Daniel PIPEs' Xenophobic DREAM

Xenophobia has a long and (dis)reputable history in the United States.

“In short unless the stream of their importation could be turned [away], as you very judiciously propose, they will soon so outnumber us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious.” (1)

“…and are they not, with the sickness of hope deferred, waiting for our downfall? It is the light of our republican prosperity, gleaming in upon their dark prison house, which is inspiring hope….By fleets and armies they cannot [extinguish our light]. But…a foreign influence acting efficaciously on the councils of a republic, has always been regarded and always proved itself to be among the most fatal to liberty” (2).

“The increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims...will present true dangers to American Jews…”(3). “The Palestinians are a miserable people...and they deserve to be…”(4). “All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.”(5).

Americans have always found reason to fear and hate the “stranger” –from 1753 to 2009, from a Founding Father to the most famous 19th-century Protestant preacher in the country, to a modern-day hate-monger.

Daniel Pipes has, for reasons that have been thoroughly discussed in academic literature, likely become the most outspoken and influential xenophobe in our history. His dream is to crush anyone who speaks Arabic and all Muslims. But the learned discourse about Pipes’s vitriol has made not a dent in the armor the mainstream media and government operatives have wrapped around him. Virtually nothing he says is ever questioned in the media, and judges and other government operatives accept anything he says as “truth.”

A random example from scores I have documented:

According to Daniel Pipes, the central task of the United States is to reinforce moderate Islam as a counterbalance to Islamism. Pipes postulates the central conflict in the GWOT is the one waged between militant and moderate Islam. “While Washington can help in this struggle by providing assistance to the moderates and working to establish reforms in areas locked in a self-defeating bargain with the militants (such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan), the actual battle will be won or lost within the Islamic world itself” (6).

Daniel Pipes is, of course, entitled to his opinion about the “central task of the United States.” I have mine, too (and it has to do with protecting liberties). But Pipes's opinion is part of the evidence in a paper published by the US Army War College. I am not privy to the workings of the US Army War College, but I suggest that an article written by the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, a Senior Intelligence Analyst for the Middle East and North Africa for the Deputy Chief of Staff, and an analyst of West Africa and Islamism—all three stationed at the Headquarters of US Army Europe and Seventh Army, in Heidelberg, Germany—is intended to influence decision-makers.

The US Army War College, in this paper designed to “demystify the radical Islamist threat,” gives the weight of authority to the work of a person so caught up in xenophobia that he dreams that “...there are no Palestinian refugees or land dispossession and [who] has advocated the leveling of Palestinian villages, while also pronouncing, without empirical support, that half of the Muslims residing in the United States 'despise American politics and ethics’” (7).

This Xenophobe led the charge against Debbie Almontaser.

This is not, or should not be, a surprise to anyone because Daniel Pipes has made himself (rich and) famous as the one-man demolition team for all things Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim in America. What is surprising is that none of his vitriolic nonsense has ever been challenged in government or the mainstream media. No, I was not born yesterday. It's not surprising at all.

Those of us in Dallas have a special connection to Daniel Pipes's Xenophobic dream. Pipes is an adjunct scholar at WINEP, where Matthew Levitt is director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. He also founded the Middle East Quarterly in which Matthew Levitt frequently publishes articles. I have no way of knowing what the personal or professional relationship between Daniel Pipes and Matthew Levitt is. Anyone can plainly see, however, that they are cut from the same Xenophobic mold.

This is not original thinking on my part.

“…Levitt constructed a vast terrorist conspiracy out of paranoid Zionist fantasies trying to explain the refusal of Muslims to acknowledge that it was just to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. In Levitt’s delusions, to which other lesser ranking government officials like Daniel Pipes and Rachel Ehrenfeld contributed, Islamic finance and Islamic charity serve as a many-headed hydra of evil. Through vast numbers of meetings and internal dissemination of documents Levitt and Levey spread Zionist doctrine throughout government bureaucracy until practically every official from Ashcroft down could, on cue, reflexively repeat the whole litany of the sins that Levitt had fabricated about each charity or financial entity that was targeted for demonization” (8).

In Dallas we twice saw the results of Levitt's fantasies (dreams) played out in a courtroom. It could not have happened without the twenty-year unchallenged Xenophobic rantings of Daniel Pipes.

(1) Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Peter Collinson, Philadelphia, May 9th, 1753 (referring to German immigrants)
(2) Lyman Beecher. A Plea for the West Edition 2. New York: Leavitt, Lord & Co. 1835: 54.
(3) STATEMENT OF SENATOR HARKIN. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Wednesday, July 23, 2003. http://www.middleeast.org/forum/fb-public/1/1130.shtml
(4) Kelley, Elaine. "Daniel Pipes’ Acrimonious Remarks Embarrass Organizers of Portland Panel on 'Healing Words.'” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (July 2001): 57. Northwest News.
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/july01/0107057.html
(5) Pipes, Daniel. "The Muslims are coming! The Muslims Are Coming!” National Review. November 19, 1990.
(6) Daniel Pipes and Graham Fuller, “Combating the Ideology of Radical Islam,” Special Policy Forum Report, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 10 April 2003. Quoted in:
Harvey, Andrew, Ian Sullivan, and Ralph Groves. “A clash of systems: an analytical framework to demystify the radical Islamist threat.” Parameters 35.3 (Autumn 2005): 72(15).
(7) Pipes, Daniel. “In Muslim America.” National Review, February 21, 2000. Quoted in:
Goodman, Robin Truth. “Terrorist Hunter: Walter Mosley, the urban plot, and the terror war.” Cultural Critique 66 (Spring 2007): 21(37).
(8) Friedmann, Karin. “Conspiracies involve lower officials.” Online Journal. July 30, 2009.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4964.shtml