Billboard Truth & Sacred Dread

WorldNetDaily reports that an Anti-terror theme scares billboard companies -- Firm rejected ad because some "clients" might be on the "other side". What is the billboard ad in question advertising? It is an anti-terrorism symposium sponsored by America’s Truth Forum featuring such speakers as Dr. Wafa Sultan, Robert Spencer, and Lee Boyland. What are the rejectors of the ad, Clear Channel Outdoor, saying? " ... we have an international clientele – some of whom might be on the other side."

Robert Spencer, in his usual apt turn of phrasing says of this rationale: "The other side? On the side of the jihadists? Imagine an American billboard company in 1942 toning down an anti-Nazi billboard because, well, some of their clients are Nazis."

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This is a fine example of the way that the primitive Sacred inhibits moderns from looking closely at its sacred violence: fear of incurring accusation by trespassing one of its prohibitions ("Thou shalt not look closely and thematize our rituals of violence"). And one may certainly not show a jihadist wearing a keffiyeh shrouding his face with the smoking ruin of the World Trade Center in the background on vast outdoor billboards. The power of soft coercion ("lawfare", "hate crime," and "thought crime") on the one hand, and the hard coercion of murderous violence we have come to associate with jihadism becomes yet another No-Go Zone for westerners. And the primitive Sacred accrues yet more fear and dread, lest we not avert our eyes from its rituals, myths, and prohibitions.