Idées | Critiquer l’Occident, oui, le liquider, non

2025/07/17 Leave a comment

Good reminder:

Pendant que la Chine emprisonne, que l’Iran torture et que la Russie assassine, certains intellectuels occidentaux continuent de tourner leur rage contre leur propre camp. À force de diaboliser la démocratie libérale au nom d’un anticolonialisme devenu pavlovien, on oublie une vérité simple : ici, on peut encore parler librement. Ailleurs, on se tait… ou on disparaît.

En ne voyant que nos fautes, on oublie que la démocratie libérale, malgré ses limites, reste le dernier cadre réformable. Elle n’est pas parfaite, mais elle demeure le seul système qui accepte d’être interrogé depuis l’intérieur, qui garantit aux citoyens le droit de contester sans peur et qui rend possible sa propre remise en cause.

« Hypocrisie d’un double discours », entend-on souvent comme propos délégitimant l’Occident. Pourtant, de nombreuses civilisations ont asservi ou dominé d’autres peuples. L’histoire humaine est saturée de conquêtes, de systèmes d’exploitation, de hiérarchies imposées. Les dynasties chinoises, les empires arabes, les royaumes africains ou européens ont tous pratiqué la violence. L’Occident n’a donc pas le monopole de la brutalité. Ce qui le distingue, ce n’est pas l’absence d’ignominie, mais la capacité à la reconnaître et à la contester. Si cette tradition d’autocritique s’effondre, elle laisse place à la complaisance, au cynisme, ou à l’indifférence face aux véritables luttes pour la liberté ailleurs dans le monde.

Les révolutions libérales des XVIIᵉ et XVIIIᵉ siècles en Angleterre, aux États-Unis et en France ont forgé un ordre inédit : séparation des pouvoirs, responsabilité des gouvernants, droits individuels, souveraineté populaire. Ces principes, imparfaits dans leur application, ont néanmoins produit des institutions capables de limiter les abus, d’encadrer l’arbitraire, de faire naître des contre-pouvoirs. C’est ici, plus qu’ailleurs, que l’esclavage a été aboli, que les femmes et les minorités ont conquis des droits, que la presse et les libertés académiques ont pu se déployer. Ces avancées ne sont pas abstraites : elles ont été arrachées de haute lutte. Et lorsque ces institutions sont contournées, comme ce fut récemment le cas aux États-Unis ou en Pologne, c’est l’ensemble du pacte démocratique qui vacille.

La société civile et les ONG jouent un rôle crucial. Associations, syndicats, mouvements citoyens et lanceurs d’alerte participent activement à la remise en question des dérives. Cette vitalité contraste avec la répression systématique qui frappe ces acteurs dans la plupart des régimes autoritaires.

Aujourd’hui, ce cadre est fragilisé. À droite, on rêve d’un ordre restauré, où l’autorité l’emporterait sur le débat. À gauche, certains milieux militants dénoncent la démocratie libérale comme une imposture. La critique est nécessaire, mais elle devient toxique lorsqu’elle ne vise que l’Occident, en épargnant les pires régimes actuels. La Chine, l’Iran ou la Russie sont parfois minimisés, voire réhabilités, au nom d’un anti-impérialisme devenu pavlovien. Le refus de nommer certaines oppressions est déjà une forme de complicité.

Ce phénomène n’est pas nouveau. L’histoire intellectuelle du XXe siècle en porte les traces : Foucault saluant la révolution iranienne de 1979, Sartre fermant les yeux sur les goulags, Aragon justifiant les crimes du stalinisme au nom de la fidélité au Parti. Ceux qui ont résisté à ces aveuglements — Camus, Aron, Koestler — ont souvent été moqués ou marginalisés. Le temps leur a donné raison. Mais la tentation demeure : celle de croire que tout ennemi de l’Occident est forcément porteur d’un avenir désirable. C’est une illusion. Elle pervertit la critique et dévoie la solidarité.

Encore aujourd’hui, certains réduisent l’Occident à ses fautes, tout en idéalisant un Sud supposé plus pur. Mais la Chine persécute ses minorités. L’Inde cède au nationalisme religieux. Le Qatar réprime la liberté d’expression. En Afrique, des conflits persistent, et la démocratie reste fragile. La Turquie muselle ses journalistes. La Hongrie d’Orbán sape l’indépendance de la justice, malgré les avertissements européens. Nul continent, nul régime n’échappe aux rapports de domination, au patriarcat ou à la violence d’État. Les oppositions binaires — Nord coupable, Sud innocent — obscurcissent les responsabilités réelles. Elles ne construisent rien.

