Joining the dots that aren't there

Crushed by Ingsoc can have a suspicious frame of mind somtimes.
We remember the nineteen eighties and how they did tell us a few porkie pies about the Russians back then.
Do you remember that Lesley Nielson film where he breaks into a meeting where all the world's terorists are seated rouna table together- or the bad guys of the world as we were supposed to see at then? (Gaddafi, Arafat, etc)
Well, we were actually spun this crap then. We were spun this idea that all 'terrorist' groups were backed by the Russians and that there was this vast Terror network funded by the soviet Union through Gaddafi and Linking the Provisional IRA, the ANC, the PLO, the Sandinistas and pretty much anybody our governments didn't like.
So questions about why we in Britain are supporting Fascist regimes in South africa and appalling policies by the Israelis, as well as preventing the justifiable right of the irish to self determination can simply be answered- 'Ah, but you can't give in to terror- you will destry our Western way of life.'
Sound familar?
What Crushed by Ingsoc sees as a few facts in the present world which happen to have one thing in common, but probably just that.

1. A strange little man with a crazy beard living in a cave in Afghanistan, acheived a remarkable propaganda coup for his small band of extremists by flying planes into the twin towers. Horrific, Incredible, but no evidence of a huge teror network.
after all they've managed to bugger all since, this allegedly all-pervasive axis of evil.

2. A Dictator originally backed by the west due to the SECULAR thrust of his policies, who had now fallen out with the west and was sitting on much of the world's oil happened to rule over a muslim country.
Oh- and we'd execute him for killing people in a war the west gave him the guns to fight.

3.Of all immigrant groups in the west, many of the poorest happen to be muslim, (Pakistanis, Bengalis, Algerians, Somalis). Hindus and Sikhs tend to be far wealthier because they bought oodles of wea;th from East africa and places. Therefore, just as we find disaffected poverty stricken white youths turn to nasty extremist groups like the BNP, young Muslims do the same in their own communities. These groups are undoubtedly unpleasant. They are not connected to al queda.

4. Veils.

Oh, look it's a global Muslim conspiracy- an axis of evil- what next, well Iran must be part of too!
And Cuba. (Voice of common sense points out that's one spin too far as even the average dumbed down American or Brit knows the Cubans aren't Muslim. Bush and Blair quietly drop that one.)

It's scaremongering. It's creating public fear to give the governments of the west an excuse for creating the police state they are creating now.
It's whipping up the same sort of sentiments the Nazis whipped up against the Jews, or the Elizabethans whipped up against Catholics.
It's nasty cynical manipulation of different groups against eachother to serve political ends.
But that's how INGSOC works.