The road to bigotry in 140 characters

The road to bigotry in 140 characters

by digby

I missed this little controversy over the week-end. I think it perfectly crystallizes the way this "debate" going:

Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 10, 2015

That's how a conversation about "Islam" morphs into bigotry and collective responsibility in less than 140 characters. Rupert Murdoch isn't just some guy.  He's the most powerful media mogul on the planet. And his media outlets carry his preferred editorial line.

According to this, the reaction was swift on twitter, this from comedian  Aziz Ansari being representative of the response by normal people:

.@rupertmurdoch is responsible for all pedophilia committed by anyone Catholic. @rupertmurdoch why are you pro-pedophile :(
— Aziz Ansari (@azizansari) January 12, 2015

Actually, that doesn't quite hit the mark, does it? The comparison would work if upon the revelation of the ongoing scourge of pedophilia in the Catholic church, all of us who are non-Catholic had demanded that Catholics everywhere stand up and repudiate their priesthood and the institution that allowed that heinous activity to go on for decades. This criminal, moral rot went all the way to the very top of the hierarchy which facilitated it and covered it up. But I don't recall anyone holding the average American Catholic believer responsible for the actions of those priests or demanding that they stand up and public rebuke them lest they held responsible for their pedophilia.  And that's because collective responsibility and its logical next step --- collective punishment --- makes little sense and is morally wrong.  But we seem to have a problem recognizing that when it comes to Islam. (In the bad old days, we very famously had a problems recognizing it when it came to Judaism and we know where that led.)

Don't kid yourself. The idea all "Moslems" are responsible for the actions of these extremists is what makes actions like the Iraq war sound reasonable to a whole lot of people. And it's the kind of idea that will lead in such directions again if we don't keep our wits about us.

This is why we need to be just a teensy bit less self-righteous in our condemnation of entire religions. It doesn't take much for people like Murdoch to make the leap from condemning the religion to condemning vast swaths of innocent people.


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