Liberal and authoritarian imperial strategies amalgamate rather than oppose each other

Evidence

Drawing a binary division between the universalizing and progressive rhetoric of liberal reform and the conservative and authoritarian assertion of colonial difference effaces complex interplays between fantasy, identification, sympathy, and fear. The many lives of the Phantom Wahhabi were born out of the ongoing, and often complex, interactions and amalgamations of liberal and authoritarian strategies of governance and colonial ideologies of universalism and difference. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 202

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: a piece on how the liberal/authoritarian binary obscures the emotional machinery — fantasy, identification, sympathy, fear — that actually drives policy.