La désinformation numérique aggrave ce brouillage. Des puissances autoritaires exploitent les failles des démocraties ouvertes pour y semer le doute, délégitimer la presse, fragmenter les opinions. Les réseaux sociaux, loin d’être de simples outils de mobilisation, servent aussi de caisses de résonance aux régimes qui nient la liberté. TikTok en Chine, RT en Russie, Al Jazeera au Qatar ou encore les campagnes de harcèlement idéologique sur X ou Facebook façonnent une vision du monde où tout se vaut… sauf l’Occident, toujours désigné coupable.

Critiquer l’Occident est légitime, même salutaire. Le condamner en bloc, sans nuances, au profit de régimes qui bâillonnent toute dissidence, est une faute morale. C’est ici, encore, que la liberté est pensable. Ici qu’un texte peut être écrit sans permission, qu’une voix peut s’élever sans craindre la prison, la torture ou l’exil. Ici que les débats peuvent être vifs, même désordonnés, mais encore possibles. Cette ouverture, fragile mais réelle, rend possibles la réforme, l’autocritique et l’émancipation.

Défendre l’Occident, ce n’est pas nier ses fautes ni s’enfermer dans l’autosatisfaction. C’est protéger ce qui rend la justice pensable, la liberté audible et la dissidence légitime. C’est refuser de troquer une démocratie imparfaite pour un autoritarisme sans pardon. C’est, aussi, se battre pour que l’universalisme démocratique ne soit pas abandonné aux nostalgiques d’empires ou aux cyniques postmodernes.

Comme le rappelait Churchill, la démocratie est la pire forme de gouvernement… à l’exception de toutes les autres.

Claude André Le signataire est enseignant en science politique et auteur.

Source: Idées | Critiquer l’Occident, oui, le liquider, non

While China imprisons, Iran tortures and Russia murders, some Western intellectuals continue to turn their rage against their own camp. By dint of demonizing liberal democracy in the name of an anti-colonialism that has become Pavlovian, we forget a simple truth: here, we can still speak freely. Elsewhere, we shut up… or we disappear.

By seeing only our faults, we forget that liberal democracy, despite its limits, remains the last reformable framework. It is not perfect, but it remains the only system that accepts to be questioned from within, that guarantees citizens the right to challenge without fear and that makes it possible to question its own.

“Hypocrisy of a double speech”, is often heard as a statement delegitimising the West. Yet many civilizations have enslaved or dominated other peoples. Human history is saturated with conquests, operating systems, imposed hierarchies. Chinese dynasties, Arab empires, African or European kingdoms have all practiced violence. The West therefore does not have a monopoly on brutality. What distinguishes it is not the absence of ignominy, but the ability to recognize and contest it. If this tradition of self-criticism collapses, it gives way to complacency, cynicism, or indifference to real struggles for freedom elsewhere in the world.

The liberal revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England, the United States and France forged an unprecedented order: separation of powers, responsibility of rulers, individual rights, popular sovereignty. These principles, imperfect in their application, have nevertheless produced institutions capable of limiting abuses, of regulating arbitrariness, of giving rise to counter-powers. It is here, more than elsewhere, that slavery has been abolished, that women and minorities have won rights, that the press and academic freedoms have been able to unfold. These advances are not abstract: they have been wrested out of struggle. And when these institutions are bypassed, as was recently the case in the United States or Poland, it is the entire democratic pact that falters.

Civil society and NGOs play a crucial role. Associations, trade unions, citizens’ movements and whistleblowers are actively participating in the questioning of excesses. This vitality contrasts with the systematic repression that affects these actors in most authoritarian regimes.

Today, this framework is weakened. On the right, we dream of a restored order, where authority would prevail over debate. On the left, some militant circles denounce liberal democracy as an imposture. Criticism is necessary, but it becomes toxic when it only targets the West, sparing the current worst regimes. China, Iran or Russia are sometimes minimized, even rehabilitated, in the name of an anti-imperialism that has become Pavlovian. The refusal to name certain oppressions is already a form of complicity.

This phenomenon is not new. The intellectual history of the twentieth century bears the traces: Foucault saluting the Iranian revolution of 1979, Sartre closing his eyes to the gulags, Aragon justifying the crimes of Stalinism in the name of loyalty to the Party. Those who resisted these blindness – Camus, Aron, Koestler – were often mocked or marginalized. Time proved them right. But the temptation remains: that of believing that any enemy of the West is necessarily the bearer of a desirable future. It’s an illusion. It perverts criticism and deviates solidarity.

