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Showing Original Post only (View all)How the liberal left loses the argument. Ceding criticism of Islam to the Right. [View all]
What we have seen since the massacre in Paris, we have seen before. The liberal left, out of a valid concern that the reaction to these attacks will result in an increase in anti-muslim sentiment, closes ranks and starts to reject all criticism of Islam, and in doing so cedes the field to the Right, which of course takes the opportunity to use the justifiable anger at yet another massacre to generate exactly the anti-muslim xenophobic over-reaction the liberal left was trying to avoid.
For example, the numerous claims from the left that "these were not real muslims", a claim that is devoid of any credibility, drown out the legitimate criticism that these were in fact Islamic jihadists, acting out of their convictions that they were doing the right thing according to their religious beliefs. The typical low information citizen, hearing from the liberal left the ridiculous claims that "these were not real muslims", rejects that nonsense outright. This same citizen is hearing at the same time, from the right, that all muslims must be held accountable, that the muslim immigrant communities are all suspect, that the solution is to crack down on the "others" to "cleanse the nation", and that citizen is not hearing a reasonable rebuttal of those claims, is instead hearing patent nonsense.
The consequences can in fact be very serious. By holding on to its well intentioned but misguided and perhaps most importantly obviously false claim that these attacks are not religiously motivated, that there is no problem with Islam, the left loses all credibility. The right's arguments are not so clearly specious, even though their motivation is. The attackers were of course muslims. The attackers obviously were motivated by their religious beliefs. The unsubstantiated (and quite wrong) leap that they represent all muslims is the untruth, but it is not nearly as obviously a flawed claim as the "not real muslims" claim, and it is surrounded by claims that are true: the attackers were muslims, the attackers were motivated by their religious beliefs. Framed this way, this is an argument that the right is going to win. And the left, always on the defense, accepts the framing, closes ranks, makes a counter argument that is patently false, and loses.