Hey Mom, I got my name on TV

Submitted by Jonathan Pfeffer, Dec 8, 2003 at 22:38

Dear Mr Pipes,

It is probably true that organized Muslim interest groups are behind many of these intellectual attacks by these student newspapers. But American born and bred students aren't exactly unwilling participants in this ghastly intellectual farce we see on campuses all across the United States. Student papers are always easy prey for people who have a focused radical agenda. American students often need a quick fix of intellectual attention. I guess these students must feel that they can't wait until they mature enough to be part of a serious debate. What we see is a clear case of the inmates running the asylum.

I think that these students, and I am referring to the non-Muslim ones of course, are attracted to political positions that have two main characteristics;

1.The position must not be the position of the government or any authoritative establishment, for that would defeat the purpose. Governments are inherently bad, and besides those positions that are supported by or sympathetic to the government are generally well represented and don't need the help of students.

2.There must be opportunities for quick attention. There is only two known way to be noticed for your work. Either your work has to be very good, or the creator of the work must present it louder and surround it with enough controversy that others who support your view rally to the event.

Therefore, all a shrewd Muslim activist has to do is provide American students with these opportunities. In a sense, these campus opportunists, and they are not all Muslim, send a very subtle message to budding American university kids: The message is this: If you take up my cause, I will get you an audience. I will get you letters to the editor of praise for your "courageous" stand. I will get enough people and attention that the local TV station may even send down a crew, and to top it all off, through our friends we may get your event written about all over the internet. Our position will annoy the government and annoy important people. So what do you say? Now, of course it is too much trouble, with exams and such for these students to actually investigate all the details. What counts is, there are enough snippets of ready made propaganda to support these radical positions. Just select the arguments from a list of stock argument snippets, reorder them any way you want and presto, you are now a certified opinionated intellectual, getting your name in the paper and even on several web sites.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".