(ANTIMEDIA) Cleveland, OH — Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani’s blustery fearmongering at the Republican National Convention (RNC) on Monday toed the line on buffoonery—but his assertions of American exceptionalism and world dominance against terrorism committed by Islamic extremists flatly ignored the well-established cycle creating those very terrorists. This chillingly predictive rant flew right under everyone’s radar as the media converged on Melania Trump’s ostensibly plagiarized speech.
“We must not be afraid to define our enemy,” the former mayor railed. “It is: Islamic. Extremist. Terrorism!”
While many wouldn’t take issue with that assertion, Giuliani followed the declaration with a blatantly bigoted disclaimer, negating the specifics of what he’d said moments before:
“I … I … for the purposes of the media,” he continued, gesturing with a sweep of his arms, “I did not say, ‘All of Islam,’” to which a smattering of audience chuckles could be overheard. “I did not say, ‘most of Islam.’ I said, ‘Islamic extremist terrorism.’ You know who you are! And we’re coming to get you!”
And that—this, after all, being Giuliani—wasn’t all.
Though the former mayor tried to obfuscate his clarification by noting these terrorists kill “more Muslims than anyone else,” he opted to play into assumptions the crowd in attendance shared in Trump’s well-established bigotry. Failing to separate extremists, he continued, “maligns all those good Muslims around the world who are being killed by them.
“It also sets up a fear of being politically incorrect that can have serious consequences […] This is why our enemies see us as weak and vulnerable. Donald Trump has said the first step in defeating our enemies is to identify them properly and see the connections between them so we can find them and catch them […]
“If they are at war against us, which they have declared, we must commit ourselves to unconditional victory against them!”
Of course, the complexities of the War on Terror appeared lost, as Giuliani chose to incite further fears about the nuclear deal between the U.S. and Iran, characterizing the nation as “the world’s largest supporter of terrorism.
“We are actually giving them money to fund the terrorists who are killing us and our allies! We are giving them money! Are we crazy?!”
Perhaps a memory lapse could be blamed for Giuliani’s failure to address the fact the U.S. continues to fund, train, and arm ‘moderate’ rebel groups in the Middle East that many human rights organizations accuse of committing terroristic atrocities—such as Nour al-Din al-Zinki, which was likely responsible for beheading a 10-year-old boy on Tuesday.
So, an appropriate reply would have to be a resounding, Yes.
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After Giuliani’s scare-anoid speech warning about the lack of ‘safety’ in this once free land, the Intercept managed to glean a startling detail in an interview that ripped to shreds perceptions about the assumed beginnings of increased surveillance.
In response to whether he would support Donald Trump’s plans to have police spy on mosques, Giuliani boasted, “I was the mayor who put police officers in mosques, in New York and New Jersey. We did it for the eight years I was mayor.”
That being said, the Intercept pointed out, recall the proud New Yorker served as mayor from 1994 through 2001—and the now-known but initially covert NYPD program of insidious surveillance of mosques within a 100-mile radius of New York City spawned so much outrage, Mayor Bill de Blasio disbanded its most notorious unit in 2014. And despite the increased spying on mosques, no tangible, credible, or useful information ever materialized.
But Giuliani bragged about mosque surveillance, anyway, saying it “helped stop, hopefully, three or four attacks” and “those leads helped us immensely. And they were enormously valuable to us. And Mayor de Blasio doesn’t know what he’s talking about”—even though he refused to name any plots that may have been foiled because, apparently, that’s “top-secret information.”
Most distressing about Giuliani’s casual pride in the mosque surveillance issue is the possibility he could serve a role in Trump’s administration should the equally paranoid demagogue win the White House. Rights-quashing programs tend to expand in an outward-only direction—meaning, should a similar undertaking be allowed, it’s a virtual guarantee Muslims would not be the only targeted group to be stripped of privacy and constitutional rights, as if that weren’t abhorrent enough in itself.
“In 2012,” Alex Emmons wrote for the Intercept, “the Associated Press revealed that the NYPD was photographing the faces and license plates of mosque worshippers, installing hidden cameras pointed at mosques, and recruiting informants to infiltrate mosques, report on sermons, and bait Muslims into making inflammatory statements.”
As nefarious and underhanded as that is, the FBI undertook similar measures during the height of the Occupy movement—which ultimately and effectively ended the uprising.
Concerns from constitutional rights advocates and activists have largely focused on Trump’s inflammatory speech and tendency to draw on the fury of his followers—but hearing Giuliani’s paranoid and misguided ramblings are a sharp reminder the billionaire will have a cabinet and administration to fill should he win the presidency.
And fear-mongering like the former mayor’s presents alarming red flags that must not be ignored.
This article (This RNC Speech You Probably Didn’t Hear About Is F*cking Frightening) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Gage Skidmore. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.