How many "lone nuts" does it take to make a party mix...

[rfranklin]

Stanley Fish had an excellent post in the NYT yesterday about the hypocritical double standard that the right applies to Muslim terrorists vs. Christian ones. In a (lone) nutshell:

The formula is simple and foolproof (although those who deploy it so facilely seem to think we are all fools): If the bad act is committed by a member of a group you wish to demonize, attribute it to a community or a religion and not to the individual. But if the bad act is committed by someone whose profile, interests and agendas are uncomfortably close to your own, detach the malefactor from everything that is going on or is in the air (he came from nowhere) and characterize him as a one-off, non-generalizable, sui generis phenomenon.

For examples, Fish harkens back to the the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing and the right’s whiplash-fast pivot from talking about Islam’s “culture of violence” to “Oh, it was just some guy acting completely on his own with no connection to anything” when it turned out the bomber was a Christian white guy, and to the irony of holding the entire religion of Islam responsible for 9/11 while disavowing any connection with the guy who tried to kill a cab driver just for being Muslim.

What’s most remarkable is not so much that the right does this, but that they get away with it so many times. Consider:

He goes on to list many of the rightwing Christian terrorists of recent times

http://firedoglake.com/2010/08/31/how-many-lone-nuts-does-it-take-to-make-a-party-mix/

[NC_Nurse]

1. Excellent article. K&R

[spartan61]

2. I wish I had read this article a few days ago.

I received another e-mail from a childhood friend with an article of how "Muslims" are going to take down America. (In the past, out of a long time childhood friendship, I usually just delete her garbage.) She is a fanatic Catholic and all I could think to respond to her was to tell her that using her argument (that because the hi-jackers of 9-11 were Muslim, all Muslims are evil,) all Catholics must be pedophiles because of the pedophile priests.

I've saved this article to respond with the next time I am assaulted by another hate filled comment from a "friend."