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Howie Blog Co-Opts Immigrant Artwork to Warn That Muslims Will Destroy the West

So if he’s right, what do we do?

The inscrutable Howie-blogger Brad Ford uses a sculpture by an immigrant artist to stoke South Dakota’s anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim sentiment. The artist in question, Friedrich Kunath, appears more interested in personal introspection than political firebranding, and Ford has to rebrand his blog post to avoid committing the Snopes-out falsehood of various anti-Muslim Web-shouters who have claimed Kunath’s work was actually an amateur piece created for a contest in the Netherlands to warn that multiculturalism is destroying Europe. Unwilling to let a good meme go to waste, Ford cloaks his fear of Muslims in a free exploration of the “unlimited social applications of this Rorschach-like predicament“:

Friedrich Kunath, "All of My Problems Are Water Based (Tree)," 2010
Kunath’s installation at Andrea Rosen Gallery, 2010

Of course, Kunath didn’t add the words “Europe” or “Islam” to his piece.  These were added by an anonymous email forwarder who saw the perfect relevance.  As the message summarizes, “The Euros will regret letting in millions of Muslims to leech off their generous welfare systems, and then still foment terrorism against the very same people who are their hosts.”  It’s the world of the parasite.

Now the focus is on “depicting the current era of multiculturalism in Europe [and] their experience in the modern melting pot.”  Once again, art teaches people to see truths that they wouldn’t likely figure out on their own [Brad Ford, “Lesson About European Cultural Suicide,” The Right Side, 2017.06.25].

Note that Ford quotes text from, among other places in the alt-right-o-sphere, a June 7, 2017, post on white supremacist website Stormfront:

This art piece sums it up… The Euros will regret letting in millions of Muslims to leach off their generous welfare systems, and then still ferment terrorism against the very same people who are their hosts [“Very Clever Piece of Art-Work,” Stormfront.org, 2017.06.07].

Rather than debating with Ford how many imams can dance on the head of a pin, I restate a still unanswered question I posed to Senator Stace Nelson in the comment section under a previous post on Islamophobia: suppose we take Ford’s phobia as fact. Suppose Muslims, the millions who have moved to Europe and those who have come to America are “parasites,” “leeching” off the generous West until they can lynch us all. If Muslims pose to our society the danger that Ford and white supremacists who lie about art say, then what practical policy response do they recommend to save ourselves?

  1. Do we freeze the assets, close the offices, and arrest all members of CAIR?
  2. Do we permanently ban the immigration of all Muslims to America?
  3. Do we permanently stop accepting refugees?
  4. Do we outlaw the public practice of Islam?
  5. Do we ban the Koran?
  6. Do we prohibit Muslims from living in dense communities, say more than one Muslim household per block or apartment building?
  7. Do we establish local caps on Muslim households to ensure that Christians always outnumber Muslims in any given voting district?
  8. Do we require all Muslims to convert to Christianity?
  9. Do we deport all Muslims?
  10. Do we just skip to the end and exterminate the threat?

I welcome literary and artistic responses… but I would prefer direct answers.

7 Comments

  1. mike from iowa 2017-06-28 13:28

    suppose we take Ford’s phobia as fact. Suppose Muslims, the millions who have moved to Europe and those who have come to America are “parasites,” “leeching” off the generous West until they can lynch us all. If Muslims pose to our society the danger that Ford and white supremacists who lie about art say, then what practical policy response do they recommend to save ourselves?

    Wingnuts practical policy in Amerika prolly has something along the lines of yooge taxcuts for the koch bros. It is ‘practically’ the only policy they have.

  2. Porter Lansing 2017-06-28 13:47

    “How To Shut-Up Stacey Nelson In Two Blog Posts” by C. Allen Heidelberger aka “How to Draw The Big Boy Into The Arena” ✯✯✯✯✯

  3. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-06-28 18:04

    What are we supposed to do… or, as the displaced farmer asked in The Grapes of Wrath, who do I shoot? That’s the question we need to ask Brad Ford, Stace Nelson, John Guandolo, Clare Lopez, Usama Dakdok, Ron Branstner, and every other speaker endorsing the anti-Muslim agenda. If Muslims are all lying jihadis, what are we supposed to do about them? I have yet to hear a clear answer… and that answer, ultimately, is all that matters.

  4. Bob Newland 2017-06-28 21:51

    Build a fence around ’em and send in fentanyl and syringes.

  5. Adam 2017-06-28 22:33

    Cory, we are supposed to hate them and build great disadvantages for them into our American society – after we deport as many as possible and keep any more from coming in.

    Haven’t you heard? We’re done with old school American values and we’re now in with the new wave of radical -out with the forefathers- stuff.

    We should make some important thing that most Muslims love illegal so that they get the same treatment as every other minority that ever had to ‘earn’ their equality over time through the tribulations of witch hunts, prohibition of alcohol and cannabis, etc.

    We got Trump now – we should prolly bring back a modern version of the old Roman Collusium. After all, so far, it looks like about 32% of American voters would snap up all the tickets for ring side seats to that madness.

  6. John 2017-06-29 08:05

    Too many Americans, most Trump voters, live in fear. They fear rather than think. They certainly do not practice any recognizable version of Christianity.

    Look at Canada: 20% of the population was born offshore – double that in the US (including the US’s illegals). Multiculturalism is more popular than hockey. HOCKEY!
    Immigration in Canada is 3 times greater than in the US – and Canada plans accelerating immigration,
    Canada ground its immigration metric in 9 economic screens. Canada ignored the feel-good, empty-headedness of family unification, race, ethnicity, religion.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/opinion/canada-immigration-policy-trump.html
    Discrediting Amerika’s hate and fear mongers should occur at every opportunity – or they’ll lead us back to a bad future of justifying racial internment, or religious Jim Crow.

  7. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-06-29 09:05

    Racial internment, religious Jim Crow, deport and build in institutional disadvantages—that’s all what I dread, but I want to hear it from the advocates of hate.

    Even if Ford and his allies are right, even if Muslims pose a monolithic threat to our society, we have to acknowledge the fact that the solutions that logic and morality would demand might well be unconstitutional and would require some sort of war-time suspension of basic civil liberties.

    But again, I need to hear from the purveyors of this anti-Islam argument what practical solution will satisfy them and their “facts.” What are we supposed to do with millions of stealthy civilization jihadists?

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