Sunday, October 02, 2005

 

I LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY!
But today while learning about one thing,
I learned another thing altogether
that was quite unexpected!

Today I was looking up the original meanings of some commonly used Latin phrases. After looking up flagrante delicto I moved on to posse comitatus. After reading the general references to the government's power to deputize civilians and to form a militia, I read an entry that said, "a loosely-organized right-wing social movement that opposes the United States federal government".

"Hmmm," thought I, "I've never heard of that before!" so I went back to the Google links and clicked the likely-looking "posse-comitatus.org", which bounced me directly to the Aryan Nations official website.

Now, this isn't the new knowledge yet, but to those who may be uninformed, the Aryan Nations is a Neo-Nazi-Nutjob-Militant-White-supremacist group formerly out of northern Idaho but now moved to northern Pennsylvania. They lit the night sky with their flaming crosses (and flaming rhetoric) during my broadcasting days in Idaho. And, coincidentally, upon moving to San Diego years ago I found one of their chief nutjobs, Tom Metzger, to be a county-neighbor!

Back to the lesson:
Landing on the Aryan Nations website I expected to find the normal Neo-Nazi Jew- & Black-hating screed, but was surprised to see a banner atop the page in Arabic! Reading down I saw several quotations from the Koran, and a link to "The Alhusseini Dynasty" (alhusseini.com/common.php), where I found pages of photos and quotes from a meeting of "Der Furhrer" with a leader of the Islamic Jihad in the 30's and 40's! That was news to me!

But since I know better than to accept as truth anything printed on a Neo-Nazi or an Islamic-Jihadist website, I did a brief websearch (by Googling "nazi islamic alliance" which turned up several noteworthy entries, some as reputable as a CNN article that states, "The idea of a Nazi-Islamic alliance dates back to World War II, when Adolf Hitler played host to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, that city's Muslim leader"!

Now, I can understand that Hitler would share some opinions with any group who hated the Jews as much as he did, but I would expect his anti-semitism to be too broad to accept Arabs into his fold! But if this actually was the case, this would be just the type of information that the "sanitized for your politically-correct protection" public education system would suppress!

Regarding the modern manifestation of this phenomenon, another article from my search, this one from The Weekly Standard says, "Such an alliance seems unlikely on its face; after all, neo-Nazis view most Muslims as racially inferior, while Islamic extremists believe that neo-Nazis are just another flavor of infidel. However, a closer examination reveals that many white-supremacist groups have expressed solidarity with Islamic terrorists recently, and in turn some white supremacists and far-right Holocaust deniers have found newfound supporters among the Islamists."

One quote from the Aryan Nations website: "TERROR SHOULD BE MET WITH GREATER TERROR!--The Aryan Prophet, Adolf Hitler, 1943" leads me to another quote from the CNN article which echoes my feelings: "The notion of radical Islamists from abroad actually getting together with American neo-Nazis I think is an absolutely frightening one."

(for a more scholarly examination of this phenomenon, go to this Southern Poverty Law Center article)

posted by huggy 11:00 AM