On the boredom of predictable rhetoric

Author’s Note:

This piece was written in response to an essay a colleague posted, following a question he posed during a seminar. The essay took that moment and spun it into something far broader and more dangerous—framing immigration as a Trojan horse, hinting at cultural contamination, and romanticizing a Christian Europe supposedly under siege. It was presented with academic flair and self-congratulation, cloaked in citations and claims of “bravery,” but its core message was familiar: fear dressed as foresight, difference framed as threat.

I didn’t plan to write anything. At first, I laughed—because the rhetoric was so theatrical, so transparently ideological, it almost read like satire. But as I kept reading, the laughter gave way to frustration. Then anger. Then exhaustion. Watching someone use scholarship to recycle these tired, dangerous narratives again and again? It became unbearable. This piece isn’t a direct reply—mostly because I don’t desire to have that sort of confrontation. It’s a reckoning, one that’ll live on Substack.

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There’s a dull ache that sets in when someone starts dressing their fear in citations and calling it courage.

A kind of exhaustion that isn’t born of shock—but of repetition.

Because we’ve heard this before.

The framing is familiar: identity in crisis, values under siege, civilization in decline, and somewhere—inevitably—a warning about Islam.

You start with reverence for institutional voices and end with a plea to preserve Christian Europe.

In between: migration framed as proxy war, refugee movements compared to Trojan horses, and a string of citations deployed like a protective spell.

It’s not insight.

It’s performance.

And it’s boring.

You build arguments like armor for your worldview

You cite Bove and Böhmelt, Sageman, Spencer, Milton, Findley, Choi & Salehyan—names stacked like sandbags around your thesis. But none of these authors give you what you truly want: absolution. Because none of them argue for the sweeping suspicion you imply, or the cultural panic you barely conceal.

Böhmelt and Bove warn that weak integration policies can exacerbate tensions—not that migration is inherently violent. Sageman’s work on radicalization is grounded in alienation and marginalization—not faith. Choi & Salehyan note that refugee flows can be exploited by bad actors—yes—but that’s a logistical challenge, not a civilizational crisis.

But you aren’t citing these thinkers for their complexity.

You’re using them to launder your certainty.

You’ve built a thesis and found enough shadows in their data to pretend they agree with you.

That’s not scholarship.

That’s choreography.

You stand on the shoulders of giants only to polish your own reflection

You quote Machiavelli like he handed you a sword.

You quote Ali like she wrote your manifesto.

And then, you say it—“I stand on the shoulders of giants”—as if what you’re offering is vision.

But to gaze upon terrorist organizations through a monocle of calculated theories is to reduce a deeply human reality to sterile abstraction.

It is to sit upon the giant’s shoulder and see not the panoramic view of history, but a myopic portrait of one’s own creation.

You are not looking out. You are looking inward and mistaking your own silhouette for the outline of civilization.

What a waste of a view.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not your permission slip

Her story is hers. It deserves space. It deserves care. But it does not justify your generalizations—and she does not speak for the millions you reduce into ideological pawns.

Where is Leila Ahmed’s deep study of gender and Islam?

Where is Abdullahi An-Na’im’s insistence on an Islam compatible with human rights?

Where is the voice of the refugee who didn’t become a headline?

Where is the scholar who resists simplification?

You don’t quote them because they don’t make for a clean narrative.

And you are not here to learn.

You are here to win an argument.

You want to preserve a Europe that never existed

You speak of Christianity like it’s the last wall standing—the scaffolding that holds Western civilization upright.

But Christianity, like any system touched by power, has been both balm and blade.

You write of European identity like it was carved in stone.

It wasn’t. It was written and rewritten—through conquest, through resistance, through entanglement.

What you fear isn’t collapse.

It’s complication.

It’s the realization that identity cannot be frozen in time without becoming hollow.

You write like your place in the world is sacred—and any disruption of that comfort is an assault.

But comfort is not a compass.

And your fear of transformation is not an argument for stasis.

This isn’t bold. It’s a performance of panic

You believe you’re saying what others won’t.

But what you’re doing has been done before—loudly, badly, repeatedly.

It’s the anthem of every reactionary in a suit: sound the alarm, cite a journal, blame the border.

You talk about realism. But realists deal with mess. With contradiction. With nuance.

You? You’re crafting a bedtime story for those afraid of the dark.

The villains are clear. The heroes are chosen. The solution is always the same: close the door. preserve the faith. look away.

You may call it defense.

You may call it preservation.

You may even call it truth.

But what I read is fear—powdered, perfumed, and published.

And I will not sit quietly while the same tired fears are packaged as foresight,

while the shoulders of giants are used not to see further—but to shout louder.

You are not the brave voice in the room.

You are the echo.

And I’ve heard it before.