Easy Dupes

Pathetic and Destructive

Narratives are powerful.  They control what we identify as significant data or facts, how we empirically apprehend the data, what interpretations and shades of significance we place upon the evidence, and the conclusions drawn.  Absolute objectivity is impossible.  Only relative neutrality and disinterestedness are possible.  The cut of our jib determines the winds we catch and the sailing progress we make. True objectivity consists only in this: full disclosure of the jib's cut whilst our sailing exploits narrative unfolds.

Post-modernism has challenged our culture to face up to the inevitable and intrinsic cant in everyone's understanding.  That is why it is despised by those still claiming absolute objectivity, operating just by the facts, only the facts.  Every so often we see the pervasive power of narrative on ridiculous display.  It can lead to an easy gullibility and childish credulity. 

"Gay Girl in Damascus" had been lionised by the Commentariate--which, as it happens, relentlessly denies the cut of its own sailing rig--both to itself and its audience.
  Therefore it is an easy mark.  The Commentariate is deeply invested in the narrative of secular human rights.  All human beings on the planet basically think the same way about demand rights and civil rights; so much so that if external repressions were to be removed, the people would rise up to claim and enjoy their rights--and the demand rights of others.  To put it crassly, were authoritarian regimes to be removed, a hundred blooms of western-style secular democracy would inevitably and naturally spring forth. 

"Gay Girl" purported to be a lesbian blogger in Syria.  The narrative of the Commentariate has for a long time failed to "see" the evidence of Islamic repression against women.  Certainly it exists--but it is not intrinsic to Islam itself or to the native heart of Islamic people.  It is therefore not really real.  Remove the oppressive regimes and hey-presto, Islam will suddenly look and act like a secular Western culture, complete with nude beaches soaking up loooove and tolerance.  "Gay Girl" became a cause celebre because she described her experience of the natural, easy tolerance of homosexuality in Syria: the oppression against homosexuals was a foreign imposition originating from an oppressive regime.  She also was an enthusiastic supporter of the oppressed Palestinian story, and an astringent foe of Israel.  Once again, she fell neatly into the predispositions of credulity in the Commentariate. 

"Gay Girl" was Amina Abdallah Arraf, a Syrian-American woman living in Damascus.  According to Jonah Goldberg,

People desperately wanted to believe in this “hero”: a saucy, sage, left-wing member of the LGBT community who likes to wear the hijab, can’t stand Israel or George W. Bush, and who parrots every cliché about the romantic authenticity of the Arab people and their poetic yearning for democracy, peace, and love. . . .  Amina’s assertions succeeded with little effort. For instance, “she” writes of the Palestinians’ need to return to their homes in Israel: “It’s simple but, maybe, you have to be a Levantine Arab to get this. It makes perfect sense to me.” Of course it does!

CNN interviewed “her” — by e-mail — for a story about gay rights and the Arab Spring. “She” said things were going great for gays. She said the feedback, even from Muslims, for her blog was “almost entirely positive.” . . .“She” has never been harassed by Arabs for being gay. But in America, “she” has been “struck by strangers for being an Arab” and “had dung thrown at me” for wearing the hijab.

Then the Commentariate exploded.  Amina was arrested by government goons.  The liberal media began a campaign to expose her plight and attempt to secure her release.  Mark Steyn reports:

A “Free Amina!” Facebook page sprang up. “The Obama Administration must speak about this,” declared Peter Beinart, former editor of The New Republic. “This woman is a hero.”

On June 7th the State Department announced that it was looking into the “kidnapping.”

Then Amina was "outed".  It turns out "she" was 40 year old unemployed male, a perpetual student who is also a peace activist by the name of  Tom MacMaster. 

The pretty young lesbian Muslim was exposed as a portly 40-year-old male infidel at the University of Edinburgh with the help of “Paula Brooks,” shortly before “Paula” was exposed as a 58-year-old male construction worker from Ohio. “He would have got away with it if I hadn’t been such a stand-up guy,” the second phony lesbian said of the first phony lesbian. As to why stand-up guys are posing as sit-down lesbians, “Paula” told the Associated Press that “he felt he would not be taken seriously as a straight man.”

Granted, these events of charlatanism are risible.  They represent the most extreme forms of propaganda.  But the real story is why the Commentariate was such an easy dupe.  It is easy because it has believed its own press.  It has become self-deluded about its narratives about itself.  It really thinks it is objective, disinterested, fair, balanced, and unafraid.  Because it has these "qualities" its beliefs about human demand rights and civil rights being deeply ingrained in the hearts of all human beings must be true.  Viciously circular to be sure--but it's position remains that crass. 

Mark Steyn rings the changes:

(Tom McMaster) took an actual, live, mass popular uprising and made an entirely unrepresentative and, indeed, nonexistent person its poster “girl.” From CNN to the Guardian to Bianca Jagger to legions of Tweeters, Western liberalism fell for a ludicrous hoax. Why?

Because they wanted to. It would be nice if “Amina Arraf” existed. As niche constituencies go, we could use more hijab-wearing Muslim lesbian militants and fewer fortysomething male Western deadbeat college students. But the latter is a real and pathetically numerous demographic, and the former is a fiction — a fantasy for Western liberals, who think that in the multicultural society the nice gay couple at 27 Rainbow Avenue can live next door to the big bearded imam with four child brides at Number 29 and gambol and frolic in admiration of each other’s diversity. They will proffer cheery greetings over the picket fence, the one admiring the other’s attractive buttock-hugging leather shorts for that day’s Gay Pride parade as he prepares to take his daughter to the clitoridectomy clinic. . . .

In Bahrain “democracy activists” have attacked hundreds of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, ripping the tongue out of one muezzin and leaving him brain damaged. What’s so “multicultural” about the pampered middle-aged narcissists of the West’s leisurely “activist” varsity pretending that the entire planet is just like them?

You can learn a lot from the deceptions a society chooses to swallow. “Amina Arraf” was a fiction who fit the liberal worldview. That’s because the liberal worldview is a fiction.

The more general point is this: when people fail to disclose their suppressed narratives even to themselves, they become willingly self-deceived.  Consequently they are easy marks and credulous dupes.  That is how an entire world view can become a fantastical fiction, whilst all the academics and authorities of the Commentariate assert its verity,  factuality and truth. 

There are few things more pathetic, on the one hand, and destructive, on the other, than a people who have become willingly self-duped by their own propaganda, calibrating policy and promulgating law accordingly.