Islam Quote by Thomas Pynchon
““Just to say evil Islamics did it, that's so lame, and we know it. We see those official close-ups on the screen. The shifty liar's look, the twelve-stepper's gleam in the eye. One look at these faces and we know they're guilty of the worst crimes we can imagine. But who's in any hurry to imagine? To make the awful connection? Any more than Germans were back in 1933, when Nazis torched Reichstag within a month of Hitler becoming chancellor. Which of course is not to suggest that Bush and his people have actually gone out and staged the events of 11 September. It would take a mind hopelessly diseased with paranoia, indeed a screamingly anti-American nutcase, even to allow to cross her mind the possibility that that terrible day would have deliberately been engineered as a pretext to impose some endless Orwellian 'war' and the emergency decrees we will soon be living under. Nah, nah, perish that thought. "But there's still always the other thing. Our yearning. Our deep need for it to be true. Somewhere, down at some shameful dark recess of the national soul, we need to feel betrayed, even guilty. As if it was us who created Bush and his gang, Cheney and Rove and Rumsfeld and Feith and the rest of them--we who called down the sacred lightning of 'democracy' and then the fascist majority on the Supreme Court threw the switches, and Bush rose from the slab and began his rampage. And whatever happened then is on our ticket.””
About This Quote
Source Speech: Interview, 2005, Thomas Pynchon on media and conspiracy
The speaker critiques how societies quickly blame groups for tragedies, drawing parallels to historical scapegoating, and warns of a desire to find conspiracies that justify fear and control.
In simple terms: People love blaming others for bad events, even when evidence is lacking.
Question assumptions and seek evidence before assigning blame.
Themes
Mood
Type
When to use this quote
- political discourse
- media analysis
- public opinion
- education
- critical thinking
Key Concepts
Questions to Reflect On
- What evidence supports these claims?
- How does scapegoating affect societal trust?
Such narratives can oversimplify complex events and fuel division.