Accusing opponents of ‘sympathy’ is a rhetorical tool for redirecting debate

Evidence

More to the point, Rothstein’s statement reveals the varied ways sympathy can be used—to promote the illusion of a post-race society or, in this case, to accuse liberals of supporting terrorism and to reframe the discussion around the need for military intervention. He accuses proponents of the injustice theory of sympathizing with the terrorists for considering the possibility that U.S. foreign policies could be a factor in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, suggesting that proponents of the injustice theory are trying to legitimize the identified grievance. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 876

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: a taxonomy of rhetorical moves used to foreclose causal explanations of political violence — accusation-by-sympathy, theory-labeling, distraction-claiming.
• DEEPTHINKING: The mapping of ‘sympathy’ as a double-edged rhetorical weapon — used both to fabricate a post-race society and to delegitimize dissent — is a genuinely layered analytical point about how empathy discourse gets weaponized on both sides.
• XREF: connects to: Opinions take shape only within contexts that invite or discourage debate — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 164; Attacking the arguer substitutes for refuting arguments that challenge consensus. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2389