Even today, some reduce the West to its faults, while idealizing a supposedly purer South. But China is persecuting its minorities. India gave in to religious nationalism. Qatar represses freedom of expression. In Africa, conflicts persist, and democracy remains fragile. Turkey muzzles its journalists. Orbán’s Hungary undermines the independence of justice, despite European warnings. No continent, no regime escapes relations of domination, patriarchy or state violence. Binary oppositions — Guilty North, Innocent South — obscure real responsibilities. They don’t build anything.

Digital disinformation aggravates this scrambling. Authoritarian powers exploit the flaws of open democracies to sow doubt, delegitimize the press, and fragment opinions. Social networks, far from being simple mobilization tools, also serve as sounding boxes for regimes that deny freedom. TikTok in China, RT in Russia, Al Jazeera in Qatar or ideological harassment campaigns on X or Facebook shape a worldview where everything is worth… except the West, always called guilty.

Criticizing the West is legitimate, even salutary. Condemning him en bloc, without nuances, in favor of regimes that gag all dissent, is a moral fault. It is here, again, that freedom is thinkable. Here that a text can be written without permission, that a voice can rise without fear of prison, torture or exile. Here that the debates can be lively, even messy, but still possible. This opening, fragile but real, makes reform, self-criticism and emancipation possible.

Defending the West is not denying its faults or locking oneself in self-satisfaction. It is to protect what makes justice thinkable, audible freedom and legitimate dissent. It is to refuse to exchange an imperfect democracy for an authoritarianism without forgiveness. It is also fighting so that democratic universalism is not abandoned to the nostalgic of empires or the cynic postmoderns.

As Churchill recalled, democracy is the worst form of government… with the exception of all the others.

Claude André The signatory is a teacher of political science and author.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Morton: Why Hiring Professors With Conservative Views Could Backfire on Conservatives

2025/07/11 Leave a comment

Interesting argument. But greater ideological diversity and openness would be welcome:

…Conservatives have criticized identity-based affirmative action because, they suggest, it imposes an expectation on students of color that they will represent what is presumed to be, say, the Black or Latino view on any given issue, which discourages freethinking. Admitting students for viewpoint diversity would turn the holding of conservative ideas into a quasi-identity, subject to some of the same concerns. Students admitted to help restore ideological balance would likely feel a responsibility to defend certain views, regardless of the force of opposing arguments they might encounter.

For professors hired for their political beliefs, the pressure to maintain those views would be even greater. If you had a tenure-track position, your salary, health insurance and career prospects would all depend on the inflexibility of your ideology. The smart thing to do in that situation would be to interact with other scholars who share your point of view and to read publications that reinforce what you already believe. Or you might simply engage with opposing ideas in bad faith, refusing even to consider their merits. This would create the sort of ideological echo chamber that proponents of viewpoint diversity have suggested, often with some justification, leads to closed-mindedness among left-leaning professors…

Jennifer M. Morton, professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania

Source: Why Hiring Professors With Conservative Views Could Backfire on Conservatives

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Can Trump’s Hard-Core Fans Be Deradicalized?

2019/07/22 Leave a comment

Interesting question and framing:

President Donald Trump’s rally in Greenville, North Carolina, this week made scholars of fascism sit bolt upright. Trump spouted racist conspiracy theories about Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar to his fans, who chanted “Send her back!”

Trump has long stoked bigoted grievances among his followers, but the Greenville rally saw him act as a more overt radicalizer than ever before. And with a portion of Trump’s fanbase now openly clamoring for the physical removal of several prominent Democrats of color, experts are questioning whether the country can repair the damage—even if Trump loses in 2020.

“He’s always embodied these sentiments,” Zoé Samudzi, author of As Black As Resistance and a scholar studying genocide said. “But I do feel like there’s a feedback loop: he’s both animated by and responsive to the base that is eager to discipline a black Muslim immigrant woman. His long held racial animus fuels his supporters (who never need permission for their virulent racism but are emboldened by him all the same), and their enthusiasm energizes the president who in turn keeps ratcheting up his rhetoric.”

While extreme actions like the “send her back!” chant, and the presence of fringe conspiracy theorists have drawn attention to his rallies, it’s unclear how many of his supporters subscribe to those individual beliefs.

“Some people might be there because they genuinely believe in this ideology,” said Mary Beth Altier, an assistant professor at New York University specializing in radicalization. “Some may be questioning those beliefs. They’re toying with them, and they go because a friend brought them or they think it’d be cool to go. They go and get swept up. People start chanting, are you going to be the only one standing there not chanting?”

Wednesday night’s “send her back!” chant followed similar rhetoric by Trump directed at Omar and fellow lawmakers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. All four are freshman congresswomen of color, who have broken with Democratic House leadership to promote a more progressive agenda, in part over wanting to confront Trump more aggressively.

