorse the dragging out and shooting of all such barbaric arguments, but it’s done here as an exercise, is it not?
Lie if necessary: I need my sleep.
“and indeed, some of them didn’t deserve what they got.”
Well, *that’s* awfully generous of her.
Eric S. Smith — I do think the homicidal blogumculi are useful in one respect. It’s easy to look at evil regimes throughout history and think, wow, *those* people over *there* were just plumb crazy! Good thing that could never happen again to us in {Enlightened Country X}!
But of course that genocidal rage is always out there, waiting for its chance. So I think in a strange way we’re lucky to have outliers like Ms. Atlas out there, serving as a concrete reminder that these feelings are out there, seething and waiting to be tapped. Otherwise we’d just sleepwalk our way into madness. (Okay, maybe we’re doing that anyway, but at least the canaries are giving us fair warning.)
Well, that probably didn’t help you sleep any.
As a Jew, the whole Palestinian question gets raised to me quite a bit.
I gotta be honest, I’m not exactly pro-Israel in these situations. The question always points to the Palestinians as terrorists. But I like to turn it around. What are they fighting for? Better yet, I like to ask “If in the 1940’s and 50’s, your grand parents had been kicked out of their houses, kicked out of their towns, so another group of people could move in and take them, would you fight back? Would you, 2 generations later, still be fighting to right what you saw as injustice?”
I like the whole “All palestinians are evil” – “All Native Americans were evil… except the ones who weren’t” “So we should slaughter all the palestinians”
It’s not that the killings of innocents were good, she’s probably saying it was awful — but necessary, to get to the “not innocent” ones.
So a “civilized” (pansy) should man up and toughen up, and do the necessary evil (and necessary horrors) and get their hands dirty, ’cause that’s how history is. That’s a pretty constant rethoric I’ve been seeing rise up on the far reaches of the right (with many different-but-same iterations) on torture, “war on terror”, death penalty, surveillance, “war on drugs” (specially explicitly on countries like Brazil) etc
“You’re either with me, or you’re a fag” works like a charm.
I just wished nowadays they’d pick up that McCain-Churchil ‘cosmic-evangelical’ viral ad of “we’ll never stop fighting, we’ll never give up” claptrap and edit with Hamas’ leaders.
I was once told that Indians were a conquered race and they should just shut up and take what they were given, as the losers of the situation.
By a Scot.