by Bill Gertz
A day before the president’s rant, the Washington Free Beacon had published my report analyzing the Florida killing spree under the headline “Orlando Attack Is a Failure of Obama’s ‘Politically Correct’ Policy, Analysts Say.” It identified three major failures by U.S. authorities prior to the attack, including the two botched FBI investigations, the failure of the Department of Homeland Security tip line program known as “See Something, Say Something” (a coworker had alerted authorities but no action was taken), and finally, the failure of the Obama administration to warn the public of a direct threat by the Islamic State to attack the United States and Europe during the Islamic observance of Ramadan, which began in early June. The group issued a video threat on May 21, 2016, calling for Islamic State sympathizers to launch attacks in Europe and the United States. No nationwide warning was issued, most likely because it would be linking the group to the Muslim religious observance. Once again, politically correct policies had turned deadly.
“Political correctness is endangering the lives of Americans,” said Sebastian Gorka, a counterterrorism specialist. “I have spoken to many law enforcement officers who are angry and not just frustrated that a political matrix and narrative is being forced upon them, and they are not allowed to speak accurately and truthfully about what the threat is and who the enemy is,” Gorka added.
Critics of Islamic terrorism who blame the ideology of jihadism for the threat are falsely labeled by the Left as bigots and “Islamophobes,” in much the same way that those who view homosexual orientation as contrary to Judeo-Christian religious beliefs are called “homophobes.” The New York Times editorial on the shooting claimed that “while the precise motivation for the rampage remains unclear, it is evident that Mr. Mateen was driven by hatred toward gays and lesbians.” The piece was headlined “The Corrosive Politics That Threaten L.G.B.T. Americans.” The Times had completely missed Mateen’s public declarations linking the attack to Islamic State terrorism.
The acronym LGBT is the latest evolution in liberal left efforts to control public debate through semantics. The same is true for the terms racism and Islamophobia. Once someone is tarred with these epithets, political campaigns of public denunciation ensue with little regard for whether the allegations are true.
Whether the president saw my article on the politically correct failures on Orlando, I do not know. More likely, Obama attempted to counteract the comments made a day earlier by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who had criticized the current politically correct response to terrorism as crippling the government’s ability to talk, think, and act clearly. After announcing once again the ratcheting up of another round of halfhearted military efforts against the Islamic State, Obama launched into the diatribe against Republicans as a “final point” of his public remarks, asserting that “the main contribution” of Republicans in the fight against IS had been to “criticize the administration and me for not using the phrase ‘radical Islam.’ ”
“That’s the key, they tell us. We cannot beat ISIL unless we call them radical Islamists,” a visibly upset Obama claimed. He went on to ask rhetorically how the use of the term would contribute to the battle against IS, and specifically if it would make the terrorists less committed to killing Americans, or bring in more allies. He also wondered whether “there is a military strategy that is served by” use of the term.
In Obama’s worldview there was no good reason to do so because, as he asserted, Islam had been perverted by terrorists to justify terrorism. “There has not been a moment in my seven and a half years as president where we have not been able to pursue a strategy because we didn’t use the label ‘radical Islam,’ ” he thundered. “Not once has an adviser of mine said, ‘Man, if we use that phrase, we are going to turn this whole thing around,’ not once. So someone seriously thinks that we don’t know who we are fighting?” The president went on to explain that his nonuse of the term radical Islam “has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with actually defeating extremism.” And according to Obama, calling terrorists Islamists would make it more difficult to solve the terror problem.
The diatribe revealed for the first time why America was losing the war against Islamist terror. Political correctness was to blame for subverting efforts to destroy the ideology behind Islamic extremism. The president made clear that day that he does not understand that countering the ideology of Islamic extremism is the ultimate key to victory. And contrary to the president’s assertion, the ideology of political correctness is to blame and must be countered.
Critics were quick to respond to the president’s angry denunciation of users of the term radical Islam. “To suggest, as the White House does repeatedly, that calling jihadis by their name bestows religious legitimacy, or that recognizing radical Islamists as Muslims somehow bestows religious legitimacy on them is as arrogant as it is wrong,” American Enterprise Institute analyst Michel Rubin countered. “No Muslim looks to the United States to define religion or bestow religious legitimacy.” Afghan war veteran and retired army lieutenant colonel Joseph Myers, a former DIA analyst and counterterrorism expert, called the president’s stance on avoiding the term radical Islam the key to preventing effective counter-ideology programs from attacking the Islamist ideology. “We can kill terrorists every day, but if we do not engage and confront the ideas that are generating new terrorists tomorrow, we will not win this war,” Myers told me. “If our national security policy and strategy prevents us from engaging the enemy on the ideological battlefield and separates Islamic doctrine as a causal factor in Islamic jihad-based terrorism, then we are disarming ourselves and conceding that key terrain to the enemy,” Myers added.