In a series of Monday tweets, Trump laid the groundwork for Wednesday’s “send her back!” chant.

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,” Trump tweeted of the four congresswomen. “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough.”

Though the tweets were indistinguishable from white nationalist talking points (and all but one of the congresswomen were born in the U.S.), Trump’s popularity with Republicans spiked after his racist tweets, a Reuters poll this week showed. It’s possible very little will bother his most devoted fans, Janja Lalich, a professor studying cults and totalitarian leadership, said.

“There’s this intense devotion and the inability to question or criticize or doubt,” Lalich told The Daily Beast.

“They seem to be in a state of what we call cognitive dissonance, where what they believe doesn’t match reality,” she said. “People in that state tend to cling to their beliefs over reality. They dig themselves even deeper. I think the things we see at the rallies, where people get into these cheers and adore everything he says, is very typical of what we see in run-of-the-mill cults. There’s what we might call blind obedience or blind followership.”

Trump’s rallies offer a strong sense of community for fans. That’s critical to the people chanting for Omar’s removal, said David Neiwert, author of Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right.

Neiwert defines eliminationism as a community-based mentality that promotes “purity” by demonizing its opponents and demanding they be purged from society.

“What they’re doing is participating in a community of hate. This is actually key to a lot of its power and its attraction. It’s almost ritualized,” he told The Daily Beast. “This is how hate crimes work. Hate crimes are always message crimes directed at targets who are seen as corrupting influences and bad for the community. Hate-crime perpetrators see themselves as defending their communities while doing it. There’s always a communal aspect to this. It’s very much the mob.”

Lalich offered a similar perspective.

“Having an us-versus-them mentality is what keeps people strong in their beliefs,” she said. “It creates paranoia, it creates a kind of fighting atmosphere. That kind of mentality is one we typically see. By feeding into that, the leader creates a separation. It also creates a sense of elitism and specialness.”

Trump’s rhetoric has already inspired violent attacks. During a March 2016 rally, Trump asked fans to eject protesters, calling on them to “get ‘em out of here.” Matt Heimbach, a neo-Nazi who was later instrumental in 2017’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlotteville, complied, assaulting a black protester. In October, a Florida man sent 16 pipe bombs to politicians, news outlets, and public figures who have been critical of Trump. The bomber had attended Trump rallies and described them as “like a new found drug.” Trump’s election has coincided with a marked spike in hate crimes, and a rise in overt white supremacist action.

Trump’s attacks on the four congresswomen are an extension of the racist appeals he made to voters during his first campaign.

“The language about the congresswomen fits into nativist language around a racial purity of citizenship, and inherent to that is an idea of ethnic cleansing either through deportation policies, restrictions on entry, or violence against racialized communities,” Samudzi said.

“The problem isn’t simply that three of the four women are US-born: the problem is the insinuation that there is an idea of birthright citizenship that could be revoked (as well as the de-naturalization of citizenship) in an attempt to actualize a vision of a white America.”

Experts who help people escape intense groups like cults or hate movements say dialogue with people outside the movement can help deradicalize adherents.

Christian Picciolini, a former white supremacist who now helps extremists leave hate groups, said his method involves talking and identifying sources of grief and trauma that might underlay hate.

“I listen for those potholes that detoured their life’s journey and then try to fill (repair) them,” he told The Daily Beast via email.

Lalich cited the case of Derek Black, the son of a prominent white nationalist, as an example of how deradicalization can sometimes works.

“What seems to have worked is really just engaging in dialogue, individual by individual,” she said. Black renounced white supremacy after going to college and meeting people of differing viewpoints.

But some of Trump’s most die-hard fans might be removed from dissenting opinions, Altier said.

“Establishing alternative social bonds and networks where they can interact with people with other views” could help, she said, but “we’re not seeing that on social media. We’re seeing more polarization in society on both sides.”

Instead, dedicated fans might turn inward, engaging with more pro-Trump communities.

“I don’t listen to Fox, I don’t listen to CNN. I don’t listen to any of ’em,” Allicyn Steverson, a Florida teacher told HuffPost at the Wednesday rally. “I listen to Trump’s tweets and his QAnons.” (QAnon is a deranged online conspiracy theory that accuses Trump’s opponents of sexually abusing and sometimes eating children.)

A choose-your-own reality media environment might keep people from challenging their beliefs, Lalich said.

“Because people are so divided right now, those folks are mainly watching Fox and listening to Alex Jones,” she said. “They’re not going to get any kind of education that might tap into their critical thinking. That’s what works when we try to do exit intervention: we try to reawaken the person’s critical thinking and get them to see the reality of who their leader is and what their beliefs are. In this case, because this is on a national level, we’ve never quite experienced this before in our country. I think any kind of public education would be very difficult.”

