Mainstreaming the Extremists; Marginalizing the Moderates

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
04 July '10

Simultaneously, in some far-flung places in the world, several smart people have come up with a horrifying conclusion: radicals are being systematically mainstreamed, real moderates are being declared extremists.

For example, the two semi-official lobbyists for Hamas and Hizballah—Alistair Crooke and Mark Perry—and the biggest defenders of the Ahmadinejad regime in America—Flyntt and Hillary Leverett—are getting adoring write-ups. Crooke and the Leveretts have been profiled in the New York Times. These peoples op-ed appear everywhere, including in the FP (Foreign Policy) blog. Criticism of them seems pretty much barred from the mainstream (there’s that word again) media.

In Australia, there’s an attempt to portray anti-Israel Jewish activists as mainstream and moderate while the traditional pro-Israel groups are said to be extremist. And of course this is what J Street is about: a group headed by a former lobbyist for a company working on a Qatari anti-Israel propaganda group and which itself has hardly ever taken a position supportive of Israel. Could J Street's cover possibly be more transparent, yet no mainstream media organ ever seems to mention this.

When Hussein Fadlallah, who might be called Hizballah’s founding spiritual guide, died recently, CNN’s chief editor for Arab affairs gushed in all a twitter that she had enormous respect for him while the BBC leaned backwards to sanitize his record.

It sounds better to say someone was an implacable foe of Israel or the United States than that he made virulently antisemitic statements and endorsed numerous terrorist attacks against Americans in which more than 240 U.S. servicemen were killed in Beirut. You see, if people knew this sort of thing they might not like him, or Hizballah.

Mainstreaming may seem to be a great solution but it is the gateway to a much worse situation. For example, General David Petraeus declared on taking command in Afghanistan, "We are in this to win." But how is the U.S.-led international force going to win? Certainly, they cannot wipe out the Taliban, since the rules of engagement restrain them from doing the kind of thing necessary to root it out.

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