Using the language of anti-bigotry to defend bigotry

JVL Introduction

Peter Beinart explores a strategy increasingly embedded in political discourse today: the use of claims of opposition to bigotry to defend bigotry.

His starting point is the development of  “a discourse of Hinduphobia”which claims that any attack on Modi’s Hindu nationalism (a nationalism that denies Muslims equal rights in India) is in fact bigotry against Hindus.

It’s an eerily familiar revisiting of the kind of narrative we are familiar with from the deployment of the IHRA definition to demonise criticism of Israeli ethno-nationalism as antisemitism.

Thus those who are victims of projects intended to build an ethnic supremacy – Hindu, Jewish or whatever – are presented as being racist bigots for opposing their own oppression.

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Thanks to Peter Beinart for permission to repost this transcript

This article was originally published by the Beinart Notebook on Mon 3 Jul 2023. Read the original here.