Picciolini stressed that outright confrontation over bigoted beliefs might not help a person abandon them.

“Ideology is usually formed, or led to, by trauma or grievance. If we continue to confront ideology by trying to change it, we will fail,” Picciolini said. “We must instead focus on repairing the motivations that lead to hate-and they are seldom someone else’s skin color or religion. Self-hatred or uncertainty lead to hate. Let’s fix that.”

Altier also cautioned that some Trump supporters might act out should his rallies stop.

“While people saying these things is awful and they may radicalize other people, if we quash their ability to say them, my research shows they may become more violent because they can’t express those grievances. It’s a catch-22,” she said.

And even if Trump leaves office, it’s no guarantee that Trumpism will end. “I think it’s only going to intensify,” Neiwert said, citing fears that Trump would not lead a peaceful transition.

It’s a concern Lalich shares. “I think he can still remain their leader. He doesn’t need to have office,” she said.

“He’s already threatened that it’s going to be rigged and that his people will rise up. I think that’s not going to change very much because he has reawakened such hatred in this country.”

Source: Can Trump’s Hard-Core Fans Be Deradicalized?

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Poway Synagogue Shooting: Why Conservatives Keep Getting Anti-Semitism Wrong

2019/04/30 Leave a comment

Good column:

What motivates someone to burst into a Southern California synagogue and shoot unarmed worshipers, there to recite the memorial prayer for the dead?

Depends who you ask: progressives say nationalist, racist ideology, while conservatives say hate. The difference may seem slight, but in fact, it’s why right and left talk past one another—and seem to be moving farther apart.

Progressives, and most scholars, regard the kind of anti-Semitism that motivated the Poway shooting as part of the xenophobic, ultra-nationalistic constellations of hatreds and “otherings” that also, in our day, include Islamophobia, racism, and anti-immigrant animus. Jews are the “enemy within,” facilitating the evils of immigration and multiculturalism to destroy the motherland.

This is borne out by what Poway, Pittsburgh, Christchurch, and other white terrorists all said in their manifestos and other online comments. Like thousands of others of ultra-nationalists in Europe and America, they see their white, European cultures being overrun by foreigners. And they believe that Jews are making it happen.

In the words of the Charlottesville white supremacists, “you will not replace us,” a taunt aimed at non-whites, is easily changed to “Jews will not replace us.” That is a political statement—filled with ignorance and hate, of course, but also ideology.

On the right, however, anti-Semitism is regarded as hate, not ideology.

Despite reams and reams of ideological-political writing, from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion forgery to Mein Kampf to the paranoid manifesto of the Poway shooter that allege in precise terms the ways in which Jews destroy the national homeland, conservatives insist that anti-Semitism is simply pure, irrational, timeless, and ahistorical hatred that has nothing to do with any politics whatsoever. It’s the same whether it comes from Pharaoh in Egypt, a Tsarist pogrom, or a Hamas terrorist.

“We forcefully condemn the evil of anti-Semitism and hate, which must be defeated,” President Donald Trump said in response to the Poway shooting.

This definition of anti-Semitism is extraordinarily wrong. It is at odds with what anti-Semites themselves have said since the term was popularized in 1879. It mashes together religious animus, true nationalist anti-Semitism, and resistance to right-wing Zionism. And it is particularly helpful to the very people who exacerbate it, today’s nationalists, for three reasons.

“If anti-Semitism is defined simply as anytime someone hates Jews for any reason, then it is a free-floating hatred that finds a home in Palestinian activism, fringe black nationalism, and among Muslim Americans.”

First, of course, it absolves them of any responsibility. To most rational observers, it seems obvious that when Trump spreads lies about the dangers of immigrant crime and Muslim terrorism, he stokes the fires of populist nationalism. In response to that incitement, some will merely wave a flag and don a red hat. But others will take matters into their own hands, striking back at Jews or Muslims or Mexicans.

Some, like Poway shooter John Earnest and Pittsburgh shooterRobert Bowers, may even believe that Trump himself has not gone far enough. They are extending Trump’s logic, not defying it.

Yet if anti-Semitism is merely a pathological hatred and has nothing to do with any ideology, all of this is coincidence. Why did anti-Semitic incidents rise 60 percent in the first year of Trump’s presidency? Well, anti-Semitism is an age-old hatred; no one can explain its pathology, the right says.

Once again, such a denial of causality and reality seems facially absurd, and yet, it is what the likes of Trump, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and their ilk would have us believe. Moreover, since hardly any “mainstream” Republicans have spoken out about Trump’s incitement of hatred, either they believe this delusion as well, or, by refusing to speak, are implicated in the violence that Trump has incited.

