{"id":7907,"date":"2010-08-30T16:38:07","date_gmt":"2010-08-31T00:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=7907"},"modified":"2010-08-31T13:15:26","modified_gmt":"2010-08-31T21:15:26","slug":"gingrich-and-bolton-back-away-from-the-new-islamophobes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/30\/gingrich-and-bolton-back-away-from-the-new-islamophobes\/","title":{"rendered":"Gingrich and Bolton Back Away From the New Islamophobes"},"content":{"rendered":"

One interesting nugget from Josh Nathan-Kazis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Forward <\/em>article<\/a> on the various Sept. 11 events going on at Ground Zero:<\/p>\n

In addition to Wilders, the rally [led by Pamela Geller] will feature a videotaped address by John Bolton, ambassador to the United Nations during the second Bush administration, and speeches by Republican political candidates and by a conservative radio host. Former GOP House speaker Newt Gingrich was previously listed as a speaker, but he is not attending. A spokesman for Gingrich said that he had never intended to attend, and that the listing was based on a misunderstanding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s impossible to know the actual story, it sure sounds like Gingrich decided that associating himself with the likes of Geller and Geerts Wilders was not a sound political strategy for a 2012 presidential hopeful. Similarly, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s notable that even John Bolton \u00e2\u20ac\u201d who is about as far right as any high-profile U.S. political figure, and who wrote the forward to Geller and Robert Spencer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s latest book <\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u201d is declining to appear in person. Perhaps Gingrich and Bolton calculated that there is a not-insignificant chance that Geller\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Muslim hatefest will end in some kind of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153incident\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d see the near-miss<\/a> at last week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ground Zero rally for an idea of what this would look like \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in which case participation at the rally would become politically toxic for whoever was involved.<\/p>\n

As I wrote <\/a>a couple weeks ago, one of the most important stories about the whole controversy over the so-called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ground Zero Mosque\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is the extent to which prominent Republican political figures, most notably Gingrich, have mainstreamed a virulently Islamophobic discourse that was once limited to the right-wing fringes. Does Gingrich\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pulling out of the Geller rally mean that he has reconsidered the wisdom of trying to carve out a niche for himself as America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most prominent Islamophobe? It would be premature to say so for sure, but keep an eye on Gingrich and other prominent Republican opinion-makers in the months to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One interesting nugget from Josh Nathan-Kazis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Forward article on the various Sept. 11 events going on at Ground Zero: In addition to Wilders, the rally [led by Pamela Geller] will feature a videotaped address by John Bolton, ambassador to the United Nations during the second Bush administration, and speeches by Republican political candidates and by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7907"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7918,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7907\/revisions\/7918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7907"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}