Words and Wars of Ideology
Janet Albrechtsen wrote in The Austrailian, that the language police are oppressing her when they tell her to stop calling people Islamo-Fascists. She argues that the people she’s describing self-identify as Islamic and claim to speak for Islam. And their actions are decidedly fascist. Isn’t she simply calling it as it is?
Yes and no. There are many phrases she could choose—and if there wasn’t anything else at stake, I would tell her to have a ball. But when an extreme, vocal, and dangerous minority claims to speak for the entire religion, bolstering their claim helps them. In simple words, Ms. Albrechtsen is helping the terrorists and is too dim to realize it.
Let’s try a different example. We have a number of hate groups here who claim the label “Christian Identity.” They are white supremecist. We call them hate groups or white supremecists—because we’re not going to allow them to claim the mantle of Christianity. We don’t want to make people sympathetic with them. And when people attack them or criticize them, we definitely don’t want people to think Christianity is under attack. In the same way, we don’t want anybody to think the people speak for Islam—particularly in a country that is heavily Islamic and has largely rejected the terrorists. Al Qaeda would love for people to view it as the leader of Islamic resistance against the oppressive West just as our Christian Identity people would love to be the head of Christian resistance to whatever they see themselves resisting. “Islamo-fascist” plays into their hands neatly.
If Ms. Albrechsen doesn’t care about hurting people’s feelings or making them feel culturally marginalized, that doesn’t make her a particularly nice person—but the stakes are (comparably) low. But perhaps she can find a way a way to hurt and marginalize people without doing the extremists’ work for them?
Do you want the terrorists to win?
A good point well put!