Hatred of Jews goes back thousands of years, but the anti-Semitism of John Earnest is a specific, nationalist phenomenon with specific roots and specific myths.

The unmooring of anti-Semitism from ideology has a second benefit for nationalists, which is that it reinforces their own nationalism. In Israel, of course, this is most obvious: everyone hates the Jews, the thinking goes, therefore Jews must be strong and dominant. Force is all the Arabs understand, I remember being taught in Hebrew school, so we have to be stronger than they are.

But even for nationalist parties like those governing Brazil, the United States, and Hungary, anti-Semitism is a convenient reminder that violence and hatred are endemic to the human condition, and strong ethno-nationalism is the only way to fight it.

“We have no choice,” as Trump has said many times.

This is how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can find common cause with barely reconstructed anti-Semites like Hungary’s Viktor Orban. It suits Netanyahu fine for Orban to demonize George Soros and other Jews—after all, Netanyahu hates Soros, too. But more broadly, both men are also engaged in the same anti-democratic activities: attacking human rights organizations, enforcing patriotic speech, undermining the independent judiciary and, most importantly, demonizing “foreigners.”

To nationalists, the solution to anti-Semitism is not, as progressives would have it, stamping out bigotry, ultra-nationalism, and scapegoating of the “other,” but rather a strong ethno-nationalist state (Jewish or otherwise). The presence of anti-Semitism serves to reinforce this view. It simply means that we must all be even stronger and more nationalistic.

The third and final function of the uncoupling of anti-Semitism from ideology is perhaps its most important: it enables “anti-Semitism” to be a scourge of left and right alike, rather than a feature of right-wing nationalism. If anti-Semitism is defined simply as anytime someone hates Jews for any reason, then it is a free-floating hatred that finds a home in Palestinian activism, fringe black nationalism, and among Muslim Americans like Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Now, we are told, including by centrists who should know better, that an “ancient hatred” has reappeared on the right and left alike—as if it is campus BDS supporters who are shooting up synagogues and chanting “Jews will not replace us.”

Of course, there are indeed instances of anti-Semitism on the far left, including conspiracy theories involving Jews and slavery, Palestinian propaganda depicting Israelis as drinking blood, and anti-capitalist screeds that call out Jewish financiers in particular (which, of course, a Trump campaign ad also did).

But in the United States, the quality and quantity of these incidents pale in comparison by those found on the right.

Most importantly, there are no left-wing equivalents for the incitement coming from the nationalist right. There is no left-wing equivalent of Trump seeking to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. There is no left-wing equivalent of “Make America Great Again” with its harkening back to a whiter and less equal past. There is no left-wing equivalent of the lies about Mexicans bringing crime, drugs, and rape to America. A single remark that congressional support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins”—a claim applied every day to the NRA, Big Pharma, or the fossil fuel industry—is nothing compared to these violent, constant, and powerful incitements to ultra-nationalist frenzy.

To the right, the Poway shooter has more in common with Ilhan Omar than with the massacre at a Christchurch mosque.

But to the Poway shooter himself, Christchurch was his inspiration. Contrary to the false and exculpatory claims of the right, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are arms of the same murderous monster, together with ultra-nationalism, hatred of the other, and racism.

And when you agitate one part of that monster, the whole beast rises.

Source: Poway Synagogue Shooting: Why Conservatives Keep Getting Anti-Semitism Wrong

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Letter: The Trouble With Staying Silent on Ideological Extremism

2019/04/06 Leave a comment

Omer Aziz responds to Graeme Wood’s earlier piece in The Atlantic (After Christchurch, Commentators Are Imitating Sebastian Gorka). Good debate and discussion between the two.

And yes, needs to be said, ideas, words and speech matter:

After the tragedy at Christchurch, New Zealand, Graeme Wood wrote recently, a funny thing happened: “Everyone discovered, all at once, that ideology matters.” But just as important as this recognition, Wood argued, is the ability to differentiate on an ideological spectrum. To fail to do so “leads to catastrophic blunders”: In The New York Times, for instance, “Omer Aziz accused the neuroscientist and atheist Sam Harris, as well as the Canadian psychologist and lobster enthusiast Jordan Peterson, of complicity in mass murder for objecting to what they argued are overbroad applications of the word Islamophobia.”

“If we cannot distinguish Harris and Peterson from Richard Spencer, let alone Brenton Tarrant,” Wood wrote, “then our problems are bad indeed.”

