It's best use is as a doorstop

[JoFerret]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,1223525,00.html

So this is how the neo-cons got us into this!

Brian Whitaker explains why a book packed with sweeping generalisations about Arabs carries so much weight with both neocons and military in the US

Consider these statements:
"Why are most Africans, unless forced by dire necessity to earn their livelihood with 'the sweat of their brow', so loath to undertake any work that dirties the hands?"

"The all-encompassing preoccupation with sex in the African mind emerges clearly in two manifestations ..."

"In the African view of human nature, no person is supposed to be able to maintain incessant, uninterrupted control over himself. Any event that is outside routine everyday occurrence can trigger such a loss of control ... Once aroused, African hostility will vent itself indiscriminately on all outsiders."

These statements, I think you'll agree, are thoroughly offensive. You would probably imagine them to be the musings of some 19th century colonialist. In fact, they come from a book promoted by its US publisher as "one of the great classics of cultural studies",....

The book is not actually about Africans. Instead, it takes some of the hoariest old prejudices about black people and applies them to Arabs.

Replace the word "African" in the quotations above with the word "Arab", and you have them as they appear in the book. ....

Writing about Arabs, rather than black people, in these terms apparently makes all the difference between a racist smear and an admirable work of scholarship.

The book in question is called The Arab Mind, and is by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at several US universities, including Columbia and Princeton.

.... I had not heard of this alleged masterpiece until last week, when the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh mentioned it in an article for New Yorker magazine.

<more>

[boobooday]

1. Fool me once

Shame on you.

Destroy the educational system, and fool them forever.

They just keep recycling the same old crap, don't they?

What is this, just some "search and replace" job on some previous racist tome about some previous scapegoat?

I read all about this book, and it sounds scary. Red meat for the neo-cons and fundies.



http://www.wgoeshome.com

[lumpy]

2. This information about a racist book

deserves a kick. It could have been written by Hitler.

[NYC]

3. I agree with you.

[yardwork]

6. Apparently it is based on "scholarship" popular during Hitler's time....

read on for more quotes from this excellent column...


According to one professor at a US military college, The Arab Mind is "probably the single most popular and widely read book on the Arabs in the US military". It is even used as a textbook for officers at the JFK special warfare school in Fort Bragg.

...

In contrast, opinions of Patai's book among Middle East experts at US universities are almost universally scathing. "The best use for this volume, if any, is as a doorstop," one commented. "The book is old, and a thoroughly discredited form of scholarship," said another.

None of the academics I contacted thought the book suitable for serious study, although Georgetown University once invited students to analyse it as "an example of bad, biased social science".

....

He backs up this claim with two quotations: one from a book published in the mid-50s ("Most westerners have simply no inkling of how deep and fierce is the hate, especially of the west, that has gripped the modernising Arab"), and another from Bernard Lewis - currently the neocons' favourite historian - referring to the mood of "many, if not most Arabs" in 1955 (just before the Suez crisis).

...

The Arab Mind was originally published in 1976, but - according to one US academic - actually belongs to the "national character" genre of writing that was popular in comparative politics around the middle of the last century.

[SandyUSA]

4. The U.S. military and neocon RACIST "handbook" on Arabs

Hi All, I am still new here only about a week. I did not think I could post this same article in the Lastest News forum, so I posted it in the 9/11, Terrorism, or whatever forum earlier this evening. The above label is what I called it there.

This article is SO IMPORTANT! For years the neocons and pre-neocons have been smearing and purging "The Arabists" from the State Department and silencing such individuals in the general media with charges of anti-Semitism. All this term Arabists actually means in reality is that the former ambassadors and other figure have some kind of positive or even just fair opinion about Arabs. But, oh no, that is not to be allowed, except as phony crap statements like Bush's about how much we want to help these people have freedom.

