Neocon smear campaigns have inspired copycat violence by figures like Breivik
Evidence
Building on Kramer’s early polemic that Middle East studies departments are wrong about US policy, these books attempted to spread the net more widely, condemning the Left as a whole, including the white Left, and constructing a conspiratorial alliance between Islamists and the Left. The Norwegian Breivik adopted this argument and turned it into the basis for the murder of teenagers at a camp run by the social-democratic Norwegian Labor Party. The neocons disavowed Breivik’s actions, yet their goal of silencing dissenting views and intimidating activists can be interpreted by those prone to violence like Breivik in these ways. The modus operandi of the neocons and the Islamophobia network is intimidation carried out through smear campaigns and harassment. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 677
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: how responsibility for rhetorical incitement is adjudicated when authors disavow the violent acts their discourse enables — there’s a legal and moral literature here.
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that disavowal does not sever the causal chain between elite smear discourse and lone-wolf violence raises hard questions about accountability for speech.