There are several points I take contention with in Graeme Wood’s essay on the Christchurch massacre, which names me and two other writers for failing to make important ideological distinctions between the New Zealand killer and others who, strictly speaking, have nothing to do with him. Set aside the irony of taking writers to task for not making important ideological distinctions and then lumping in three diverse writers together, thereby failing to make those distinctions yourself. Wood’s major claim in the piece is that after Christchurch, “everyone discovered that ideology mattered”—white-nationalist and fascist ideology—and this was in contrast to the politically correct liberal response to jihadist violence, in which presumably these very same writers adequately distinguish Islamist terrorism from Muslims tout court.

Other writers can speak for themselves. In my case, I have written about the role that ideology and religion play in jihadist violence. Indeed, I have been influencedby Wood’s own work on this, and have discussed it with him, multiple times, in private and in public. I believe that there is always an ideological spectrum with respect to extremist violence, and the various shades of that spectrum ought to be interrogated, even if it makes people feel uncomfortable. That goes for Islamist violence, as it does for white-nationalist terror.

Wood takes especial issue with my mentioning of the neuroscientist Sam Harris in my piece for The New York Times. The exact words from that piece were:

People with millions of online followers have been incessantly preaching that Islamophobia is not the problem; Islam is. The Canadian intellectual Jordan Peterson has said that Islamophobia is a “word created by fascists.” The neuroscientist Sam Harris has called it an “intellectual blood libel” that serves only to shield Islam from criticism.

Note that there is not the slightest intimation here that Peterson or Harris shares liability, responsibility, or guilt for the New Zealand massacre. It simply acknowledges the salient fact that prominent thinkers have been in Islamophobia-denial for a long time, even after Muslims were specifically targeted because of who they were and for no other reason.

Jordan Peterson is more complex, and his thinking about Islam and Muslims requires its own separate treatment. But Harris has been propounding vicious misinformation about Muslims for a decade. Does Wood not have an opinion on someone who warned about the “ominous” Muslim birth rates in Europe and published misleading statistics about them, the very same birth rates that the New Zealand killer was so tormented by in his manifesto? (And why would it be “ominous” if there are more brown people in Europe? For what it’s worth, at maximal levels of immigration, Muslims would account for 14 percent of Europe’s population in 2050, according to Pew. Those worried about the coming hordes of brown bodies can relax somewhat.)

It is not wrong to call out people who have been denying that a particular form of racism exists when this very racism becomes the central motivation of a live-streamed lynching of vulnerable people. By the logic of Graeme Wood’s own piece (that ideology matters) and by the logic of Sam Harris’s own ontology of Islam (that there are concentric circles of extremism, with jihadists in the middle and their enablers on the outer rings), the ideological spectrum of Islamophobia ought to have been probed more thoroughly. Instead, Wood is silent, dismissing all this as self-evidently not worth mentioning. A spectrum of ideology for thee, but not for me.

If casual Islamophobia is not on the same ideological spectrum as violent Islamophobia, why not? Are overt warnings about Muslim birth rates and “deranged” Muslims so acceptable now that they fail to register as extreme? Yes, Islamophobia is an imperfect term; that does not alter the reality the term describes, which, like anti-Semitism, is a particular form of racism. The methodology of Wood’s piece—of transposing words to highlight hypocrisies—might help here. Swap Muslim with Jewish, and you get Harris warning about Jewish birth rates in Europe, calling the Jewish world “deranged,” and claiming that anti-Semitism is a made-up word. Anyone using such language would be rightly condemned as anti-Semitic. I wonder whether Wood would still be silent then.

There are many enablers of Islamophobia today, Harris among them, and their consistent propounding of anti-Muslim myths has put Muslim lives at risk. Of course, there is no causal link between the intellectual enablers of Islamophobia and the New Zealand killer. To my knowledge, no serious writer has sought to draw such a link. Again: We are not discussing culpability; we are discussing an ideological spectrum in which subtle bigotry toward Muslims has become mainstream. These ideological enablers create a permissive environment for more dangerous ideas to fester. Calling them out is not a controversial idea. It’s applied to Muslims all the time.

“To fail to differentiate leads to catastrophic blunders,” Wood writes. I heartily agree. And an even greater moral disaster is the willful blindness toward an ideological spectrum when a white man is the one pulling the trigger. When you are silent on the ideological extremism of your friends, you inevitably aid the violent extremism of your enemies. In this case, it is not your voice that gives them license, but your silence on matters that you have deliberately overlooked.

