[ by Charles Cameron — the camps, theirs and ours, and nuking Mecca, with a pinch of Lynch ]
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Here are the reminders..

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These DoubleQuotes arose in the context of comments by Georgetown Syria specialist Marc Lynch, better known on the web as the blogger Abu Aardvark, on a recent On the Media podcast:

The kinds of ideas that you are seeing espoused by presidential candidates right now are the sorts of things that you would have seen on obscure right-wing blogs twelve years ago, and now they’re being taken seriously on the op-ed pages. The idea that you would have a religious test for Syrian refugees to let Christians but not Muslims in, or that you would create a national registry to track Muslims, or to shut down mosques – I mean, these are radical fringe ideas, and yet they’ve insinuated themselves into the mainstream.

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Here’s the evolution of an idea, from 2005 to the present. You’ll note that the rhetoric has gained intensity (the qualification “if they nuke us” has been dropped), but in this case the earlier source (Fox) was more mainstream, and the current one (WND) way deeper into the fringe..

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Sources:

Raw Story, Trump crosses the Nazi line: Maybe Muslims should wear special ID badges

Raw Story, Rhode Island Republican wants Syrian refugees held in ‘centralized’ camps

Fox News, Tancredo: If They Nuke Us, Bomb Mecca

World NetDaily, Bomb Mecca off the face of the earth

On the Media, Lessons Unlearned