What should a political party that has just lost its white working-class, blue-collar base to a “make America great again” nationalist do to try to regain these voters? Why not appoint as the new head of the party a radical left-wing ideologue who has a long history of supporting an anti-American, anti-white, anti-Semitic Nation of Islam racist? Such an appointment will surely bring back rust-belt voters who have lost their jobs to globalization and free trade! Is this really the thinking of those Democratic leaders who are pushing for Keith Ellison to head the Democratic National Committee?

Keith Ellison is, by all accounts, a decent guy, who is well liked by his congressional colleagues. But it is hard to imagine a worse candidate to take over the DNC at this time. Ellison represents the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party, just when the party — if it is to win again — must move to the center in order to bring back the voters it lost to Trump. The Democrats didn’t lose because their candidates weren’t left enough. They won the votes of liberals. The radical voters they lost to Jill Stein were small in number and are not likely to be influenced by the appointment of Ellison. The centrist voters they lost to Trump will only be further alienated by the appointment of a left-wing ideologue, who seems to care more about global issues than jobs in Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. Ellison’s selection certainly wouldn’t help among Jewish voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania or pro-Israel Christian voters around the country.

Ellison’s sordid past associations with Louis Farrakhan — the long time leader of the Nation of Islam — will hurt him in Middle America, which has little appetite for Farrakhan’s anti-American ravings. Recently, Farrakhan made headlines for visiting Iran on the 35th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution where he berated the United States, while refusing to criticize Iran’s human rights violations. Farrakhan also appeared as a special guest speaker of the Iranian president at a rally, which featured the unveiling of a float reenacting Iran’s detention of 10 U.S. Navy sailors in the Persian Gulf.

In addition to embracing American enemies abroad, Farrakhan has exhibited a penchant for lacing his sermons with anti-Semitic hate speech. Around the time that Ellison was working with the Nation of Islam, for example, Farrakhan was delivering speeches attacking “the synagogue as Satan.” He described Jews as “wicked deceivers of the American people” that have “wrapped [their] tentacles around the U.S. government” and are “deceiving and sending this nation to hell.” Long after Jesse Jackson disavowed Farrakhan in 1984 as “reprehensible and morally indefensible” for describing Judaism as a “gutter religion,” Ellison was defending Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam in 1995 as a role model for African-Americans, calling him “a tireless public servant of Black people, who constantly teaches self-reliance and self-examination to the Black community.”

Congressman Keith Ellison’s (left) sordid past associations with Louis Farrakhan (right) — the long time leader of the Nation of Islam — will hurt him in Middle America, which has little appetite for Farrakhan’s anti-American ravings. (Image sources: Ellison/Center for American Progress; Farrakhan/Smithsonian Institute)

Ellison has struggled to explain his association with Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. He has acknowledged working with the Nation of Islam for about 18 months to organize the Minnesota delegation to Farrakhan’s 1995 Million Man March in Washington. However, Ellison insists that he never joined the Nation of Islam and more recently, he has held himself out as a friend of the Jewish people and of Israel. This late conversion coincided with Ellison’s decision to pursue elected office in Minnesota, and an apparent realization that his association with the Nation of Islam might hurt his political fortunes. In 2006, he wrote a letter to the Jewish Community Relations Council in Minneapolis, in which he apologized for failing to “adequately scrutinize the positions” of Farrakhan and other Nation of Islam leaders. “They were and are anti-Semitic, and I should have come to that conclusion earlier than I did.” In his recently released memoir “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee: My Faith, My Family, Our Future,” Ellison writes of Farrakhan:

“He could only wax eloquent while scapegoating other groups” and of the Nation of Islam “if you’re not angry in opposition to some group of people (whites, Jews, so-called ‘sellout’ blacks), you don’t have religion.”

Ellison’s voting record also does not support his claim that he has become a “friend” of Israel. He was one of only 8 Congressmen who voted against funding the Iron Dome program, developed jointly by the U.S. and Israel, which helps protect Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets. In 2009, Ellison was one of only two dozen Congressmen to vote “present” rather than vote for a non-binding resolution “recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from, reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.” And in 2010, Ellison co‐authored a letter to President Obama, calling on him to pressure Israel into opening the border with Gaza. The letter describes the blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip as “de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents.”

Even beyond Ellison’s past associations with anti-American and anti-Semitic bigotry and his troubling current voting record with regard to Israel, his appointment as head of the DNC would be a self-inflicted wound on the Democratic Party at this critical time in its history. It would move the party in the direction of left-wing extremism at a time when centrist stability is required. The world at large is experiencing a movement toward extremes, both right and left. The Democratic Party must buck that dangerous trend and move back to the center where the votes are, and where America should be.

Indian security forces are again waging pitched battles with violent Islamists on the streets of the Muslim-majority province of Kashmir. Mobs began congregating in towns on July 9, after the customary Friday prayers, to protest the killing the previous day by Indian security forces of a prominent Islamic terrorist, Burhan Wani. The protestors waved black ISIS flags and pelted stones at riot police. The riots have so far claimed 49 lives, including 2 policemen.