Source: Letter: The Trouble With Staying Silent on Ideological Extremism

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

After Christchurch, Commentators Are Imitating Sebastian Gorka

2019/03/30 Leave a comment

Interesting and sophisticated take, and good call for greater understanding of the differences within and between ideologies and perspectives:
After the 2015 Paris attacks by ISIS commandos, Donald Trump’s counterterrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka wrote these notorious lines, blaming the ideology of “radical Islam” for the atrocity:

These attacks are the latest manifestation of a growing and globalized ideology of radical Islam that must be addressed at its source—which includes the mainstream imams and media personalities who nurture, promote and excuse it … They were inspired by a thriving online ideological structure that recruits and radicalizes mostly men to save “the caliphate” from “the kuffar [infidels]” … The threat we’re facing isn’t just individual terrorists. It’s the global ideology of radical Islam. We have to take it seriously, and call out imams, academics, and media personalities who give it a platform under the guise of exploring both sides, fostering debate or avoiding political correctness.

Except these words weren’t by Sebastian Gorka at all. They were written in The New York Times by Wajahat Ali, hours after the massacre of 50 Muslims at prayer in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15. I swapped white nationalism for radical Islam, politicians for imams, and Western civilization for the caliphate.

A funny thing happened after the tragedy of Christchurch: Everyone discovered, all at once, that ideology matters. Four years ago, commentators were contorting themselves to attribute jihadism to politics, social conditions, abnormal psychology—anything but the spread of wicked beliefs that lead, more or less directly, to violence. Ideology for thee but not for me. Imagine the contempt any thinking person would feel for someone whose reaction to Christchurch was to wonder whether a few Muslim street hoods had once roughed up the shooter, or if during his trip to Pakistan the authorities had given him a hard time at the airport. Did he have trouble getting a job? Feel unsettled by modernity?

In dismissing these tendentious explanations so breezily—so breezily that they receive not even a mention—Wajahat Ali is absolutely right. So are the countless other commentators, Muslim and not, who have belatedly come to the conviction that if bad ideas permeate communities (virtual and real), their effect is not incidental but decisive. Ali has, in fact, been direct in his acknowledgment of the role of belief in some contexts. Others have treated it as an embarrassment, especially in their own communities. In the neighborhoods that were targets of recruitment by ISIS, community leaders emphasized nonideological causes publicly. But they all knew, on some level, that ideas mattered, and any parents who detected a whisper of ISIS ideology in their household understood that it was as deadly as bubonic plague.

Almost two years ago, I opined, meekly, that Sebastian Gorka was not wrong about everything. I complimented him for noting the role of jihadist ideology, and then roasted him for botching the particulars of that ideology. Gorka’s view of jihad is monolithic; he believes, erroneously, that “radical Islam” is a vast and united front against which the next patriotic generation should prepare to fight. In fact, jihadism is a complicated network, with mutually antagonistic elements (Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, say) and even some elements that aren’t violent at all.

I regret that the commentators post-Christchurch are imitating Gorka’s main virtue as well as his signature flaw. The transposition is astonishing. Gorka treats Hezbollah like al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood like Hizb al-Tahrir—all different Islamist groups, with salient resemblances; his post-Christchurch doppelgängers seem ready to treat Tarrant like Trump, and Trump like Tarrant. In The New York Times, Omer Aziz accused the neuroscientist and atheist Sam Harris, as well as the Canadian psychologist and lobster enthusiast Jordan Peterson, of complicity in mass murder for objecting to what they argued are overbroad applications of the word Islamophobia. C. J. Werleman, a columnist for Middle East Eye, tweeted last weekend that “ISIS appeals to roughly 0.0000001% of Muslims,” whereas “right-wing extremism represents the views and attitudes of roughly 30-40% of white people.”

If we cannot distinguish Harris and Peterson from Richard Spencer, let alone Brenton Tarrant, then our problems are bad indeed. (Among those problems is arithmetic: 0.0000001 percent of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims is 1.8 Muslims, a substantial undercount of ISIS’s adherents, even when you round up to a whole number.) Harris and Peterson seem to think America under Barack Obama was a good place and getting better; this view is not compatible with fascism. To support Donald Trump (which Harris and Peterson in any case do not) is not to support the slaughter of Muslims in New Zealand. Just as there are many, many steps between believing in Sharia law and following ISIS, there are countless shades of difference between, say, supporting a border wall and wanting to snipe at Mexicans along the Rio Grande. If sharing a cause with ISIS or Tarrant makes you uncomfortable, perhaps it should. But it does not make you guilty of every crime they committed.

To differentiate on an ideological spectrum is hard. But to fail to differentiate leads to catastrophic blunders. If you blindly swat at enemies, and blindly extend courtesies to friends, the predictable result is that your friends get swatted and your enemies indulged. They may not send thank-you notes, but I promise they are grateful.

Source: After Christchurch, Commentators Are Imitating Sebastian Gorka

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,