Reading Faisal Devji’s post The Moderate Muslim’s Fate has raised several questions in regard to my own thoughts on anti-Muslim sentiments recently. Devji makes an interesting argument for the de-politicization (benign neglect) of Islamic organizations in the West; to this I cannot comment, having admittedly very little knowledge of the position of Islamic organizations and their particular struggles in the West. It seems plausible, though I am suspicious about the possibility of de-politicization in the first place. To misquote Trotsky: you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.
But I also agree with Devji that “The truly interesting thing about the controversy, in other words, is neither Islam nor even ‘Islamophobia’ but the transformation of right wing politics in the United States.” This is what I have been trying to demonstrate in the last couple posts, that this debate is both a transformation and an extension of conservative thought — it cannot be seen as purely opportunist, but is developing a conservative line of argument about the centrality of “culture” to the identity of the nation.
Devji’s point about the de-centralized structure of the right wing movement and the peripheral role of the Republican Party in the formation of conservatism is interesting. This is certainly one of the major developments of the past ten years, accelerated by the first Obama administration. This movement allows the Republican Party to point to “grassroots” movements and “outsider voices” to achieve its own policy goals. Devji understands that this movement is independent of the Republican Party, and it is my argument here that its independence from the party is what makes it politically useful. What Devji has to say on this point is instructive:
“In the US … the crisis of authority among conservatives might have moved against political institutions but certainly not beyond them. What has been lost in the debate has been any claim to authoritative speech or knowledge, as demonstrated by so many of the arguments against the ‘Ground Zero mosque’ or about President Obama’s religion and place of birth. This is simply the consequence of a media-driven society with multiple sources of information that can no longer be contained within any effective hierarchy of knowledge.”
In other words, what was once a hierarchy of speech (the authority of the party or the media to issue definitive statements that might carry the qualities of being “newsworthy” or “truth”) has been flattened and expanded. The echo-box metaphor now well understood to rule the media operates not on a dichotomy of authoritative speech and illicit speech, but rather self and other speech. In other words, if you want to create an issue or report a dubious piece of news it is enough simply to cite that someone else has said this or that. This operation is relatively common for conservatives as to become a bit cliché: the Republican Party can approvingly discuss any number of hard right-wing issues, showing that it is the Tea Party Movement (and not the party) which is endorsing them.
For the media itself, the question is more perplexing. For example, while there is no general controversy regarding the Quran burning (even the most xenophobic public officials wince at the thought), the story has become the possible reaction of the “Muslim world”: a very possibility created by the media coverage itself. So the question of why such an event is newsworthy is difficult to answer: it seems to be newsworthy only because of the possible fallout, but this amounts to saying it is notable because it has been widely noted. So while the importance of the event is only a direct consequence of its being reported, the media can still claim that it is news because someone else is the immediate actor. Just as the media require an outside agent to legitimate its own internal production of news, political parties increasingly need para-party structures. It is the safest way to take the most reckless path: when things go wrong, the people need only point to the party as the culprit, and meanwhile the party can point to the para-party structures as the real radicals.
The problem for conservatives, actually, is that there is a fairly serious paradox inherent in this practice. What has defined conservatism, after all, in the past 200 years of western politics is fear of the masses, and the belief that it is traditional elites who should guide them, not a government founded on majoritarianism or equality. The Republicans are playing fast and loose with the leveling effects of modern telecommunications and culture. Within the conservative tradition in the 20th century, several solutions have presented themselves to limit the power of democratization. In the United States over the last half century, Neoconservatives have tried to marry “values” and free market fundamentalism, the former intended to fill the void created by the latter’s steady destruction of community, family, tradition, etc. It was specifically Leo Strauss who resurrected Plato’s “noble lie” to create the kind of social cohesion necessary to keep order despite an obviously unequal economic order.
In the “Ground Zero Mosque” debate, then, the appeal to “sensitivity” toward a majoritarian sensibility is a way of inventing such a nationalist culture, united (as victim) against Islam, and placing such a culture above law, as overriding law. While there is nothing new about political bogey men, the driving tension is now how egalitarian technologies can be manipulated to legitimate conservative cultural norms. The current debate, then, can be seen as an exercise in how the institutions of conservatism can control, channel, and maintain such “populist” movements.
