Britain's "Stop the War" movement, which organised huge rallies against the war on Saddam Hussein's regime, is a curious partnership between supporters of the international Muslim Brotherhood and largely non-believing socialists.

In the municipal politics of Britain and the Netherlands, some radical Muslims quite often find themselves doing political business with other anti-establishment groups on the secular left

[...] one of the few common denominators between angry Muslims and secular leftists is hostility to America.

Not only is the European left joining forces with Muslim extremists; they support terrists who attack America, too:

The September 2001 attacks, remember, were planned in Hamburg.

. . .

And lots of businessmen know only that version of international news.

So what they say does matter to shape conventional wisdom, unfortunately.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

What exactly did Ben Franklin say?

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

According to whom?

Who is behind The Economist, and what is its readership?

Who is the intended target of this bullshit?

Is the UK independent of the US?

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

If the Economist can pile all numbers onto one heap, so can I. It just goes to show that with a larger Muslim society, Europe is in a different stage of integration than the USA is - that's all. It makes no sense to draw parallels based only on the amount of total Muslims present. Comparing between two continents when the USA has a percentage of total population that's as large as France, or the Netherlands, that'd make a first start.

Now the Economist included the percentages as well within their figure, but why the choice to present it the way they have it, and not the way I put up? What's the motivation behind that choice? I'm not a statistical expert, so everyone should feel free to point out where my reasoning is flawed.

When Americans look at the rest of the world, they always assume that people are primarily classified by their religion and ethnicity and everything follows from there. Come to think of it, when they look at themselves they assume the same. The difference is that they assume in the US that "diversity" is a source of strength because of the success of the melting pot, and that abroad it is the source of all conflict, and that the rest of the world needs to learn the American way of integration in order to live with themselves peacefully.

I believe the situation in Iraq would be very different had the Coalition Provisional Authority not come in from the very beginning determined to "manage the ethnic and religious divisions within Iraq".

The frames we wear...

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

I suppose it's possible, in theory, that the Economist does not mean "Eurabia" to be racist. It's also possible, in theory, that they are involved in a good faith attempt to save Europe from its errors. What's the betting?

And that was being an asshole: if the Nazis had successfully invaded the UK (or Ireland) I'm quite sure there would have been lots of people perfectly willing to help round up Jews for slaughter. Likewise in the US. Do you have any idea how widespread that sort of eugenicist  thinking was at the time or how popular fascism was outside of the countries  that implemented it? The importance of WWII's history is that any nation can act incredibly badly when whipped up by dangerous fools. It can happen there, and quite possibly would have.

I don't understand why, when seeing a phenomenon develop, Americans (in particular) require that it develop to the worst pitch of the previous analogues before any comparison can be drawn. Do you think that early 20th C anti-Semitism dropped fully formed from heaven? That 1950's McCarthyism happened in a vacuum? That Hitler came from nowhere and was suddenly a dictator? These things develop over time: "Islamofacism" is being built up to an analogue to Communism by people who need an overarching foe to fit their world-view to. That it's both a religion - Islam - and an ethic group - Arabs - that are being picked on has other disturbing echoes. Think of it as a cross between 20th C anti-semitism, mid 20th C anti-communism with a dash of corporatism thrown in. Makes for a delightful little cocktail. Good before dinner.

I call it a racist slur because, whatever its origins, it has largely been used as such by the far right, and eschewed by anyone from the left or reasonable centre. This is precisely why I object to its use by The Economist, and see considerable importance in the way it is placed on this cover (large black lettering, about ten times the size of the sub-heading) in conjunction with instantly-identifiable symbols of Islam and France. Whatever qualifiers they may put inside the mag, the cover speaks a clear language.

My comment on "Muslim" and "Communist" is based on history as I lived it; when I, as a student in Britain, demonstrated against the Vietnam War, I was told by those who defended the war (that boils down to the American political and military establishment speaking through their punditry/communications/media outlets), that I was being manipulated by the Reds. That's what The Economist is now saying, mutatis mutandis, about those who protest the Iraq War. More broadly, I was pointing to the wish of certain American ultras to develop a new Cold War with a permanent enemy and a Fifth Column.

Otehrwise, I entirely subscribe to the above comments by Colman and Migeru.