Fort Hood and the Media
What does the mainstream media’s coverage of the Fort Hood massacre tell us about liberalism?
With several days now having passed since the massacre at Fort Hood, the pundit class has turned from commenting on the attack itself to commenting on the commentary. David Brooks pens the inevitable column:
“The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality. It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the U.S. as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar.
It denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.”
It was, of course, only a matter of time before a moderate conservative reminded us that there is, in fact, significant danger to the United States from radical Islam, and it’s a fair and true warning indeed. However, one wonders what exactly Brooks would have us do. Of course there’s a tendency in the media to have a bit of sensitivity to the issue — what would be accomplished by making explicit what everyone already knows: that this act was the result of radical religious commitments combined, apparently, with a disturbed and pitiable individual?
I think the mainstream media account here is right on. A defining feature and enduring success of American liberalism is that it has been able to absorb ethnic, racial, and religious minorities, to varying degrees of success, in such a way as to prevent outright violence (though clearly not reaching any platonic ideal of fairness, equality, etc). There are many in any society who hold commitments to radical ideologies, religious or otherwise. America has succeeded in that, for the most part, it’s only those who are also simply loony who manage to act out in support of those radical commitments. In that way, the media is right to highlight what’s unusual about Hasan — that he was a disturbed loner — rather than what is, indeed, quite common: that he held hard line religious commitments.
-John
Related posts:
- Was Fort Hood terrorism?
- Islam between democracy and liberalism
- A spectre is haunting America
- Liberalism and the burqa
- Will Tariq Ramadan destroy liberalism?
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