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The Scapegoats Among Us
Full multi-page article at link from Policy Review....The need to blame To identify primal fear as the denominator common to the anti-American scapegoating now emanating from some quarters in Europe is not to suggest anything like sinister intent. The same is true of the pundits who have made a different industry of scapegoating in the U.S. All have their reasons, and the overriding reason is an obvious one. There is something deeply human about the desire to find all the things scapegoats can provide: a vessel to bear one's anxieties and outrages, a target that won't hit back, a welcome distraction from the real thing. On the positive side of the ledger, the threat of Islamism as a problem within the West and not merely emanating from outside it is indeed beginning to get the airing it deserves, at least in the United States. The appearance of the Phillips, Berlinski, and Bawer books is one sign, as are other serious treatments now in the works. So is the attention the subject now garners in news and commentary that comes largely (though not exclusively) from the right. On the negative side, the record of ideas from the last few years also suggests that we too need to keep our guard up. That is why the appearance of scapegoating since 9/11 bears watching all its own: because freedom can be curtailed one baby step at a time, and fuzzy ideas about reality only accelerate them. Who would have guessed 20 years ago that by 2006, a Norwegian man eating lunch in the restaurant beneath the parliament would be asked to remove his jacket because the Star of David on it is now considered a "provocation"? Or that German cultural authorities at a flagship opera would opt for pre-emptive self-censorship? Getting from here to there had to start small: One pulled punch at a time in a newspaper editorial, one more act of omission in calling a spade a club, one more clever set of reasons for why something that is not the obvious thing is really the menace that walks among us. As for what looking into reality requires of us if we are not to take refuge in scapegoats, it is no wonder that the temptation to look elsewhere continues strong. The real thing was apparently on near-perfect display in Amsterdam at Theo van Gogh's murder trial, where according to Ian Buruma the murderer Bouyeri finally broke his silence to address van Gogh's mother as follows: He wanted her to know that he didn't kill her son because he [Theo] was Dutch, or because he, Mohammed, felt insulted as a Moroccan. Theo was no hypocrite, he continued, for he had simply spoken his mind. "So the story that I felt insulted as a Moroccan, or because he called me a goat fr, that is all nonsense. I acted out of faith. And I made it clear that if it had been my own father, or my little brother, I would have done the same thing . . . if I were ever released, I would do exactly the same, exactly the same." In the face of a reality like that, who wouldn't rather pin the tail of "our most pressing issue" on some other donkey Spanish-speaking illegals, right-wing Christians, George Bush, Israel and the Jews, even and ultimately America itself? The deformation of political truth to avoid recognition of the Islamist threat which is one of its current defining features is a normal response to an abnormally terrible fact. Unfortunately, that does not make it any less inimical to freedom. Posted by: 3dc 2007-01-26 |
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