A scholar at the Insitute for Advanced Study, Danielle Allen, decided to investigate the initial source of a viral email -- essentially a piece of self-replicating propaganda (like this sheet, actually, only anonymous and not based in fact, and designed to get its reader to not think, rather than to think). The email is one you may have seen -- it asserts that Barack Obama is secretly an Islamic fundamentalist -- a Manchurian candidate who will seize power, and then ... WHO KNOWS???
See how alarming capital letters and redundant punctuation can be? That's how propaganda works -- it triggers an emotional response -- these days, it's typically fear -- that subverts rational thought.
The researcher appears to have found the sources of the rumours that have resonated across the Internet in much the way that I uncover plagiarists among my students -- by searching unusual turns of phrase, and finding their original iterations online.
The Washington Post journalists interviewed the folks who made those initial iterations. Guess who they are.
This is an outstanding story about what happens when we stop, and think -- and thus disarm propaganda, which aims to subvert our rational decision-making so that we act as the propagandist wants us to act.
But while we are on the subject of OBAMA IS A SECRET MUSLIM, I also want to include a note that I sent recently to the Obama campaign.
When I find someone generalizing in print or in speech about a particular ethnic group, my smell test is that I replace my own ethnic group -- the Jews -- for whichever group is being commented on.
Most frequently, I do not like what I see. You should try it with your group.
For example, this exchange between Steve Kroft and Hillary Clinton, on 60 Minutes:
STEVE KROFT: You don't believe that Senator Obama's a Jew?
HILLARY CLINTON: Of course not. I mean that's, you know, that, there is no basis for that. You know, I take him on the basis of what he says, and, you know, there isn't any reason to doubt that.
KROFT: You said you take Sen. Obama at his word that he's not a Jew...
CLINTON: Right, right..
KROFT: …you don't believe that he's a Jew.
CLINTON: No! No! Why would I? There's nothing to base that on. As far as I know.
Did you cringe? I'm still cringing. Down this road lies the gas chamber.
The mouth leads the mind -- the way we speak about reality defines how we think about that reality.
If you want to know what "political correctness" is, I'll tell you.
It is the right to not be dehumanized by words.
I have friends, colleagues, and many students who are Muslim -- and I cringe for them, and for all of our humanity, when I hear their name used as a pejorative. And I cringed when Barack Obama's campaign -- as a result of these viral emails -- asked two young women in religious garb to not stand behind the candidate.
I wrote the following speech, and I sent it to the Obama campaign.
We'll see how it goes.
Senator Barack Obama's Speech Addressing "Muslim" Rumors
(fiction by Richard B. Simon)
"Some folks are spreading rumors that I am a Muslim. Those rumors are false. I am a baptized Christian. But it is also wrong to use "Muslim" as a pejorative -- and the use of "Muslim" as a way to try to smear someone is a relic of the disastrous political choices made by the Bush Administration. To his credit, President Bush has said from the start that we are not at war against Islam, and that Islam is a religion of peace.
"But his Administration and their allies have not hesitated to use these labels to divide and conquer us at the ballot box.
"America is a nation of faith, and it is a nation of many faiths -- Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and many others -- and among those many faiths that comprise the American Spirituality in the 21st century is Islam.
"Some of your neighbors are Muslims. Some of your children's classmates are Muslims. Some of your children's teachers are Muslims and Hindus and Christians and Jews.
"Yes, it is wrong to say that I am a Muslim. But it is also wrong to say that Muslims are our enemy.
"Fundamentalist terrorists are the enemy in the War on Terror. They pervert Islam to further their own political ends, among which is driving wedges between American and American, opening rifts in American society, to make us weaker.
"But that's not only the case at home. To defeat the violent ideologies of fanaticism, we need to win the hearts and minds of Muslims around the world. Demonizing a person is no way to get that that person to join your side, no matter how right your side may be.
"There are over a billion Muslims on earth. There are nearly three million Muslims in America. There are only a few thousand members of terrorist groups like al Qaeda. So the odds are pretty good that when you meet an American who adheres to the Islamic faith, her interests, his interests, are the same as yours:
"She wants a positive future for her children. He wants a fulfilling job that pays a good wage. They want to have time to recreate, and a little money put away for their retirement.
"And when they talk about the United States of America -- its government, and its people, and its policies -- there is one word, one ringing, striking word you will hear them use: We.
"No, I am a not a Muslim. I say this as a matter of fact, but not because Muslim is some terrible thing to be.
"Some members of my campaign last week asked two young women, who were wearing traditional Islamic Abaya, or headscarves, to not stand behind the lectern as I spoke. That was the wrong thing to do -- and I apologize to the Muslim American community.
"I also apologize to Sikh Americans, because it would have been the same as to ask a Sikh man to not stand behind me wearing the turban he wears to demonstrate his faith.
"And I apologize to the Jewish American community, because it would have been the same to ask an Orthodox Jewish woman to not stand behind the lectern wearing the headscarf she wears to show modesty before God. Or her husband and son to not stand behind us wearing Yarmulkes and tallit, or a Hasidic Jew to not stand there wearing the payyes.
"And I apologize to Catholic Americans, because it was the same thing as asking a priest to not stand behind the lectern in his collar, or a Sister nun to not stand behind me wearing the habit she wears to signify her devotion to God.
"The truth is that in these times, we need all of us on the stage. And as your President, I will need all of you to stand behind me, to be the wind in the sails of our democracy as we steer a new course together.
"I made a mistake when I allowed our campaign to bend to the nasty winds of fear. We all know that people who do not want to see our campaign succeed are using "Muslim" to create doubt and fear. They have calculated that that is the way to win this election. And my campaign bent -- we feared, in that moment, that the propagandists of fear and hatred would use the photograph to spread falsehoods and cast aspersions. But we will no longer heed the poison pen of the fearmonger. No American should be afraid to display her faith, whatever that faith may be.
"The Founding Fathers in their wisdom protected religious freedom in this young nation by protecting all religions equally.
"They understood the central importance to Democracy of many ideas, of many points of view -- and of many faiths.
"Our nation's motto is E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one.
"The Great patriot Patrick Henry argued in 1799 for the strength of the Union, saying 'Let us trust God, and our better judgment to set us right hereafter. United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.'
And it was Benjamin Franklin who said, before signing the Declaration of Independence that is the very founding argument, the very heart of our democracy, "we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."
"America, I am proud to be a Christian. But were I a Jew, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Shinto, or a Sikh, I would be just as proud.
"For too long, we have allowed our differences to divide us, to make us weaker.
"It is time for us to come together, America, and fulfill our greatest dreams for our children, and for the future of this nation.
"We have a lot of work to do, America -- to restore the rule of law, to rebuild our economy and our infrastructure, to repair the climate, and to regain this nation's rightful place as a beacon of hope and light and freedom unto the world.
America, We can not afford to exclude any of us. Because no matter what name we call God by, we're going to need all the help we can get.
God bless the human race, in all our faiths and all our languages, and may God continue to bless America.
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