Marketing Manufactured Consensus : A Taxonomy of Sentiments about Fitna

In my furtive stumblings I’ve come across yet another discussion concerning reactions to Geert Wilder’s film FITNA. Before I go any further it’s worth noting that movie reviews for a production of thirty minutes or less requires expounding and in the circle of cinema critics inflated rhetoric is the order of the day. Much of the commentary coming from the Council of Ex-Muslims seems to be in that spirit of waxed prose.

http://www.youtube.com/v/tlsc81n8KFc&hl=en&fs

What is really at issue for me here is not that I really give a damn about ex-Muslims who dally about defensively over their previous ideology. In fact, I do care but some are only bound to get offended since many of them were still remain susceptible to indoctrination peer pressure and have yet to realize that they are the ones who have to get used to unbelievers. Not the other way around. The issue is the fact that the members interviewed for this video took the stance that the Geert Wilder's film FITNA was directed against immigrants rather than Muslims. How did this happen? In what segment of this very short movie was the issue of immigration even addressed? Was anti-immigrant sentiment conveyed subliminally in the form of very fast cues? Where was the woman in the red dress a la Steven Spielberg that anti-immigrant sentiment? Would that be what the anti-immigrant sentiment was? Am I missing something? I know full well that Wilders endorses changes in immigration policy but still there’s nothing in his film about immigration.

So let’s give it a break and know that this is one of those times when gut reactions are good things and if you’re smelling something funky under the sofa cushions you’re probably right. These views are manufactured and reek of phoniness and fakery. It’s like when you have a boss who has picked his own favorites and you’re not one of that inner circle and like it that way. You’ve seen it happen before in the movies when the wagons are closed but this is also one those times when you know full well that after about a half-hour the screams and yells of petty bickering start to be heard from outside that closed circle. It’s only too predictable. I must add that not only do the views of these members of the council seem to be a result of giving in to peer pressure like how one avoids frowns at a dinner party.

Coincidently, the forums have been replete with some of the most ignorant views of Wilders being posted and reviewed favourably by several ex-Muslims at that.

This is where plainly false descriptions of Wilder’s character (he’s not the monster so many have claimed him to be) have smuggled themselves into public discourse as legitimate while not providing much (if any) evidence to back them up outside of infantile rants. These have become the underlying sentiments emerging from these forums that probably owes itself to the character make up of the council, the influence of a few online personas, and years of indoctrination which still gives many of them a tendency to cling to authoritarian values and modes of thinking. It not only allows for the continuation of such things but it undermines the critical thinking faculties of those who most need to get away from the tangles of cognitive biases and dissonances that they have been immersed in for and leaves a viewer like me wondering, “How the hell did the topic of immigration become a talking point” and why is it relevant to highlight this? The commonly uttered claim that of theme of FITNA was “anti-immigrant” is so obviously a false attribution that it makes one wonder if this is just part of a spoiler campaign to dissuade potential viewers from taking up the task of viewing the movie for themselves.

A monstrous hybrid that has emerged and how it developed requires explanation. The embryology behind this can get even uglier but it seems to have started as a parlour game of real people making the choice to arrive at a satisfactory consensus that all could agree upon. They know what their target market’s mentality is and understand that playing a soft and soothing tonality to their image will appeal to ex-Muslims who are most indoctrinated into believing that they were under siege when they were Muslim. This approach simply encourages the transference of unfounded paranoias and cultivated reflexive actions into life after Islam. It still encourages a life left unexamined (in my opinion) but it does get them more cachet among the Left if looked at from a marketing perspective. What emerges is a group grope that is entirely rational and geared for efficiency.

