Liberal tolerance itself constructs and reproduces the others it claims to accept

Evidence

Several important investigative reports on the financing and production of Islamophobia have been produced in recent years including “Fear Inc.” by the Center for American Progress, 6 “The Right Wing Playbook on Anti-Muslim Extremism” by People for the American Way, 7 as well as “Jihad against Islam” by Robert Steinback from the Southern Poverty Law Center. 8 Each of these follows the financial trail of campaigns, pundits, organizations, and films identified as producing, utilizing, or reproducing Islamophobic discourses identified with neoconservative and right-wing political goals. They focus, however, on the most extreme and obvious forms of Islamophobia and pay less attention to the ways in which politically liberal pundits, journalists, and even scholars can be implicated in the reproduction and spread of Islamophobic discourse. The work of Wendy Brown on toleration and her critique of liberalism as directly implicated in constructing “others” to tolerate and selectively include provides important correctives to the exclusive focus on the most obvious Islamophobes in America. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 494

Categorization

• XREF: Wendy Brown’s critique of liberal tolerance connects to the Frankfurt School reading of toleration-as-control and to Orientalism debates about liberal inclusion of the Muslim other. — connects to: Civil Rights support was compatible with liberal faith in the system — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 692; Liberal neutrality masks power by presenting exclusion as reason’s product — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 135; Acknowledging other just societies forces liberal democracy to renounce universalist claims — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 285 (+1 more)