“The other piece of this that I found really disturbing in the messaging around the war recently…is some of the language in the description of their opponent. “Sort of the way they seem to create this image of the Iranians and all of their sort of proxies or allies, the sort of imagery that they conjure up,. And I think that it takes a certain amount of arrogance and I’m also going to say it, a bit of racism, to constantly talk about people like they are savages. That is a word that we have heard Hegseth use.”
—MSNOW hostess Antonia Hylton, during Saturday’s broadcast of “The Weekend: Primetime.”
Apparently all you have to do to justify being made a co-host of a show on MSNOW is to demonstrate enmity to one’s own country’s leaders and support for its enemies. Oh, before I forget, “enemy” is the proper term for a nation your country is currently at war with, not “opponent.”
Furthermore, calling Iran’s leaders “savages” is not racism but a fair and accurate diagnosis. Savage as a noun means one who is vicious and uncivilized. Iran is currently a brutal, murderous and ruthless regime that murdered many thousands of its own citizens for daring to protest their harsh treatment from their government. Since the Islamic takeover in 1979, 258 Americans were killed in a suicide bombing at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, and a truck bombing in the same city in 1983. The Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah killed 19 U.S. Airmen in Saudi Arabia at the Khobar Towers in 1996. It is estimated that Iranian proxies have killed nearly 700 Americans between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly 50 Americans were killed by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists during the attack on Israel that took place October 7, 2023, and that attack was as savage as one could be even if one ignores American casualties and only focuses on the Israeli civilians killed, raped and taken as hostages
Ethics Alarms 
Does she know that Iranians are technically Caucasian’s and not if the Semitic groups that populate the Arab/muslim world and Israel ?
Apparently not!
How I wish my own bishops would recognize that diplomacy and dialogue does not nor has ever worked with these savages.
The bishops and Western world leaders are trying to sing kumba ya with people who have demonstrated their goal is to destroy our relgion and Western values. NOt only by means of the swod but by overpowering culture withtheir pernicious presence .
Useful idiots.
I think they’re more pernicious that that, AM. I think they’re bad actors. They want chaos so they can bring in an authoritarian government of their liking.
I wonder if she will have any comment on the fate of the Iranian Soccer players that didn’t sing the Iranian national anthem in protest? I’ll bet those women will meet a savage fate. I hate to put it so bluntly but that is the reality. I think 2 players are staying in Australia but 5 are returning due to coercion from threats to there family members.
I know their, not there.
Jack already covered this. Somehow page 2 didn’t show up when I read the post then after commenting and returning I see page 2.
The families are being held hostage to force their daughters to return to Iran, where they will face punishment and possibly death for refusing to sing the Iranian national anthem during their opening match, in an apparent protest against Iran’s government.
“Savages” is a perfectly appropriate description of such a government.
Jack has a valuable way of clarifying issues that are made to seem ambiguous but, when clarified, are not.
It is the product (fruit) of rigorous rationality. This is both a compliment and a statement about how rationality works. (Depends on sound first principles).
In a sense, I can understand Antonia’s desire not to fully dehumanize our enemies. I’ve made the case before that we can go to war without treating our enemies like mere vermin. Crush them yes, but when the actually combatants and their leaders are taken care and their means to keep fighting extinguished, then we can at least potentially turn enemies into friends, like we did with the Axis powers at the end of WWII.
That being said, we’re not talking about mere misunderstandings or competition over resources. It should be beyond question that radical muslims and other styles of absolute dictatorship are incompatible with Western values. It may be oversimplifying to say “They hate us for our freedoms”, but the reality is they hate because we won’t let them kill or grind down all the Jews in Israel, and they hate us because our existence as prosperous, free-thinking democracies is living refutation of their belief that absolute control is the way to prosperity, causing people to leave their societies for ours.
It may be oversimplifying to say “They hate us for our freedoms”, but the reality is they hate because we won’t let them kill or grind down all the Jews in Israel, and they hate us because our existence as prosperous, free-thinking democracies is living refutation of their belief that absolute control is the way to prosperity, causing people to leave their societies for ours.
Truth (if such is understood to exist) tends to work against formulated narratives based in social and political narratives. One has to accept the truthful fact that Jews and then Israel conquered a land that was abandoned millennia prior (or from which they were exiled by the Roman state). This is what “Nakba” refers to: the disaster of expulsion from one’s land and home.
So it is actually false to say, to believe, “they hate us because we are Jews”. In fact, there are a dozen different stories to explain Arab contempt for Israel and foreign occupation of Israel and the region and some have elements of truth and some are flatly false. It is far simpler to say “We took over this land. You were expelled from your home and land.”
At least you cannot completely let go (choose not to see) a fundamental element in the conflict.
It is true that the settler Jews of Israel, when they made their move to establish the military base of the State of Israel, provoked the will to erase those people. No doubt there.
But the core motive was such that anyone would understand their feeling and their motive: Israel is and of course made itself a forward-base of Occidental power in the region. That is a fact not a speculation or a fantasy.
The “doctrine of Americanism” is that of manifest destiny. The whole world will give in to American will. We see it as “God’s will” and we are agents of that manifestation.
I do not so much object to the rhetorical content of your paragraph as I say that the rhetoric is no longer necessary (for those capable of thinking without the need of rhetorical embellishments).