Peter King’s persecution of Muslims has historical roots

U.S. Rep. Peter King, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, held his second hearing to “examine the threat of Islamic radicalization” and scapegoat Muslims on June 15. At the hearing, King targeted one of the most oppressed groups in the United States — prisoners. He labeled Muslim prisoners a breeding ground for “terrorism.”

Some of the greatest African-American leaders, like Malcolm X, became Muslims while incarcerated. King and his committee are not only attacking Muslims, but the entire Black community’s liberation struggle.

At the first hearing on March 10, Rep. Keith Ellison, one of two Muslim Americans serving in Congress, broke into tears and accused King of being “McCarthyistic” in his approach to the Muslim community.

“We need to approach this through fair analysis and do no harm. I fear this hearing does not meet that standard,” Ellison said to King. “When you ascribe the violent actions [of individuals] to an entire community, you assign blame to an entire community. This is the heart of scapegoating and stereotyping.”

Ellison told the committee the story of Mohammad Salman Hamdani, a 23-year-old paramedic and Muslim American from Queens, N.Y., who died while responding to the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. “He was one of those brave first responders, who tragically lost his life. ... After the tragedy, some people tried to smear his character solely because of his Islamic faith.”

Ellison explained that there was unfounded speculation that Hamdani had disappeared because he was in league with the attackers. His remains were later found in the rubble of the Twin Towers.

What was McCarthyism?

“McCarthyistic” refers to a repressive period in U.S. history sometimes referred to as the witch-hunt.

After World War II, the U.S. and European imperialists launched a broad political, ideological and economic assault on the Soviet Union known as the Cold War, eventually including military encirclement by NATO forces.

In 1949, the victory of China’s revolution sparked a wild witch-hunt against suspected communists in the U.S. In the same year, the Soviet Union tested its own nuclear weapon, sending a message that it would not be a defenseless victim of Washington’s nuclear threats.

The anti-communist witch-hunt intensified in 1950 with the opening of the Korean War. The House Un-American Activities Committee and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s committee subpoenaed trade unionists, teachers, scholars, writers, actors, artists, journalists and even some government officials.

Some went to jail for refusing to testify. Others were forced underground or into exile. Many more were targeted for political repression, losing their jobs and livelihoods in a broad FBI sweep aimed at driving all leftists out of the labor and progressive movements.

This was the atmosphere in which Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested in 1950 and charged with having given the “secret” of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. The trial judge even blamed them for the Korean War!

To fend off accusations of anti-Semitism, the government arranged for a Jewish judge and prosecutors at the Rosenbergs’ trial. One of them was attorney Roy Cohn, whose direct examination of Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, produced testimony central to the Rosenbergs’ conviction.

Greenglass later admitted that he lied during the trial at the prosecution’s urging.

It was impossible for the Rosenbergs to get anything resembling a fair or impartial trial amidst the frenzy created by the media, Congress, the FBI and courts. They were executed on June 19, 1953, in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, N.Y.

The Rosenbergs’ conviction brought 24-year-old Cohn to the attention of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who recommended him to Sen. McCarthy. McCarthy hired Cohn as his chief counsel, choosing him over Robert Kennedy, in part to avoid accusations of anti-Semitic motivation for his investigations.

King worked with Cohn

What does all of this have to do with Peter King’s 2011 Congressional hearings?

As a young lawyer, King worked with Roy Cohn for 18 months at the firm Saxe, Bacon & Bolan, where Cohn maintained his private practice. When Cohn died in 1986, King told the Associated Press: “It was amazing to me the network of contacts he had. He seemed to have access anywhere — FBI agents, prominent senators, and the State Department. There seemed to be nobody he didn’t know.” (Politico, March 8)

If Roy Cohn seemingly impressed the young Peter King, who is King now having an impact on? Who may follow in his footsteps?

Why, it’s none other than New York City Councilperson Dan Halloran. At a GOP fundraiser on May 14, 2010, Dan Halloran presented King with the Ronald Reagan Award. The same year, King returned the favor by encouraging Halloran to join his anti-Muslim crusade in Congress by running for New York’s 5th District seat. Halloran had other priorities and declined the offer.

Halloran became the first elected official in New York City to publicly criticize the Cordoba House Park 51 Islamic Center project in lower Manhattan, near the World Trade Center site.

But Muslims aren’t Halloran’s only targets. He also opposed the City Council’s bill to regulate so-called crisis pregnancy centers, which deceive women seeking reproductive health care by bombarding them with anti-abortion propaganda.

After a powerful winter storm dumped 20 to 32 inches of snow on the city last Dec. 26, New York sanitation workers toiled for weeks in 12-to-14-hour shifts to clear the drifts away. Despite these heroic efforts, reckless decisions by billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s administration disrupted normal snow removal. Several New Yorkers died when ambulances failed to get through the snow-covered streets.

During the height of the storm crisis, Halloran and the right-wing, anti-labor New York Post made unsubstantiated claims that a “worker slowdown” had impeded the snow removal operations.

New York City’s Department of Investigation looked into Halloran’s accusations. On June 3, the DOI issued its findings, exonerating the sanitation workers and stating that, “In total, Mr. Halloran’s information about city employee statements contributed no actual evidence about a possible slowdown.”

In contrast, at a City Council hearing investigating the blizzard fiasco, Freedom Party gubernatorial candidate and Councilperson Charles Barron told Deputy Mayor for Operations Stephen Goldsmith, “I think you and the mayor should be investigated.”

Barron was right. Bloomberg and Goldsmith sabotaged the snow removal effort by failing to declare a snow emergency, failing to order major highways be salted before the snow started falling, and reducing the amount of snow removal personnel and equipment.

How can the people stop the Peter Kings and Dan Hallorans, who are cut from the same cloth as Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn? With solidarity and resistance.

A prime example took place on Sept. 11, 2010 — the ninth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center.

Some 10,000 people gathered in City Hall Park, just blocks from the World Trade Center site, and marched through lower Manhattan to show solidarity with the Muslim community and condemn the racism and bigotry whipped up by Halloran and the right wing against the Cordoba House Islamic Center plan.