How To Be A Liberal: The Story of Freedom and the Fight for its Survival

by Ian Dunt

The terror attacks on the US on 11th September 2001 delivered a crucial turning point in the narrative. They provided a villain. All the various abstract ideas of nativism could now be encapsulated in the image of the suicide bomber, looking to enslave the West. In many ways, 21st-Century Muslims took the role that Jews took during the Dreyfus Affair. They could be portrayed as capable of global conspiracy and yet simultaneously as crime-crazed thugs and rapists. As ever, the caricature made no logical sense. How could a group with the latter characteristics be clever enough to accomplish the former? But as before, that did not matter and was in fact useful. It meant Islam could be blamed for everything, from petty crime on the street to national humiliation on the global stage.