By the time the bodies had been counted at the Bondi Beach massacre, the familiar machinery of moral confusion had already started turning. As with every atrocity of the kind this century – and there have been too many to count since 9/11 – the language is the first sign that something has gone horribly wrong with our response to evil.
Through the media that speak on their behalf, institutions reach for a tried-and-tested lexicon of calculated evasion. These are words and phrases designed to create the appearance of a sober and humane response.
In reality, they are empty of meaning. They function as an anaesthetic, numbing public outrage and buying just enough time for things to restabilise without having to say anything of substance.
Here are eight examples you’ve heard dozens of times before – by no means exhaustive – that should have been retired years ago but persist out of habit, even as fewer people pretend to believe them.
1. “This has nothing to do with Islam”
Translation: Ignore everything you just saw and heard.
It doesn’t matter that the perpetrator has done everything short of handing out annotated copies of the Quran to justify his actions. It’s irrelevant that he shouted “Allahu Akbar” while stabbing people, or that he livestreamed a statement pledging allegiance to ISIS in the aftermath. Ignore that his social media is a catalogue of jihadist justifications for violence. He may even be called Jihad, but that’s a reference to “spiritual struggle” – just so we’re clear.
Remember: this has nothing to do with Islam.
The brazenness of the lie is obvious – any fool can see it. But worse is the demand that you participate in it. The authorities are effectively asking that you ignore reality and absorb the institutional message that none of this was religiously motivated.
It’s gaslighting on an industrial scale. As the line often attributed to Solzhenitsyn puts it:
“We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying. We also know that they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”
Many of the other phrases on this list are downstream of this one or its variations that talk about a “poisoned offshoot” or a “grotesque distortion” of Islam – supporting characters in a fiction we’ve heard too many times before.
2. Concerns about “Islamophobia / far-right rhetoric / divisive language”
Translation: The problem is you.
