Soccer Dad

Terrorist chic by any other name smells as rank

In Why do intellectuals sympathize with criminals? Dr. Helen points to an interview Q & A

BC: Why do we as a society automatically extend empathy and compassion to criminals rather than the victims of their crimes? There's a phrase that you use in this context: "a preference for barbarism." Why do our intellectuals rally to the cause of miscreants rather than that of good, honest citizens?

Dr. Dalrymple: Intellectuals need to say things that are not immediately obvious or do not occur to the man in the street. The man in the street instinctively sympathizes with the victim of crime; therefore, to distinguish himself from the man in the street, the intellectual has to sympathize with the criminal, by turning him into a victim of forces which only he, the intellectual, has sufficient sophistication to see.

I love the response. So much of our news is spun statements made by "experts" who will say something counterintuitive - sometimes so much so that most people would consider it beyond ridiculous - but is taken at face value because, well, it was uttered by an expert.

This problem is especially manifest in dealing with terrorism. There is a tendency among our experts and in the media to find some grounds for "understanding" terrorism and that, of course leads to silence on different aspects of terror.

Seraphic Secret emphasizes the media's silence on the antisemitic aspect of the Mumbai terror.

But true to its liberal agenda, appeasement at all costs--especially when it involves Jewish blood--the mainstream media did all it could to play down the slaughter in the Mumbai Chabad House, making believe that the Islamo Nazis were equal opportunity murderers--when nothing could be further from the truth.

Daniel Pipes looks at a more general aspect of denial.

I documented this avoidance by listing the twenty (!) euphemisms the press unearthed to describe Islamists who attacked a school in Beslan in 2004: activists, assailants, attackers, bombers, captors, commandos, criminals, extremists, fighters, group, guerrillas, gunmen, hostage-takers, insurgents, kidnappers, militants, perpetrators, radicals, rebels, and separatists - anything but terrorists.

And if terrorist is impolite, adjectives such as Islamist, Islamic, and Muslim become unmentionable.

Remember Dr. Dalrymple's words?

... the intellectual has to sympathize with the criminal, by turning him into a victim of forces which only he, the intellectual, has sufficient sophistication to see.

That's what's going on. I refer to this as "terrorist chic." But whatever it is, it is foul and it is pervasive among our academic and media elites.

Crossposted at Yourish.