It should be noted that one of the persons interviewed (Maryam Namazie) is also a member of the Workers Communist Party of Iran or (WCP-I) and a truly humane person. At one time they were quite actively taking part in public protests in major Western cities marching along with the likes of the Stop The War Coalition, Respect, SWP and others. They have struggled to maintain ties to other leftists outside of their experience but are themselves in the political wilderness. That’s not difficult to achieve since so much of the extreme Left is so pro-Palestinian and ready to provide comfort and support to Islamists. Any attempts to accommodate secularists from Muslim societies is usually given the thumbs down and viewed as “heretical” with different epithets that have become a part of Marxist-Leninist mudslinging over the course of ages. The WCP-I may stand out as an anomaly since they do present a human face what with the various personalities and while the Coex forum is autonomous to it while still serving as an occasional media outlet as seen in the first video presented here but don’t let that fool you.

Simply said, they only got into this venture late in the game and way after the initial wave of websites and forums that emerged in the late Nineties. The long efforts at achieving a common front with the wildly lunatic fringe movements was done in order to bring their particular take on Marxism. Much of that has been achieved (with mixed results) in such places as the UK where the Left has been successful in resurrecting Jew-baiting via anti-Zionism and what has the WCP-I done in response? Nothing. After all, they were too busy preaching revolution while keeping under wraps a fair amount of essays and interviews by such people as the founder of their party, Mansoor Hekmat.

I’ll have to admit that even though I’m no Marxist that I was impressed by the critiques of Islam that came forth and recommend reading his essays that can be found right here. In fact, there are elements of which he has written and spoken about that can be included into any honest teaching curriculum about Islam. But true to the nature of the left in Iran they left these bits and pieces out of their public platform while being decimated domestically, much of their surviving apparatus exiled and the masses being left ignorant and uninformed about Islam during the crucial years leading up to and after the overthrow of the Shah.

As a Marxist party from the Middle East they’re not that exceptional in that regard and the fact that their banners were present at pro-Hezbollah rallies as late as 2006 should tell anyone that they will remain quiet on the issue of anti-Semitism for the foreseeable future. Accordingly, it should not surprise anyone that there is a prevailing anti-Semitism cloaked under the guise of anti-Zionism percolating onto such forums as COEM. And it should also surprise nobody that the basic style of critique that these people had in the video regarding FITNA made their views known is much the same way individuals sympathizers and members of so-called “anti-Zionist” groups on the Left make their views known about Israel. Which is by emphasizing particular aspects of their opponent’s stance and injecting another subject (in this case, immigration) that is convenient to utilize since there is the presence of a large Muslim population in Europe and is not altogether unrelated. It’s a neat sleight of hand if you’re not aware of leftist styles of argumentation but damn clumsy if you used to engage in agit-prop.

It has been said that “In a diplomacy there is no last word” and this is oftentimes the prevailing ethos that is a part of much political discourse. It allows for much that is needed for any discourse to occur in the first place but it can come at a cost and this has been amply demonstrated in times past when tyrants were accommodated by roaring silence. It looks like this has been the problem with much of the Left for sometime and in their age-old quest to open new markets for their ideas it has left them deeply compromised. It just seems that hardly anybody else has noticed it enough and if one looks back at the appeasement movement of the 1930’s closely enough this form of political discourse - with it’s this mentality of Burberry suits and impeccable manners - this is what allowed Hitler to consolidate his hold on power and then expand. It sold well enough without ever becoming a majority opinion in the West but it did buttress the arguments of isolationists in the USA while soothing the anxieties of millions who would later become victims of the Nazi regime. It doesn’t bode well for democracy that this has continued into a later era which is replete with confusions similar to that earlier time.

For a fifteen minute movie it sure stirred up a lot of business decisions that, at first sight, appeared to be a cognitive bias in a group setting. It wasn’t. They know the film wasn’t about immigration or they wouldn’t have got one I-word confused with another I-word or at least seemed to. They know the score about Islam as well as many others do. Like Mansoor Hekmat and scores of other leftists from the Muslim societies they left the dreaded task of facing down Islam on the back burner and didn’t find the profit margin attractive enough to educate others about what they knew about it. At the end of the day it’s a business decision and it’s about time I stop and get used to it.