A New Politics of Xenophobia

Paul Green just sent me the following email:

In his opening statement to the Durban II conference in Geneva, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared that:

Racism is a denial of human rights, pure and simple. It may be institutionalized, as the Holocaust will always remind us. Alternately, it may express itself less formally as the hatred of a particular people or a class — as anti-Semitism, for example, or the newer ‘Islamophobia.’

and warned that:

A new politics of xenophobia is on the rise. New technologies proliferate hate-speech.

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Not only that, in a statement (pdf) at Durban II today, Pakistan’s foreign minister Nawabzada Malik Amad Khan called “upon states to declare illegal and prohibit organizations based on ideas or theories of superiority or promoting socio-religious hatred or discrimination”.

It also equates racism and “Islamophobia,” declaring that “Islam and Muslims are negatively stereotyped as terrorists and Islamo-fascists” and that “for over 1.5 billion Muslims around the world, this poses a serious xenophobic challenge.”

I think I feel someone’s hot breath on my neck.

No kidding.

The delegations from most Western countries walked out on Ahmadinejad yesterday because of his blatant anti-Semitism.

But will they walk out on this one? Or will they compliantly implement whatever noxious new regulations get cooked up in Geneva this week?

Watch out for the local repercussions of Durban II. Keep an eye on what your elected representatives are doing. You never know what they’ll foist on you next in the name of “human rights” and “international law”.