The emboldened bigotry vibe
Eiynah wrote a terrific post at Nice Mangos a couple of months ago about the many ironic consequences of Donnie’s Brainless Ban.
Amidst all the false accusations of ‘Islamophobia’ even when people of muslim background would raise their voices to mildly critique something like misogyny or homophobia in their own communities….there were some people spouting legitimate anti muslim bigotry, right alongside them…
Unfortunately, that has boiled over.
The resistance to allow open discussion of Islam, caused a massive failure to address grievances with Islamic extremism.
This left the floor open for the right to swoop in and fear monger, campaign from an angle of xenophobia…it couldn’t be more obvious than in a time like this. Where muslims are being singled out by the fucking president of the United States…and banned.
We see it all the time – like that time Sam Harris tried to browbeat Maryam into agreeing that he never carelessly (or worse) wandered into xenophobic territory when he talked about Islam, and she simply would not comply. Suddenly a whole crew of right-leaning male bloggers and Twitter jockeys who had been fans of hers discovered that actually she’s just the worst, man.
This is a time where innocent muslims were shot while peacefully practising their faith, by a far-right, deranged Trump and Marine Le Pen supporter. People’s hijabs are being ripped off in the street, we hear of such stories more and more. The emboldened bigotry vibe seems infectious – people who were always slightly sympathetic, are more and more comfortable sharing their feelings now.
What do right wing nationalists want exactly? What does Trump want? If he really hates muslims, he’s achieving the opposite of making them a widely detested group.
Artwork by Shepard Fairey
Precisely. Thanks to Trump, we now have that image of a woman in hijab as a lefty hero, as if veiling women were the ultimate in progressive thought.
I prefer Eiynah’s version:
Eiynah
Not to mention Ayaan Hirsi Ali just prior. But no, it seems the left has decided to give Islam an exemption from criticism, despite opposing so much of what it stands for.
Some left. Not The Left. We aren’t a unified bloc. My defense of Muslim’s rights is not to be construed as an exemption from criticism for Islam. .
And while I am angered that women are individually harassed for head covering I do not condone the practice.
I’ve personally decided to shut up about it in public places (because I feel at this moment in the US it’s not worth potential harm to one of the now most vulnerable groups) but I’m not happy about it…
Just one of the many, many unfortunate consequences of that monster getting elected…
Agreed.The ‘Left’ has a long history of blinkered attitudes. The atrocities committed by Stalin and Mao were ignored by their Leftist worshippers in the West. The one big idea at the time was ‘anti-imperialism’, now it’s ‘anti-racism’.
If the contemporary so-called ‘Left’ had been true to its ideology and not ignored Islam’s atrocities, the vacuum wouldn’t have been filled by the Right.
The Left was deeply and passionately divided on the Stalin question. Trotskyists, socialists, anarchists, and many nondenominational leftists detested Stalin.
And the left is also divided on science. We like to think of the right as anti-science and the left as pro-science, but many of the anti-vaxxers are liberal, as are many of the paleo-everything folks, and the new agers are probably mostly left. There are a lot of people on the left who regard science as imperialist, male, and western, and as such, to be opposed. And some on the right who regard it that way, and love it for that reason.
Yes. Learning about that in the mid or late 90s was what got me here – it’s what B&W was originally about.
It’s been obvious to me since the Mo-toons affair that there’s a fine line to walked on Islam. Yes, there’s a dark side to it, which is somewhat more prominent than e.g. Christianity’s dark side (which has been on the whole on the wane in the past century or so), and that deserves and very much needs to be called out. But Muslims in the West are also subject to anti-immigrant bigotry, and racists are quite happy to use legitimate criticism of Islam as cover for their own agenda. Predictably, some Muslims seem to be responding by using accusations of such bigotry (labelled as “Islamophobia”) to cover their own promotion of a theocratic agenda. How does one navigate that particular Scylla and Charybdis?
For light relief (because we need some), try this article and many of the comments…
http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-wine/91176176/i-fed-my-family-on-paleo-for-a-week-and-it-was-a-disaster
Rob, those comments were…amusing, heartbreaking, infuriating…
A writer I am familiar with wrote an article about going vegan. Sometimes, though, he actually did take in some dairy, so he recognized that his diet wasn’t fully vegan. The abuse he got in the comments was similar to some of what I saw with these commenters chewing her out for not “doing it right” – paleosplaining? And not one of them have a clue how stupid this whole fad is.
Indeed. The amusing comments were invariably from the people who understand just how daft the concept of a specific paleo diet (composed of modern foods from different geographic regions) actually is. IMO incidentally, Pete Evans is a fool who gives out sometimes dangerous advice based on little more than his opinion. I don’t even consider his advice well meaning.
My point was not, that all the Left was pro-Stalin or pro Mao, but that some sections of the ‘Left’ had abandoned their social democratic principles. Whether or not some progressives were anti-Stalin is irrelevant.
Iknklast,
I wouldn’t describe New Agers or anti-vaxxers as ‘Leftists, just demented. There’s apparently a difference between the progressive social democratic left that’s part of the tradition of most Western nations and left liberals by the US definition.
Rob,
Not being a fan of the program, I had no idea of Evans and the drivel he promotes. Apparently no one has challenged Evans on the fact that many humans possess a genetic mutation that allows them to digest dairy products.
The Lysenko affair is the iconic example of pseudo-left anti-science and credulity.
Straight out of Orwell, the dictatorship declared that two plus two would equal five until further notice. And even ‘real’ scientists like Haldane waffled and hesitated, or actively supported Lysenko’s claims.
‘Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize’ by Sean B. Carroll, is worth skimming through those passages on the subject.
RJW @ 12 – Irrelevant to what? It wasn’t irrelevant to what I was talking about – which wasn’t in fact a correction of or disagreement with you, but just an expansion on the point that the left is always full of disagreements on basic principles as well as everything else.
The anti-vax movement is a big tent. I see a fair amount of crossover with Libertarians, for instance.
Apropos of not very much, a fairly conservative friend of mine is a paleo diet/alt med/alt anything enthusiast with at least some New Agey tendencies. Xe, not a Jew, once had a Hebrew character hung on her fridge. Had something to do with the Kabbalah (sp?) to help with negative thoughts, I was told.
Ack. I used “xe” in the interest of privacy in the very off chance someone who knows me would suss the person’s identity out, then said “her fridge”.
Ophelia @15
OK I misinterpreted your comment.
The “Left” has also managed to corrupt the debate over the issue of immigration, that’s another area where the Right has taken the high ground.