why is there such a blindspot about Islamic extremism on the left? I feel like I understand a lot of their other blind spots but this one is a mystery to me. Why do they implicitly, often unconsciously, cover for an ideology that ought to be totally anathema to them?
but this is what I don't understand. you're saying its just pure factionalism then? "I support the enemy of my enemy" is really driving all this shit? Like, they seriously think that ISIS is acceptable because Republicans dislike ISIS?
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It’s not all factionalism, but the differential responses to Islamic violence do seem to be motivated by domestic political interests. I don’t think American liberals or most leftists condone ISIS, but they’d just far prefer to ignore it.
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Part of this has to do with the miserable failure of the Iraq War and the way that it motivates leftists to try and downplay threats that could legitimate a war. If ISIS is really, truly evil, shouldn’t we bomb the shit out of them?
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that's the right wing hawk position (bombing) but I don't think it follows the best response to an evil terrorist organization is airstrikes. seems counterproductive, on examination of the historical record. ignoring is counterproductive too though.
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literally nobody knows what an actually effective response is. failure to acknowledge this is the cause of enormous political problems. humility is supposed to be a "conservative" virtue but is completely absent from the "conservative" (hawk) foreign policy establishment.
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I just can't get over the absurdity of the left hand-in-sanding it about actual ISIS style terrorists shooting up nightclubs in America though. they don't have a solution either but their response is like straight-jacket worthy.
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But what do they have to gain from accepting it? Right wingers will use it as a cudgel against them and things just get potentially nastier for their Muslim friends.
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ok, so that's the pure factionalism case. if that's what it is, then that's what it is, but that's definitely a form of dysfunctional psychosis.
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the productive position, which I've seen from like exactly 1 person in the entire world (Maajid Nawaz) is to encourage positive outcomes for marginalized people at risk of radicalization by focusing on community support and social integration with broader society.
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The "fetishization of the marginalized" thing seems non-explanatory also. Islamic extremism is incredibly damaging to those same marginalized muslim communities in western countries. Do they think they're helping those communities out by being blind to the serious problems?
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I think that the counterculture of the 60s made a great deal of the importance of an outside to modern culture. The status quo was bad and the best way to destroy it was to unite those who were marginalized by it.
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So the marginal and transgressive were vaporized as being key to the overturning of the system. I think this played a role in how identity politics became the big thing on the left (that and the fact that it isn’t actually radical). Difference became a good in itself.
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Here we can see a parallel in how the third worldists view capitalism as only being conquerable by a non-capitalist outside to the capitalist system. Hence Foucault’s early support for Khomeini’s “revolution” and the support we still see for Iran from some.
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I always thought post-revolution Iran was very "second world". adjacent to soviet periphery, buying weapons from Russia, far more industrialized than the true third world and never colonized (not explicitly anyway).
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In the original conception I think first world was the western sphere, second the Soviets’, and third everyone else. For Foucault I just wanted to draw attention to the way he saw it originally as progressive in an anti-liberal and anti-capitalist way.
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His support suggested a longing for something novel without a great deal of concern for how it could be oppressive. The third worldism is a different tendency, but something that shares similarities to this view in its desire for the Other.
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fetishization is the right word. maybe should use a stronger term: xenophilia
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