I don't think some of the folks in here are jumping to the "Bill is on the hate brigade" as they're emphasizing the nuance, especially of American foreign policy. While Bill absolutely admits this is a thing, he never states this in the show unless someone else brings it up. He's done the same thing with Trump, in fact: the only time Trump was ever acknowledged as a systemic result of our culture, our policies, or our ideals was when Cornell West said he was the "dark side of America" come to life and the issues of our neoliberal society being the ground he grew from. Bill leaves a lot off of the table, and likely does so for time, but that should still warrant criticism because what he leaves off that you and I know and grasp, a The_Donald user is filling in with "America is innocent and being plagued by an outside threat," which of course fails to acknowledge the transactional activities that link us and the problems of radical Islam together.
I get what you and Bill are talking about, but the issue is very much in the middle, where it's a mixture of that as well as a mixture of what lightskintwin, Glenn Greenwald, and Noam Chomsky allude to as well, which if we are to be perfectly honest, is often not in that conversation on Bill's show too much. And as I just said, that becomes a problem because not everyone is able to fill in what's not talked about genuinely. For people who get America has played a role in this, that's great. But let's be real here: much of the anti-Muslim hate brigade thinks it's entirely isolated and that the solution is '"only if we ban the 13th century dwellers away from our borders." This is where people like Bill and Sam fall right into support from the right of America, and being associated with them at all should raise alarm. They're on board because what they're filling in feeds their narrative, which when examined exclude what we've done. They should have figured out by this point why they have to constantly take down rebuttals, for not every retort is clearly one to smear. Maybe that's the case between Glenn and Sam, but Sam gets shade from other people, and they're not all pseudo-internet rivalries.
Bill deserves some shit because like Sam, he is just leaving himself open to be misconstrued, because the gaps he leaves are being filled with differing views. That can simply be addressed by admitting we as a nation are associated with this problem and not a victim in this. How many of a new generation of terrorists have we created by double tapping civilian locations? It's not just the evil ISIS fighting us, as we're also creating an enemy. When was the last time this was stated on Bill's show? Why is it every time this topic comes up on his show, he, Sam, or anybody talking about this issue are given the card they are on the internet hours later? Sure, some of it is that whole "criticism seen as combat," but a lot of it is also a lack of information to clearly show it's not just a problem of ideas, or even of mind, but of policy as well. They are seen attacking people, for they don't attack the double taps, or the drone strikes clearly enough to associate social systems as fuel for the problem. Just look at the recent happenings of European terrorism: I can't find another way to put it, but where is the conversation of Islamic segregation and isolationism given to these people within Europe? Much like a gang, they're likely to bond on like-mindedness, and if this is the only "home" they get, that just increases the likelihood of normalizing oneself around very violent people. All because they are seen and treated as isolated problems that would be best left out of sight and mind. We find sympathy for those leaving Syria via tyrannical collapse, but what about those leaving their own homes because we've bombed the shit out of them? We get mad at the idea of them wanting refuge.
I come to defend Bill and Sam on this issue because I know where they're coming from, but both do a very poor job at covering clear holes in arguments by leaving out information, which again, is likely because of time constraints and focusing on a few, clear points. But what both fail to bring up often enough is precisely the reason they get incorrectly labeled. Their lack of acknowledging the extensionality of the problem we create in relation to the problem itself is precisely why they're seen as finger wagging haters of an entire theology, even if people like Bill and Sam are actually friends with believers of Islam. You would have assumed these grown-ass men would have seen the mistakes they're clearly making, and why anytime Islam comes up, it's fucking Groundhog Day when it comes to criticism.
A conversation on radical Islam in the west is also a conversation on what the west has done to Muslim nations. On Bill's show, the latter only typically occurs if a guest brings it up. Any time it isn't is enough time for people to fuel the idea of a war with Muslims, which includes the dangerous ones, the reformers, and the pick-and-choosers of the theology. This is how you get a sub-culture in America that simply see the belief in Islam as an existential threat and engage in hostile acts to anybody believing in it. Just look at the paradox of a culture getting mass shootings practically every other day talking about the pure fucking spook of radical Islam causing violent deaths in the most violent first-world nation on the planet.
