American Orientalism justifies therapeutic violence against Arabs as civilizing mission

Evidence

In this self-making, the modern American iteration of Orientalism can be read as a Manichean divide in which America, peace, democracy, and human rights exist on one side while the Orient, Oriental despotism or authoritarianism, violence, and barbarism exists on the other. The former is justified in administering therapeutic violence to the latter in order to civilize it or keep it at bay. Thus, the production of Orientalist institutions in the United States advances the justificatory discourse of violent intervention in ways reminiscent of the mission civilisatrice of European colonialism. It is of no small import that a theorist as respected as Alexis de Tocqueville could on one hand decry the treatment of Native Americans in the New World and justify the razzias that killed thousands of Berbers and Arabs in Algeria as necessary. In political theory as well as French literature, the Arab remains faceless and has nothing of the “noble savage"" about him, he is simply a savage. In such a worldview, violence is required to make the Arab into a civilized human. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 235

In this self-making, the modern American iteration of Orientalism can be read as a Manichean divide in which America, peace, democracy, and human rights exist on one side while the Orient, Oriental despotism or authoritarianism, violence, and barbarism exists on the other. The former is justified in administering therapeutic violence to the latter in order to civilize it or keep it at bay. Thus, the production of Orientalist institutions in the United States advances the justificatory discourse of violent intervention in ways reminiscent of the mission civilisatrice of European colonialism. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 235

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘therapeutic violence’ framing parallels Said’s Orientalism (which Choudhury cites) and echoes the civilization/barbarism dichotomy found in colonial discourse literature. — connects to: Said defined Orientalism as scholarship tied to governing the Middle East; The Judeo-Christian category is a mid-twentieth-century construct that erases Islam from the West — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 229; Academic Orientalist ideas preceded and justified military violence against Muslims. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 267 (+14 more)
• CANDY: Tocqueville decrying Native American treatment while justifying razzias in Algeria is a striking, tweetable contradiction.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 235

Broader Connections

• The War on Terror recycled pre-existing Orientalist academic discourse into state violence #corroborates (0.90) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 267
• Academic Orientalist ideas preceded and justified military violence against Muslims. #corroborates (0.85) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 267
• Multiculturalist representations of Arabs actually legitimize racism and torture #corroborates (0.85) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 305
• Violence with impunity is practiced in the name of civility #corroborates (0.85)
• Liberal universalism requires violence against the unredeemed outside world #expands (0.82) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 293
• Centuries of Orientalist scholarship have functioned as domination and violence #corroborates (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 483
• Arab violence is framed as illegitimate while US violence is framed as legitimate #corroborates (0.80) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 169
• Historical contextualization of Muslim violence is dismissed as anti-American #corroborates (0.80) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 233
• The moral imperative to address Muslim injustice can slide into endorsing Western civilizing missions #expands (0.80) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 26
• Civility veils rather than ends sanctioned state violence #corroborates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 250
• Orientalism is a political doctrine arising from Western dominance #expands (0.80)
• Orientalism presents Arabs as static types rather than historical agents #expands (0.75)
• Orientalist scholarship justified colonization by depicting Muslim men as innately abusive #corroborates (0.75)
• American Orientalism persists fragmentarily but ideologically coherently #expands (0.75)