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| Newt Gingrich has turned Islamophobia into an art | Newt Gingrich has turned Islamophobia into an art |
| (about 9 hours later) | |
| Related: What we learned from day three of the Republican convention | Related: What we learned from day three of the Republican convention |
| If you missed Newt Gingrich’s speech at the Republican National Convention then this was the gist of it: ‘Be afraid of the Islamists. Be very, very, very afraid. Thought September 11 was bad? Hah! You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ | If you missed Newt Gingrich’s speech at the Republican National Convention then this was the gist of it: ‘Be afraid of the Islamists. Be very, very, very afraid. Thought September 11 was bad? Hah! You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ |
| The former speaker had something of a tough spot; squeezed in between Ted Cruz, who sort of stole the show by refusing to endorse Trump, and Mike Pence, who formally accepted the VP nomination. But, you know, when life gives you lemons, you’ve just got to go ahead and invoke a bloody apocalypse, backed with some spurious statistics. | The former speaker had something of a tough spot; squeezed in between Ted Cruz, who sort of stole the show by refusing to endorse Trump, and Mike Pence, who formally accepted the VP nomination. But, you know, when life gives you lemons, you’ve just got to go ahead and invoke a bloody apocalypse, backed with some spurious statistics. |
| As someone on Twitter pointed out, an anagram of “Republican National Convention” is “Con vulnerable nation into panic” and Gingrich did just that in a way that only Gingrich can really do. | As someone on Twitter pointed out, an anagram of “Republican National Convention” is “Con vulnerable nation into panic” and Gingrich did just that in a way that only Gingrich can really do. |
| Over the decades he’s turned speech-making into not so much an art as a sort of Newtonian science. In 1994 the political action committee he ran, Gopac, distributed a memo called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control”, to the Republican party. This instructed Republicans to learn to “speak like Newt” by using a laundry list of “contrasting words” and “optimistic positive governing words” when describing Democrats and Republicans. | Over the decades he’s turned speech-making into not so much an art as a sort of Newtonian science. In 1994 the political action committee he ran, Gopac, distributed a memo called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control”, to the Republican party. This instructed Republicans to learn to “speak like Newt” by using a laundry list of “contrasting words” and “optimistic positive governing words” when describing Democrats and Republicans. |
| Related: Ted Cruz's non-endorsement of Trump sets fire to Republican 'unity' | Richard Wolffe | Related: Ted Cruz's non-endorsement of Trump sets fire to Republican 'unity' | Richard Wolffe |
| This black/white, good/evil approach to language was very much in evidence on Wednesday night as Gingrich delivered a textbook example of language as a means of control. | |
| Gingrich started with a roll call of all the disasters in the last 37 days that he believes Muslims were responsible for. There were a lot of disasters. After setting up the problem (imminent death and destruction) he zeroed in on the culprits. Ah, but wait a second before you get hysterical with your Islamophobic accusations news-media! | |
| The culprit he was very careful to point out, is #notallmuslims. A few days ago, of course, Gingrich caused some outrage when, responding to last week’s terrorist attack in Nice, he proposed that the government should “test every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in sharia they should be deported”. | |
| After the media reported his exact words he quickly backtracked by saying that “the news media went into a hysteria overnight in trying to grossly exaggerate what I was saying.” Not wanting a repeat of this, Gingrich did some Googling and found some statistics about how, while not all Muslims want to kill you, a sizable proportion of them do. | |
| “Pew Research finds that just 9% of Muslims in Pakistan support Isis,” Gingrich said. “Unfortunately, that 9% is 16 million people. And that’s just one country.” So there you go. He did the math and it proves that he isn’t Islamophobic thank you very much. | |
| Just maybe slightly creative when it comes to the interpretation of data, seeing as that study said 9% of Muslims had a favorable view of Isis, not that they would support it. And, more importantly, the same 2015 Pew report found that Pakistan was an outlier; views of Isis were “overwhelmingly negative” in 10 Muslim-majority nations. Which Gingrich didn’t feel was important to mention. | |
| Gingrich’s speech sounded suspiciously like he was auditioning to be the next secretary of defense. If that scares you then take some consolation from the fact that Gingrich dismissed that idea in an earlier speech on Wednesday. “I think [Trump] thought I was going to say I would like to be secretary of state or secretary of defense, but those are real jobs and I’m at a stage in my life where I would really just like to be creative,” Gingrich said. | Gingrich’s speech sounded suspiciously like he was auditioning to be the next secretary of defense. If that scares you then take some consolation from the fact that Gingrich dismissed that idea in an earlier speech on Wednesday. “I think [Trump] thought I was going to say I would like to be secretary of state or secretary of defense, but those are real jobs and I’m at a stage in my life where I would really just like to be creative,” Gingrich said. |
| And if, in turn, this disappoints you then take solace in the chance that, perhaps, despite his protestations, Gingrich might find a way to combine creativity and a “real job”. After all, it’s become abundantly clear that creativity, particularly when it comes to facts, is one of the traits most valued in a Trump administration. | And if, in turn, this disappoints you then take solace in the chance that, perhaps, despite his protestations, Gingrich might find a way to combine creativity and a “real job”. After all, it’s become abundantly clear that creativity, particularly when it comes to facts, is one of the traits most valued in a Trump administration. |