The exchange between Steve Emerson of the Investigative Project and Rep. Peter King over Emerson's not being included among the possible witnesses for King's Muslim HUAC hearings, reported by Ben Smith, is informative. Emerson was early in sounding the alarm about funds in Islamic charities being funneled to radical groups, but his group has since descended into pointing an accusatory finger at every American Muslim organization or leader in the public eye. In a letter, Emerson, outraged that King didn't include him, accuses the congressman of "caving to the demands of radical Islamists."
During the days of Senator McCarthy, innocent writers were blacklisted and had to write under pseudonyms because of fear from the accusations of the dictatorial Senator. That you have caved in to the demands of radical Islamists in removing me as a witness, in light of the fact that no one in this country has done more empirical investigations about the attitudes and statements of the established Muslim leadership, shows me, to my utter horror, that McCarthyism is still alive today...
Emerson's understanding of what constitutes McCarthyism resembles Sarah Palin's understanding of the First Amendment. Emerson doesn't seem to understand that "blacklisted" means you can't get a job or make a living because of your perceived political views, not that you don't get invited to testify before Congress on a subject you are knowledgeable about.
Emerson's invocation of McCarthyism aimed at the critics of King's McCarthy-style hearings is particularly odd. When I say that Emerson has pointed an accusatory finger at every American Muslim organization or leader in the public eye, I mean that literally -- in his letter he refers to Congressman Keith Ellison "and his Muslim Brotherhood friends," as though the pro-gay-rights congressman from Minnesota were merely a latter-day Sayyid Qutb. As if to give the whole thing a grade-school playground sheen, Emerson even whines that Rep. King seems to believe that Rep. Ellison is a "better friend than me." Muslim friends it seems, are the gateway drug to radical Islamism.
The tragic part of the story is that Emerson, who helped turn fearmongering about a nationwide domestic takeover by Muslim radicals into a veritable industry, doesn't get the very basic identity politics strategey King is employing here. By calling Ayaan Hirsi Ali and M. Zuhdi Jasser, King is trying to sharply define the acceptable range of political views for American Muslims. That is, you can either renounce the faith entirely like Hirsi Ali and declare that "Islam is a cult" and "we are at war with Islam," or like Jasser you can simply accuse every other Muslim in the country of trying to impose Taliban-style Sharia law. Otherwise, you might as well be a terrorist. The idea is that those views will sound less inflammatory coming from witnesses who identify or once identified as Muslims than they would coming from a non-Muslim like Emerson. King isn't so much rejecting Emerson as giving him exactly what he wants. It's possible that Emerson finally figured that out, since according to Smith, he later apologized.