I have an elderly friend who is an anti-Zionist Jewish American historian who has advocated for 50 years for justice for the Palestinians. He was purged from the State Department in the late 1940s by way of a lying FBI report that he was gay way back then, and he was labelled a self-hating Jew and had most of his writings lambasted or ignored. He met with many Arab leaders and found that any so-called anti-Americanism was only because of our unfair and biased foreign policy toward the Arab and Muslim world over Israel. They did want to be our allies! And many wanted to have a more democratic society over time! We sabotaged it all with our racism toward them. That is the real history, instead of this pack of neocon-type lies represented in this hideous racist book taught to our military.

[salin]

8. welcome to DU, SandyUSA

I agree that this is important - frightening thought that in order to "become more culturally aware" of where troops were being sent - that this book would be read and circulated. Very frightening.

Your friend sounds very interesting. I hope that we that we hear/read more about him.

[SandyUSA]

10. Hi Salin, web address for anti-Zionist Jewish American historian

The picture he choose for his Home Page is one of him with his arms around Palestinian orphan children.

If our US leaders had listened to him 50 years ago instead of booting him out of the State Department, the whole history of the Middle East region could have been different, and it is highly unlikely we would have this senseless clash of civilizations and so-called war on terror.

http://www.alfredlilienthal.com

[daleo]

5. This makes sense when applied to neo-cons themselves.

You get an interesting effect if you replace the word "Arab" with the word "Neo-con" in this statement, from the article:

"Hersh continued: "The Patai book, an academic told me, was 'the bible of the neocons on neo-con behaviour'. In their discussions, he said, two themes emerged - 'one, that neo-cons only understand force, and two, that the biggest weakness of neo-cons is shame and humiliation'.""

[WarNoMore]

7. KICK! n/t

[psychopomp]

9. Who is responsible for the dissemination of this book

to our military training academies? Is it just incompetence? Or a more sinister reason? Is it just that this book was being read forty years ago in those same academies and it got dusted off again in light of recent events?

[SandyUSA]

11. It is most likely a sinister reason

The neocons tend to micromanage everything they can get away with. This piece of garbage book is most likely not being used by accident. The more "respectible" version of anti-Arab propaganda is the many books and articles of Zionist Bernard Lewis. When my anti-Zionist Jewish friend and I recently watched Lewis on TV, my friend shook his head about how much damage Lewis has done, especially after becoming the darling of Dick Cheney.

[Straight Shooter]

12. Amazon reviews

"While he doesn't often say this directly, the judgementalism that undergirds his discussion screams aloud this view. In many instances, he makes sweeping generalizations about the nature of all Arabs by citing a single instance, whether in Palestine, or Morroco, or Iran, or where ever. He then uses this one instance to make a grand claim that sounds good, but which may or may not have any legs to it. The nature of Arabs is no more universal from country to country than the "West" is universal from France to the US to Germany."

That's just part of one review. And now, for some real enlightenment, we have:

A Must Read, February 13, 2004
Reviewer: Christopher W. Wilbeck from Fort Hood, Texas United States - "This book is a must read for anyone attempting to understand how Arabs think."

http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/1578261171/graphicsunlea-20/701-3448219-0671506

And here's an image from the home page of http://www.forthood.com

[SandyUSA]

13. Grim Reaper icon at Fort Hood website

That guy on the horse icon is clickable and takes you to the artist's site. I checked out what he calls his grusome creation:

No. 31 Death Dealer 15x22

So, that is how our troups are to be personified?This is so sick and wicked...

[Straight Shooter]

16. Frazetta has an enormous worldwide following for his artwork

Frazetta has been around for a long time.

I just thought it was weird, and extremely inappropriate, to have that particular image on a web site proclaiming the virtues of Fort Hood. Some guys just like to think they're "bad." What's rotten about it is when they get the chance to act out their fantasies.

[Moderator]

14. JoFerret

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
paragraphs from the
news source.

Thank you.


DU Moderator

[Jacobin]

15. Are these quotes from Mein Kampf?

[Bandit]

17. Aren't most Arabs African?

:shrug: It still fits your scenario with either ethnicity.