A Department of Homeland Security report reveals that the president’s ban on the use of Islamic religious terms was incorporated in a multimillion-dollar program designed to dissuade American youth from becoming terrorists. The June 2016 report by the Homeland Security Advisory Council called for spending up to $100 million in new funding for programs aimed at American millennials in response to the Islamic radicalization threat. But the report urged that to avoid creating an “us versus them” mentality in what was supposed to be a war of ideas, the government must limit its description of the problem to the vague rubric “Countering Violent Extremism,” or CVE. A section of the report on the use of terminology recommended that the Department of Homeland Security “reject religiously-charged terminology and problematic positioning by using plain meaning American English” instead of “religious, legal and cultural terms like ‘jihad,’ ‘sharia,’ ‘takfir’ or ‘umma.’ ”
Jihad is the Islamic concept of holy war, the primary call to arms for Islamic terrorist groups around the world, including the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Sharia law is the antidemocratic, Islamic supremacist legal code that analysts say has kept many American Muslims from assimilating into American society and opened them up to terrorist recruitment. Takfir is the Arabic term for apostasy, and umma is the word used to describe the entire Muslim community. Thus tens of millions of dollars devoted to anti–Islamic radicalization programs would be wasted by ignoring the root cause of the problem.
Political correctness remains the major impediment to successful information warfare against terrorism. The American failure to turn back the Islamic State was highlighted by one of the president’s most politically correct acolytes, CIA director John Brennan. In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence two days after the president’s defense of the non-Islamic nature of the program to defeat the Islamic State, Brennan said this: “Unfortunately, despite all of our progress against [the Islamic State] on the battlefield and in the financial realm, our efforts have not reduced the group’s terrorism capability and global reach.” It was a damning indictment of failed politically correct counterterrorism policies.
Obama consistently misjudged the Islamic State threat, no doubt because of the foolish hope that his policies would lead Muslims a
round the world to favor the United States. Yet he never once admitted the failings or changed course. In a remarkably wrong statement reported by New Yorker editor David Remnick in January 2014, as Islamic State forces were taking over the Iraqi city of Fallujah, Obama tried to dismiss the group as nonthreatening: “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is, if a JV [junior varsity] team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” Obama tried to spin the embarrassing comment months later by denying he was referring to the Islamic State. Remnick, however, later contradicted the president by insisting the comment was referring to the Islamic State takeover of Fallujah in January.
Obama’s politically correct posture toward radical Islam surfaced during the 2016 presidential campaign when Hillary Clinton announced she too would refuse to speak the term radical Islam because doing so would be harmful to Muslims. “No. 2, it helps to create this clash of civilizations that is actually a recruiting tool for ISIS and other radical jihadists who use this as a way of saying, ‘We are in a war against the West—you must join us,’ ” Clinton explained. After the Orlando massacre, Clinton cleverly distanced herself from Obama by announcing she prefers the term radical jihadism—something that represents a slight improvement in dealing with the problem and possibly a positive step for the future toward more effective information warfare.
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The source of deadly politically correct policies can be traced to the New Left radicals who read Herbert Marcuse during the 1970s and followed his advice of abandoning street protests and demonstrations in favor of long-term infiltration and subversion. Within several decades, Marxist and leftist sympathizers had moved into positions of power in American institutions, first in academia and the universities, then in the news media and entertainment industry, and finally into government. It was a remarkable use of information warfare techniques to impose Marxist ideas on a nation built on Judeo-Christian values and American traditions of independence and freedom. American national culture is now dominated by what has come to be known as “opinion morality,” which seeks to obscure traditional concepts of right and wrong. Leftist proponents of opinion morality argue there is no right or wrong; morality is whatever your personal opinion may be. The leftist street radicals of the 1970s, such as those who took part in the Youth International Party and were called Yippies, once sought safe houses to hide from authorities. Today’s radicals, by contrast, demand “safe spaces” on campuses for protection from even the slightest offensive speech—especially speech emanating from those espousing conservative, pro-American or patriotic beliefs, or literally anything that could lead to the slightest emotional upset. Leftists today also promote the bogus concept of “white privilege” as an information warfare weapon to be used in campaigns of weaponized shaming that seek to discredit any and all things favorable to American traditions, freedoms, and culture.
By 2015, the destructive politically correct movement had reached its zenith on college campuses. The conservative National Review published a list of what it termed the “13 Most Ridiculously PC Moments on College Campuses.” It included such inane incidents as the Swarthmore College student who declared that anyone who said they hate pumpkin spice lattes must be labeled “sexist” because doing so was tantamount to saying “girls don’t have valid emotions.” The University of New Hampshire issued a “bias-free language guide” that declared use of the word American as offensive and to be avoided. Western University in London declared the word skinny to be “violent,” because of liberals’ concerns it was somehow insulting to those who are overweight.
