“The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.” – Charles Eliot Norton
Sunday, September 7, 2008
The Roots of 'Foreign Subversion' Conspiracies in the Middle East? - Actual Foreign Subversion
"Foreign Subversion" is probably the first English phrase any Arab politician learns, and is the explanation for everything from peasant resistance to childhood vaccines (they obviously cause sterility) to curbing media freedom (Israel will infiltrate Syrian Facebook groups). Next to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict it's the number two reason Arab regimes give for maintaining archaic restraints on human freedom. "Irrational appeals to conspiracy theories" could just be another footnote in some Orientalist publication on the Arab Mind, but turns out, they're not so irrational after all.
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