Why Extremists, Terrorists and Conservatives like Trump need each other

Have you ever thrown away an aging head of broccoli into your kitchen garbage bin and accidentally forgot about it as it sits there slowly rotting for a few days?

Do you remember what that horrid stench smells like?

It’s as if the smell is caked on your clothes. Attaching itself to every piece of furniture and fabric in your house. Following you everywhere. Not even the opening of windows can eradicate that disgusting, soggy, nauseating odour.

The only solution is to tie the garbage bag up and throw it away.

This past weekend, I made that very mistake: I visited the United States of America for four long days.

It reeked.

The stench was everywhere — on TV, on the cover of major newspapers and even on the train en route to the Jets vs. Giants game.

I am of course talking about the sickening inescapable divisive rhetoric being boiled up by media personalities and their outlets, far-right conservative presidential candidates and a population so obsessed with “the other” that they have reached a whole new level of “WTF is happening to America?!”

On Monday, GOP candidate, Donald Trump poured gasoline on the proverbial fire, suggesting that “the land of the free” should ban all Muslims — tourists and immigrants — from entering the USA.

That fire is now out of control.

You may have heard the collective groan from liberals and progressive conservatives who know that the suggestion to ban people on the basis of religion is both unconstitutional and counter to every ounce of our pluralistic, open and democratic fibres.

Yet, here we are: Mayors on both sides of the US/Canadian border suggesting we ban Trump’s name from buildings, NYC councilors waging anti-Trump rallies, trusted international dailies propagating one man’s vile idea that more than a billion people on earth should be targeted, judged and treated as enemies of the state.

But wait, is this really only one man’s idea?

On Wednesday, more ridiculous news according to one poll: 65% of likely Republican voters support Donald Trump’s Muslim ban.

What on earth just happened? And how did we get to this?

Nothing just happened, is the answer to the question because our collective ignorance, silence and inability to see swaths of examples leading to this very moment is the reason why we are all here.

USA. Canada. France. Denmark. Netherlands. Switzerland. Spain. Italy. Belgium. Yes, all of us.

The signs, everywhere. Examples piling up, all around us. For years.

And with each day, we’ve allowed more Americans, more Canadians, more Europeans to get comfortable with the idea that maybe, just maybe there is someone — nearly 25% of the world to be exact — to fear.

Let’s be abundantly clear here: Donald Trump didn’t just wake up on Monday morning and think to himself, “You know what I should say, I should suggest we ban all Muslims until this war on the West is over.”

No. he didn’t. So shame on us for being shocked or appalled by his comments and the fact that he’s able to say something so obscene and still capture the world’s attention.

Part of the problem is that we for years, have afforded Trump and those like him the oxygen needed to keep these repulsive ideologies alive.

In the last few years, especially since 9/11, otherwise reasoned, balanced and fair citizens of democratic nations have turned a blind eye to fluctuating definitions of democracy. And we’ve all quietly hoped no one would notice because we’ve been sold on the basis of national security and a manufactured war of civilizations.

Enough already.

In late 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad including one in which he is shown wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. This sparked a national and worldwide debate on freedom of speech and whether one newspaper had the right to offend and provoke an entire religion.

In December 2009, 57% of participating Swiss voters approved a national referendum ban on the building of minarets.

On February 14, 2010, the French Senate voted 246–1 in favour of a ban on Muslim women wearing burqas everywhere from post offices to streets, including those worn by tourists from the Middle East and elsewhere. That ban was then passed with overwhelming support by the National Assembly in July of the same year.

In April 2010, Belgium became the first country in Europe to ban women wearing the full Islamic face veil in public. In June 2010, Spain joined Belgium in the attempt to ban the burqa in a significant escalation of Spain’s debate over how to handle radical Islamists. In October 2010, a high profile Italian minister suggested a similar ban on the basis of national security.

In September 2010, Geert Wilders, the leader of the anti-Islam Freedom Party suggested that Muslims threaten European values by wearing head scarves. He even suggested that the Dutch government should monitor private Islamic schools more closely.

Five years ago, in the USA we were witness to the “Ground Zero Mosque” debate, where a shared community centre for interfaith dialogue was angrily contested by Americans who felt building such a space two blocks from the World Trade Center site, was an affront to their citizenship and national integrity. This event of course resulted in dozens of Qurans being burned all over the country by religious leaders who wanted to make a point of their disgust and disagreement.

And in Canada, this past year, the ousted Conservative government turned one woman into a national campaign issue. The newly minted Canadian wanted to preserve her right to wear a burqa (after being identified and checked by a government official) to a Canadian citizenship ceremony. The government sensing a political opportunity to divide the country’s liberal voters and in an attempt to rescue their sinking poll numbers ensured this was front page news for a majority of the campaign.

Every single one of the examples above are concerned with the symptoms — temporary fixes by political candidates and ailing governments aiming to gain votes and to appear like they’re in charge of their electorates.

All of these are superficial and destructive proposals, some of which have and continue to be debated… and some which unfortunately have now been enacted in democracies like ours.

None are actually meant to address the very real threat that a group of organized religious criminals plan to threaten our way of life.

They hate our freedom. They despise the fact that we are proudly plural and open places where our women and men can safely contest ideas, move across borders and believe in any or no god in which they choose.

We are certainly in a war, but Islamic terrorists who misinterpret their religious texts are not the only threat to the freedoms we enjoy.

Extremists — in every single democratic society, within every religion and who promote a brand of politics on the margins of sanity and reason are a danger to us all as well.

Donald Trump’s brand of conservatism… France’s Front Nationale whose political polling numbers continue to climb… far-right leaders like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and the Australian Liberty Alliance who believe less multiculturalism is the answer… and the left-over Conservative reformers in Canada who hang onto the aspirations of one-day governing by the bible…

Together with writers, scholars and political commentators who spew out purely racist, xenophobic and dangerous levels of toxic rhetoric are just as damaging to our collective security and the welfare of our democratic institutions.

Combined, they purport to defend their respective lands, defenders of their constitutions, they claim… by promoting ideas and policies that are so inconsistent with their own nation’s struggles and victories — the same victories that have allowed them the very right to speak.

We have overcome this in the past, and we will do so again.

The Irish Catholics coming into America in the 1830s. Women and the right to vote. Black Americans standing up to injustices — then and still. Jews escaping Nazi Germany to any country who would accept them. Chinese head taxes in Canada.

Throughout our history, “the other” who we have been tempted, taught and convinced to fear have changed names, colour and without a doubt, religion too. But at the core, the same truth remains: decency and sanity win if enough of us speak up to challenge inaccuracies, falsehoods and policies designed to make us all less free.

You see, these far-right extremists in each of our democratic nations have something in common with the Islamic terrorists attempting to scare and change us — they want us to turn on each other, to fear one another, to close up our borders and to limit the freedoms we have fought so hard to attain and preserve.

They need the attacks in Paris in order to remain relevant. They grow stronger by trying to convince us that two crazy people in San Bernardino are stronger than a land of millions. They use London subway stabbings to turn a political profit. And they can only exist if our rationality begins to fray.

Trump, like all the other religious and political extremist thugs need each other. They need us to make reactionary political decisions impacting our social cohesion while we mourn and while we react to incidents that test our courage and unity.

And like that aging, slowly decaying head of broccoli soaking at the bottom of a disgusting pile of garbage, they want us all to forget the only sure way to combat and beat that awful stench.

Research based on: No Muslims Allowed? An analysis of the State of Pluralism in the West (2011)