[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin December 21 2012 Dean Baker on Social Security Laila al Arian on Homeland @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin122112.mp3″]
This week on CounterSpin: You may have heard that, in the discussion to avert the dread “fiscal cliff,” the White House has offered to, adopt a “chained Consumer Price Index” that would cut Social Security benefits; and to extend the Bush tax cuts for people making between $250,000 and 400,000. These rumors are being reported as almost as if they’ve been confirmed, by a media that seems relieved at the possible resolution. We’ll talk it over with economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic & Policy Research.
Also on CounterSpin today, the Showtime drama Homeland is a big hit with viewers, as it follows a CIA operative trailing a former Army POW who has become a Muslim terrorist. Tv critics can’t get enough—it’s gripping, thrilling” stocked with magnetic characters. But journalist Laila Al-Arian sees it differently—her piece for Salon.com was headlined, “TV’s Most Islamophobic Show.” She’ll join us to explain.
LINKS:
—Center for Economic & Policy Research
–“TV’s Most Islamophobic Show,” by Laila Al-Arian (Salon.com, 12/15/12)
Random thoughts about Homeland and Islamophobia.
From the beginning, I’ve been suspicious of the possible racism in this show. So, I was very interested to hear what Ms.Al-Arian had to say. After hearing her, I had to write. From where I sit, Homeland is more subtle propaganda then racist.
Her first evidence of Islamophobia is that the Arabs are the bad guys. Too this I would point out that in 2 seasons (except for the season finale) the only children who died were due to drone strikes ordered by the Vice President (i.e. the Americans). In my book, that makes the Americans the bad guys. When the Brody character tells the vice president that he’s killing him, I cheered. In the first season, the plot was to get Brody into a secure location with the vice president, the top CIA officials and the Joint Chiefs of Staff so Brody could detonate a bomb vest. To get them all together, a sniper working with Brody, kills a high-level government official (not an innocent). He doesn’t set off the bomb but if he had, he would have killed the people in government who are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Muslim world. Upon learning of the plot, the CIA characters talked of this as a terrorist attack but since the targets were all direct participants in the war effort, the attack should have been characterized at a military counterstrike. By not doing this, the show leaves the assumption that ant attack against any American is an act of terrorism. To be charitable, maybe they thought the audience was smart enough to put it together.
In the season finale, hundreds (?) of Americans are killed by a car bomb at the CIA while attending a memorial service for the vice president. (The same tactic the US military uses when memorial services are held for killed “militants” (i.e. any military aged male within the kill radius unless they are posthumously proven to be non-combatants). The victims included the teenage son of the vice president (not a nice character for other reasons), his wife (the most innocent of all the characters) and top agents from the CIA (including the director, who, we are told in the previous scene is a “bad guy”), the military and top politicians. Except for the wife and to a lesser extent, the teenage son, all those killed were legitimate military targets. Personally, I felt more grief for the killing of the Arab boy then I did for any of the victims of the car bomb.
Ms. Al-Arian pointed to the smarmy look of the terrorists as an example of the show’s Islamophobia. He doesn’t look any smarmier then the actor who plays the Israel spy on Covert Affairs. The only difference in their look is one wears a western style suit, the other wears Arab looking clothes.
The Abu Nasir character is suppose to be a fanatical killer, driven to kill because of the American war on Muslims. To me, he is not even as deranged as the Americans in the movie Inglorious Bastards. He’s no more evil than the director of the CIA or the vice president. In fact, he’s arguably less evil because his targets are known combatants, unlike the Americans.
She also points out the female reporter for the Arab news agency. The character is Oxford educated, successful, well off and works for a mainstream news organization (since she was able to interview so many high level government officials, we know she must be mainstream. We know, in real life, that high level government, intelligence and military officials don’t talk to reporters unless they trust them on a personal and professional level. Any suggestion to the contrary is propaganda.) The way that she is connected to Nasir is through a friendship between her grandfather and his. How can she be a believable terrorist sympathizer based on such a flimsy connection? Believe it or not, Paul Revere was well educated, from an affluent family and a very successful and respected businessman in Boston. Based on her criticism, it would be unbelievable to think Paul Revere would be a Yankee terrorist, but he was.
The point about the torture used on Brody to “turn” him is arguably Islamophobic, in that it lets us believe that terrorists torture American soldiers when they are captured, but mostly, it is propagandist. If this treatment were true, it would be all over the news. To date, one US soldier has been captured in Afghanistan. He has been threatened with “harsh treatment” but there is no evidence he has been tortured. On the other hand, there are volumes of evidence that the US tortured captured prisoners. So there may be some Islamophobia here but mostly it seems to an attempt to justify our torture of their prisoners.
When the bomb maker’s shop is located, the CIA sends in armed soldiers to raid the place. After the raid is over, they are ambushed by a group of terrorists in full body armor, with assault rifles and advanced technology. (When I initially saw them, I thought they were a government black ops group there to prevent the discovery. I was very surprised to find out they were terrorist.)
The terrorists triumph and get away without any trace. Later, the #1 terrorist turns up in Washington, D.C., without anyone in the government having any idea how it happened. Or even later, a military helicopter, operated by the terrorists, flies off with Brody without any government agency knowing anything about it and without any way to track it. That means that an unknown number of military trained terrorists immigrated to this country, with, or obtained later, the latest in military and technological hardware without any of the hundreds of thousands of law enforcement and intelligence personnel discovering a thing.
In reality, we know, from FAIR and other like-minded groups that our Constitutional protection of privacy has been discarded and the government can spy on anyone, any time, for any reason. None of these things could happen without the government having some knowledge of it. (We even had knowledge of 9/11 even though we ignored it.) There are those in Washington, D.C. who want Americans to think there are squadrons of militarily trained terrorists with advanced weapons and technology sneaking into this country to inflict terrible devastation on us. (Gee, to make us safe, maybe we should give up more of our liberties and spend more on the military and intelligence agencies.) Islamophobia? I don’t think so. I think Homeland is guilty of using mainstream assumptions to reinforce mainstream propaganda.