Neocons recruit Muslim ‘native informers’ to delegitimize Muslim criticism of US policy

Evidence

Not only did AVOT set out to influence public opinion, it also sought to silence dissenting views. As its website declared, AVOT has a “steadfast commitment to attacking those who would blame America first.” This was part of a larger strategy that targeted all dissenters but particularly, as noted above, the Arab American Left. The neocons have vigorously argued that the United States has been a force for good in the Middle East and that people in that region therefore had only themselves to blame for the state of their countries. This argument has been articulated not just by the likes of Pipes and Lewis, but also by mainstream figures like Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman. Neocon Ayaan Hirsi Ali has given legitimacy to this argument through her status as a “native informer.” Ali, who blames Islam for her difficult childhood in Somalia (and pretty much everything else), asks: “Why are Muslims so hypersensitive to criticism and why don’t they do anything with it except to respond by denying it or playing the victim?” In short, Muslims who attempt to articulate criticisms of US policy do not have any legitimate grounds. Irshad Manji, another ideological collaborator with empire, puts it more condescendingly when she tells her “fellow Muslims” to “grow up,” lecturing forcefully that the United States has been a champion of human rights and that “neither Israel or America lies at the root of Muslim misery.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 676

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly corroborates and sharpens the vault’s Islamophobia cluster: Muslim-native-informer co-optation (Ali, Manji) is a mechanism by which empire manufactures consent, adding a primary-source naming of figures beyond Aziz/Razack/Rana.
• XREF: Connects to the existing vault cluster on post-9/11 Islamophobia as imperial policy — specifically corroborating the ‘manufactured consent’ and ‘native informer’ narrative strands. — connects to: Neocons recruit non-Western voices to delegitimize Muslim critiques of US policy; Neocons weaponize native informers to silence criticism of US policy — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 541; Native-informant Muslim figures preemptively delegitimize Muslim criticism of US policy (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Neocons weaponize native informers to silence criticism of US policy #corroborates (1.00) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 541
• Native-informant Muslim figures preemptively delegitimize Muslim criticism of US policy #corroborates (0.93)
• Native informers give empire’s anti-Muslim arguments false legitimacy from within #expands (0.90)
• Brown-skinned native informers authenticate the demonization of Islam while silence follows Israel’s crimes #corroborates (0.87) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 555
• Media spectacle turns native informers into embodied fantasies of Islam #expands (0.75) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 459
• Both neocons and realists deploy an Islamic threat frame serving shared US dominance #complicates (0.72) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 744