While France and other countries debate how to effectively respond to an attack in Paris by the Islamic State, U.S. journalists are increasingly preoccupied with how the “right wing” and conservative politicians and activists are reacting to the tragedy.
After the events last Friday, many lawmakers and candidates for public office both in Europe and the U.S. have expressed skepticism about taking in refugees from Syria, where the Islamic State is claiming territory, citing the possibility of terrorists using the refugee system to invade countries they want to attack. One of the Paris attackers entered the country posing as a refugee.
But the New York Times responded by saying that “Republicans on Capitol Hill” and “conservative” governments in Europe that threaten to reject migrants were in engaging in “dangerous” politics.
“These responses are wrong,” the Times wrote. “Confusing refugees with terrorists is morally unacceptable and, as a matter of strategy, misguided.”
“Stemming the exodus of refugees from Syria must be an important part of any comprehensive plan to end the Syrian war,” it added. “Building new barriers to keep them out with the absurd argument that Muslims are inherently dangerous could provide propaganda benefits to the Islamic State.”
A separate column in the Times accused “the right and the extreme right” of turning the attack in Paris into anti-immigration “political fodder.”
“[I]n Germany and elsewhere, the idea that incoming refugees present a security risk is already an established meme among the anti-immigrant right online,” said the column, by Anna Sauerbrey. “They take it as fact that the attacks in Paris would not have happened had Europe shut its doors months ago.”
Fusion, the millennial-focused news and entertainment website, published a cartoon on “how to tell the difference between ISIS and Muslims.” The cartoon depicted a member of the Islamic State on the left and a Muslim woman on the right. An arrow pointed to the woman with text that said she “hopes ISIS (or right-wing nuts) don’t attack her mosque.”
Critics didn’t spare Parisians who lived through the attack. On Saturday, Marine Le Pen, a French politician, called for aggressive action against radical Islamic terrorists after the attacks that killed 129 people.
“Islamist fundamentalism must be annihilated, France must ban Islamist organizations, close radical mosques and expel foreigners who preach hatred in our country as well as illegal migrants who have nothing to do here,” Le Pen said, according to Reuters.
But the Daily Beast called Le Pen “far Right” and said she “used the horrific attacks on Paris to push her right-wing brand of politics.”
Richard Cohen of the Washington Post went a step further on Monday by using the Islamic State-led attack to remind readers that history “has shown in the recent — and not so recent — past that [Europe’s] Christians can act plenty bestially on their own.”
The headline of that op-ed was another warning to conservatives: “In the wake of Paris, our common enemy is intolerance.”
