Human-rights rhetoric functions as core neoconservative propaganda, not liberal exclusivity

Evidence

Bricmont argues in his book Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War that the ideology of our times, at least when it comes to legitimizing war, is no longer Christianity, nor Kipling’s “white man’s burden” or the “civilizing mission” of the French Republic, but is a certain discourse on human rights and democracy, mixed in with a particular representation of the Second World War. This discourse justifies Western interventions in the third world in the name of the defense of democracy and human rights or against the “new Hitlers.” … These liberal arguments, however, aren’t only the tools of liberal imperialists—they are part of the neocons’ arsenal as well. After all, the Bush administration used women’s rights as justification for the 2001 war on Afghanistan and named “democracy-building” a goal in Iraq. The difference between the neoconservative and liberal imperialist wings of the policy establishment lies in the latter’s recourse to multilateralism and coalition-building when possible (though not always), as well as a willingness to use diplomacy. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 466 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

Related

• Human-rights discourse has replaced civilizational rhetoric as war’s legitimation (similarity 0.93)
• Human rights and democracy discourse replaced older imperial justifications for war (similarity 0.90)
• Responsibility-to-Protect discourse shifted sovereignty from nations to individuals (similarity 0.87)
• Bush used women’s rights and democracy to justify war (similarity 0.84)
• Human rights rhetoric masks imperial assumptions that racialize colonized peoples (similarity 0.82)
• Liberal humanitarian rhetoric masks imperial violence and infantilizes its targets (similarity 0.81)
• Human rights advocates legitimized progressive-sounding counterinsurgency warfare (similarity 0.81)
• Liberal human-rights rhetoric racializes by infantilizing those it claims to help (similarity 0.79)
• Clash-of-civilizations rhetoric ideologically legitimized both foreign wars and domestic attacks (similarity 0.79)
• Revolutionary rhetoric can mask active counterrevolutionary alliances (similarity 0.78)
• Humanitarian rhetoric masks a bipartisan assumption that developing peoples cannot govern themselves. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Human-rights discourse has replaced civilizational rhetoric as war’s legitimation #complicates (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 466