And in the ultimate leftist semantic subversion, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee launched a “just words” campaign that declared use of the term politically correct to be offensive because it “has become a way to deflect saying that people are being too ‘sensitive.’ ”
The success of the destructive leftist agenda in the U.S. education system was highlighted by a poll conducted in 2016 that found millennials have little understanding about socialism or communism. The poll showed that 45 percent of young people between the ages of sixteen and twenty said they would vote socialist, and 20 percent would vote communist. Equally disturbing and indicative of the power of the liberal-left narrative was the survey’s finding that a third of millennials mistakenly believed more people were killed under the administration of President George W. Bush than under the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin. Under Soviet rule, an estimated 20 million people were killed or died as a result of communist policies.I
Marion Smith, executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which commissioned the poll, said his organization has been concerned that an emerging generation of Americans has little understanding of collectivism and its dark history. “Unfortunately, this report confirms this worrisome impression,” Smith said. “This report clearly reveals a need for educating our youth on the dangerous implications of socialist ideals.”
Clare Fox, head of the British think tank Institute of Ideas, called the hypersensitive crybabies of today’s younger generation “Generation Snowflake,” melting at the slightest emotional distress. But Fox incorrectly blamed parents of snowflakes for such stupidities as Oxford University’s policy of notifying law students they will be informed beforehand if content during a lecture could upset them, or Cambridge University’s canceling an Africa-themed dinner over fears the meeting would offend students. Mexican sombreros worn by students also were banned at some schools as insulting to Mexicans, and more than one politically incorrect Halloween costume has come under fire from the mavens of PC. In October 2015, Walmart was pressured to halt sales of an Israeli soldier costume for children, and a “Sheik Fagin Nose,” after critics claimed both were offensive. The liberal American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee opposed the Israeli soldier costume, calling it a “symbol of violence” against Palestinians, while the hooked Sheik Fagin Nose allegedly had to be stopped for promoting anti-Arab racism. The same month, Amazon and eBay were criticized for a “Lady Boy” Halloween costume deemed insensitive to cross-dressers.
“Anti-bullying” also has become a rallying cry of the new fascists behind political correctness. In recent years bullying has expanded from being defined as physical abuse or beating to include such questionable acts as teasing and name-calling, spreading rumors, verbal sexual commentary, “homophobic taunting,” graffiti, insensitive jokes, bullying gestures, and exclusion from friendship groups. In overreaction, schools are subjecting children to endless anti-bullying assemblies, books, programs, and stories of victims.
“By the time they get to university, our overprotected children are so loaded up with emotional angst that they are ill-equipped to deal with the basic challenges of adult life,” Fox laments. Students at the University of Missouri forced the school’s chancellor and president to resign amid charges the administrators were insensitive in responding to alleged racial incidents on campus.
And in a scene reminiscent of the 1970s’ mass Communist Party purges during China’s Cultural Revolution, Mizzou student protesters, echoing the Red Guards of China, issued this outrageous demand:
We demand that the University of Missouri System President, Tim Wolfe, writes a handwritten apology to the Concerned Student 1950 demonstrators and holds a press conference in the Mizzou Student Center reading the letter. In the letter and at the press conference, Tim Wolfe must acknowledge his white male privilege, recognize that systems of oppression exist, and provide a verbal commitment to fulfilling Concerned Student 1950 demands.
The university president did not meet all the demands but few noted its outrageousness on campus or off. Wilfred M. McClay, a University of Oklahoma history professor, sees the case as an example of the Left’s weaponized shaming. “One of the many advantages of shaming as a technique for gaining political advantage is that it does not need to trouble itself with the niceties of argument or debate,” McClay wrote in the Claremont Review of Books. “P.C. discour
se, with its wooden abstractions and its servile obedience to ideological desiderata, is its natural home.”
Some traditional liberals began to oppose the politically correct mania. Several comedians, including Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock, announced they would no longer perform shows on some college campuses over concerns about their facing a politically correct backlash against their politically incorrect humor. The novelist Lionel Shriver came under an information assault after giving a speech in which she opposed the leftist idea that writers should avoid engaging in “cultural appropriation”—the bogus notion that majority cultures are illicitly exploiting minorities by stealing their intellectual property. In particular, Shriver was criticized by Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a twenty-five-year-old Sudanese-born Australian writer who protested by walking out of Shriver’s speech and later angrily denouncing the novelist in the Guardian newspaper. Shriver’s rejoinder in the New York Times questioned whether the Left would survive the wrath of politically correct millennials. As she stated: “Viewing the world and the self through the prism of advantaged and disadvantaged groups, the identity-politics movement—in which behavior like huffing out of speeches and stirring up online mobs is par for the course—is an assertion of generational power. Among millennials and those coming of age behind them, the race is on to see who can be more righteous and aggrieved—who can replace the boring old civil rights generation with a spikier brand.”
Several police shootings of African Americans spawned a racist antipolice movement that has further undermined law and order nationwide, as police in major cities began turning away from enforcing the law over concerns their liberal political leaders would accuse them of racially motivated policing. The policy was deadly. By May 2016, homicide rates in twenty major U.S. cities increased sharply and the FBI director, James Comey, attributed the rise in murders to intimidated police.