Islamophobic Ads Reach TriMet
10/18/2012
The Islamophobic advertising campaign that has already appeared in New York City and San Francisco has come to Portland. Bus ads reading "In Any War Between the Civilized Man and the Savage, Support the Civilized Man" as well as "Support Israel. Defeat Jihad," will be visible on TriMet vehicles. The ad is financed by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and also promotes the New York-based group Stop Islamization of America (SOIA). The Islamophobic SOIA organization first gained notoriety during the 2010 controversy around the plans for building an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero in New York City.
Pamela Geller, a central agitator for both AFDI and SOIA who is behind the advertisement campaigns, considers the Obama presidency to be a pawn of Muslim conspiracy, and has suggested that the President is actually an illegitimate child of Malcolm X. Geller’s writings were praised by and cited in the manifesto of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Geller, following Breivik’s 2011 attacks, stated that Breivik’s victims at the Utøya camp had they survived would have become “future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims who refuse to assimilate, who commit major violence against Norwegian natives including violent gang rapes, with impunity, and who live on the dole.”
Hopefully an outbreak of projectile vomiting will cover up any of those posters before someone feels oppressed. But with the diversity in Portland that is doubtful.