By Maajid Nawaz
Wednesday, November 09, 2016
I always feared Trump would win. I had placed a wager on that
fact with my friend Cameron Munter, the former American ambassador to Pakistan.
Cameron had absolutely assured me of a Democrat victory.
So sure was he that he bet $100 on it. This morning I sent him a simple email:
‘My friend, I feel like crying. I do not wish to collect. Please donate the
$100 to a charity of your choosing.’ I wanted no part in profiting in any way
from the fear that millions of Muslim Americans, Mexican Americans and migrants
to America must be feeling right now.
But then it struck me.
In our sanctimony, our outrage, our righteousness, we
overlook the way in which we appear to the other. The fact is that populism is
not only rising on the right.
The hard left, too, is angry, scared and increasingly
vitriolic. Many on the left are displaying the very traits they disparage the
right for exhibiting. Fear is well and truly on the march.
Yes, we are scared. But they – Trump voters – are scared,
too. Blaming and shaming them will only scare them more. And people do not go
on to do good things when they are scared. The 1930s stand as a vivid testament
to this truth.
We liberals must grieve this election loss, yes. We must
mourn, then accept, and reflect on the outcome. But, most of all, we must then
act to dissipate this fear among Trump supporters themselves. And that cannot
happen, will not happen, if we are scared ourselves. Shouting, insulting and
finger-pointing at a moment like this rarely changes opinions, but neither does
pretending there is no problem.
Great change is afoot, and a consequence of this change
is great trepidation and uncertainty. We often hear that globalisation has
disenfranchised people, but its most obvious effect is that it has empowered
parochialism.
Owing to historically unparalleled connectivity and
mobilisation, globalisation has stratified entire populations.
Extremist Muslims are hating on ‘kuffar infidels’.
Neo-Nazis and their populist right bedfellows are hating on the multicultural
left. The hard left are hating on ‘neo-liberal globalists’. And they all seem
to be hating on ‘the Jews’.
Many Muslims now feel more connected to their religious
counterparts across the world than they do to their fellow citizens. For all
their talk of anti-globalisation, the populist right, too, have forged
transnational global alliances with like-minded nativists the world over, while
hating on their “liberal elite” neighbours for doing the same.
Meanwhile, the globalist left protests ‘neoliberal
capitalism’, while relying on the technology and social media platforms created
by these ‘neoliberal capitalists’.
Globalised localism is what I call this. And as these
political strands draw in on themselves owing to connectivity, they grow
further apart from each other. That echo chamber is more akin to a deep mining
cave – leading nowhere.
Fear requires no logic. This is why it is contradictory.
Depending on who you talk to, we are simultaneously witnessing the end of
progressivism and the return of state socialism. The end of borders and
resurgent nationalism. The sidelining of religion and a revival of theocracy.
Immigrants are stealing our jobs while unjustly claiming welfare.
Free speech has suffered terribly. Populists will abuse
it to incite hatred of Muslims. Islamists will simultaneously argue for it, and
against it, depending on whether the topic is the right to advocate theocratic
extremism or ban cartoons.
The hard left’s answer is typically authoritarian,
preferring to silence debate rather than think uncomfortable thoughts. I am at
once listed – by two respectable outlets – as a Muslim terrorist and an
anti-Muslim extremist. Reasonable conversation around Islam, race, and
immigration has become near impossible.
Indeed, the only thing this fear has in common is the
overwhelming narcissism of its most devout adherents. Everything must revolve
around us. Only we are the victims. Nobody else’s pain matters. Unless, of
course, it can be used to teach them how much we have been suffering, too.
Of course African-Americans, Latinos and other minority
communities have suffered, and will suffer still. Yes, many Muslims, too, are
suffering. But my fellow liberals must accept that the white working classes –
especially the underemployed men among them – are also in dire straits.
These young men are underrepresented at universities
today, underemployed, and many are incarcerated. Depending on the perspective,
everyone is at once a minority and a majority. The truth is, we are all
suffering.
Yes, it is racist to suspect that all brown men who look
like me are rapists. It is bigoted to presume that all Muslim men who share my
faith advocate religiously justified rape. It is xenophobic to assume that all
immigrants – like my family – are sexual predators awaiting their chance to
rape.
But let me be absolutely clear: what will feed this
racism, bigotry, and xenophobia even more is refusing to talk about the very
real challenges to culture and liberalism that globalisation and intercultural
exchange bring. Silencing this conversation only encourages the populist
right’s rallying cry against “the establishment”.
In part, Trump won because the hard left has abandoned
the facts almost as quickly as the hard right. This will not be comfortable to
read for many, but that’s precisely why it needs to be said.
We have become quick to demand our rights while slow to
afford those same rights to others. If all blacks are not thugs, if all Muslims
are not terrorists, likewise all police cannot be racist killers and all
straight white men cannot be the devil incarnate with absolutely nothing to
contribute.
In between these tabloid simplifications, intelligent
debate has been lost. Liberalism provides freedom of religion and from
religion. Free speech allows for the advocacy of ideas such as Islamist
theocracy, but it also means that others have the inalienable right to
blaspheme.
Bigotry can exist against minorities but also by
minorities. Human rights are a double-edged sword of justice. They work both
for and against people, including for and against minorities. We should be able
to hold two thoughts at the same time.
If Brexit and Trump’s win has failed to stop us in our
tracks and reflect, then I humbly suggest we are part of the problem.
Only a new commitment to the universality of human rights
and human dignity can lift us out of this current quagmire. But that will
require foot soldiers of peace who preach what we have in common rather than
how we are different; what we have gained, rather than what we have lost; and
what we seek to achieve rather than what we have failed to accomplish.
These foot soldiers of peace must be able to transcend
their own victimhood while pulling people together. Love and empathy must win
over hate and vengeance.
Everyone is a victim, and everyone is an aggressor.
No comments:
Post a Comment