From Gabriele Marcotti's "Land of the Stoopid," Fall '94 arely in the history of mankind has anyone been as wrong as The New York Times' editors who produced this 1923 editorial. At a time when assorted hatemongers and loonies ranging from Tom Metzger (the pedantic Aryan Nation's founder and guardian of Caucasian purity) to Sheikh Abdel Rahman (the alleged mastermind behind the World Trade Center bombing) seem to be cropping up everywhere, it becomes increasingly difficult to judge which are mere madmen and which are genuine threats. To be fair, most hate rallies today bring out the pathetic and ludicrous side of extremist groups. The sixty-some neo-Nazis and skinheads who assembled in New Hope for last year's Gaybash '93 rally elicited more pity than fear as they huddled together with their silly chants and tattered banners, outnumbered 6 to 1 by counterdemonstrators. The meteoric rise of Russian proto-Fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky has shown that a deranged radical autocrat can come out of the woodwork at any time (hell, this country almost elected one H. Ross Perot last year) as long as the population is desperate enough and the propaganda is ludicrous enough. America has more than its fair share of looney toons hard at work studying Zhirinovsky's methods so that they too can emulate his astounding ascent. While it is unlikely that a potpourri of anti-Semitic drivel, free vodka in industrial quantities and promises of a "Greater United States" extending from the Panama Canal to the Arctic Circle will be enough to get anyone elected in this country, it is undeniable that the threat of nationalist hatemongering is alive and well right here in the U.S. of A. But the real threat won't come from the Metzgers and Abdel Rahmans and other outspoken radicals – the real threat lies with those who hide their bigotry behind a veneer of semi-respectability. People like alleged Jewish Defense League bomber Dov Hikind, who advises New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, or talk show host Rush Limbaugh, whose thinly-veiled racial slurs litter the airwaves daily, are now part of the mainstream – and their views and opinions have become acceptable, if not disagreeable. Thus when Hikind calls The New York Times the New Africa Times, or when Limbaugh makes fun of the way Jesse Jackson talks, we find it acceptable and sometimes even funny. Maybe it is acceptable. Maybe it is funny. As a matter of fact, it's about as funny as the cartoons that appeared in German magazines circa 1925, depicting Jews with big noses hoarding money and eating children. Fact is, if we come to accept or even defend those notions, if we casually let them slip into our everyday life, we contribute to the problem. Limbaugh, Hikind and those of their ilk are like manure; they help fertilize the country for the outspoken bigots who will follow them, just as the anti-Semites made Germany fertile ground for Hitler. There have always been crackpots ranting and raving against one group of people or another. But it takes certain conditions for these crackpots to have any kind of an impact. If anti-Semitism hadn't been rampant in Central Europe Hitler might never have come to power. By the same token, if the culture of hate and intolerance becomes mainstream in our society (and Hikind, Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, et al. are just the beginning), we are in for some rocky times ahead.
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