The mainstream media in the West have been quick to point the finger of blame on India for using — as BBC puts it — “excessive force.” “Allegations that the forces are trigger happy in the region have been a common criticism for years,” the BBC said. The mainstream media, however, did not take into account that more than 1,500 members of the Indian police and army were injured by the mobs.

Germany’s state-run Deutsche Welle featured a Pakistan-based social media campaign that criticised the use of BB guns by Indian riot police against stone-throwing mobs of Islamists.

The New York Times criticised the Indian Army for “escalating” the situation by confronting the armed Islamic terrorists in the first place:

“A dozen boys with a few guns — they were no threat to the Indian army, one of the largest in the world. There is no record of Burhan and his crew waging any attack. Their rebellion was symbolic, a war of images against India’s continuing occupation of Kashmir, where about half a million of its soldiers, paramilitary and armed police are still stationed.”

What New York Times did not say is that these “boys with guns” are members of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, a group designated as a terrorist organisation by both the European Union and the United States.

India is not “occupying” Kashmir, which is already part of India. They are waging a war against Islamic terrorism which has claimed the lives of more than 4,800 Indian civilians and more than 2,400 Indian security personnel.

The New York Times styled the dead terrorist, Burhan Wani, as if he were an affable gun-rights activist with a large Facebook following: “He built up a following on social media, posting pictures of himself and his associates in combat fatigues, often carrying arms.” After being at the forefront of gun control campaigns in U.S. for decades, the New York Times finally supports “open carry” — but only for terrorists waging jihad against “infidels.”

With reverence, the New York Times describes Wani, the “internet sensation” who had put “together a small band of Kashmiri militants. Barely out of their teens, they had taken to the forest and social media.” Elsewhere they called him a “22-year-old separatist who wanted an independent Kashmir and had built up a following on social media among disaffected Indian Kashmiri youth.”

Undoubtedly, Burhan Wani created a “social media sensation” among Muslim youth in Kashmir, as do all those gruesome ISIS beheading videos among Muslim youth in Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

The mainstream media, quick to blame India for the ongoing unrest, will not tell its readers how the province of Kashmir became the Islamist hellhole that it is today.

The minarets of the mosques, reserved in times of peace for prayer calls, proclaimed armed jihad against Hindus in towns and cities across the province. Kashmiri Hindus were given three options: either to convert to Islam, leave their ancestral homes, or face certain death.

“Eviction notices” were handed out to the leader of Hindu and Sikh community. The notices read:

“We order you to leave Kashmir immediately, otherwise your children will be harmed — we are not scaring you, but this land is only for Muslims, and is the land of Allah. Sikhs and Hindus cannot stay here”.

The notice ended with a threat; “If you do not obey, we will start with your children.” In an ultimate act of humiliation, Hindu men were told to move out of Kashmir without taking their property or women.

Hamas-style marches took place in towns and cities across Kashmir. Jihadis brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles marched in military formations, targeting Hindu men, women and children.

Members of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, the same terrorist group that the New York Times affectionately calls the “crew” of “boys with guns,” have been at the forefront of killing, raping and pillaging Hindus.

The campaign to purge Kashmir of its native Hindu and Sikh population has been one of the most effective ethnic cleansing campaign of recent times. An estimated 95% of Kashmir’s Hindus were forced to leave — a cleansing that made Kashmir more than 90% Muslim. Some 400,000 Kashmiri Hindu Pandits were forced to live as internally displaced refugees inside India. Hindu temples were desecrated and destroyed, wiping out the signs of Hinduism from its ancient land.

Jihadis, trained and armed by Pakistan, after purging Kashmir of its native Hindu and Sikh populations, are now waging a terrorist campaign to carve out a separate Islamic country in that part of India.

Certainly, the Indian state also carries responsibility for the current state of affairs in Kashmir. Successive Indian governments have failed to intervene or provide safety to Hindus and Sikhs during the ethnic cleansing of 1990s. After more than 25 years, no Indian government has made any serious effort to help displaced help Hindus and Sikhs return back to their homes in Kashmir.

Left: Indian soldiers carry the coffin of Indian Army Colonel M N Rai, who was killed in January 2015 by terrorists in Kashmir. Right: Masked Islamist radicals in Kashmir display a version of the black flag of jihad.

If Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs cannot go back to their original homes due to security risks, it would only be fair to allocate them enclosed and fortified housing at other locations in Kashmir. If Indian authorities, in their characteristic incompetence, cannot guarantee security to returning Hindus and Sikhs, they could at least supply them arms to defend themselves.

Only reversing the tide of ethnic cleansing can put an end to this Islamist takeover. Arming the police with BB guns — regardless to how dangerous the BBC or the New York Times editorial staff might consider them — is not going to put an end to the Islamist aspiration of turning Kashmir into another “Islamic State”.

Vijeta Uniyal is an Indian current affairs analyst based in Europe.