As we saw when Swedish leftists angrily denounced a gay pride parade because it might "provoke Muslims," so-called progressives don't really believe in their own causes. It's just something that is used to attack people they don't like, usually White Christians. Politics is about "who," not what.

The #IStandWithAhmed fable wasn't about overzealous school officials or law enforcement. If that had been the focus of the story, people would have brought up all the white kids who keep getting suspended for doing things like making a gun out of a pop tart or wearing an American flag shirt.

Instead, it was about engaging in a Two Minutes Hate against prejudiced Texas rednecks who oppressed a genius Muslim who just wanted to be a scientist and wear a NASA T shirt. (After all, NASA's highest priority, in the words of the Administrator appointed by Obama, is to "reach out to the Muslim world.")

Of course, as with every single one of these hashtag causes célèbre, there was Narrative Collapse. In this case, it came as soon as the father's background as an ethnic activist was revealed and people got a look at Ahmed's "clock," which was actually a model of a briefcase bomb. It turns out he didn't even build the thing.

And two leftists noted for their atheist activism made the mistake of Noticing.

First, Bill Maher, who’s already clearly stated that “Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas,” asserted on Friday’s “Real Time” that “This kid deserves an apology, no doubt about it. They were wrong. But could we have a little perspective about this? Did the teacher really do the wrong thing?” He drew applause when he said that the clock “looks exactly like a f__king bomb” and demanded that “Someone look me in the eye right here and tell me, over the last thirty years, if so many young muslim men…haven’t blown a lot of s__t up around the world…. It’s been one culture that’s been blowing s__t up over and over again.”

[Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins sink to new lows: Trolling a child in the name of Islamophobia is not "passion for truth," by Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon, September 21, 2015]

Williams sniffs, "Just a reminder: cultures don’t blow s__it up; extremist members of cultures do."

Well, it's good to know diverse and vibrant Third World cultures get a pass. But Williams (as you've guessed), has a much less forgiving interpretation of Western culture. In response to Taylor Swift's video set in Africa, she sternly intoned, "You don’t have to be overtly hostile to people outside of your own experience to participate in the bias against them" [Taylor Swift's fantasy Africa: Glorifying colonialism in art is a political act, like it or not, Salon, September 3, 2015]

And while someone bringing a mockup of a briefcase bomb to school should be celebrated (if he's Muslim), Williams believes those who defied a school ban on Confederate flags are associating themselves with murderers and called for the school to re-educate them.

High school students who love their Confederate flags, who feel “offended” about some imagined insult to their “heritage,” may I make a suggestion? It’s called Google. Maybe you could read about Dylann Roof, the confessed killer of nine African American church-goers in Charleston earlier this year, and his fondness for the flag.

It’s not sufficient for their schools to ban the Confederate flag, or to suspend those students who still flaunt it. They have to teach them why.

["It's not racist, I can tell you that right now": Confederate flag's meaning a total mystery to teens fighting to fly it, Salon, September 18, 2015]

Got that? Flag = harmful and threatening. Briefcase bomb mockup = "cool clock."

Why? Because one is associated with Bad People and the other is associated with Good People. Salon, as our moral superiors, is here to help us tell which is which. Incidentally, Salon is also trying to normalize pedophilia today [I'm a pedophile, but not a monster, by Todd Nickerson, September 21, 2015]. (Maybe they got the memo that Afghanis love it, so its multicultural now and therefore good.)

Well, if Bill Maher is doubleplusungood now, what about Dawkins? Dawkins argued that while a White child would not have been arrested with the clock (doubtful), Ahmed may have been deliberately baiting the school into arresting him in exchange for White House visits , crowdfunding, fame, free stuff, etc.

Williams responds:

[It’s] unfortunate that an intellectual who once had the power to provoke insightful, challenging debate has in recent years turned into a sour crank, eager to leverage his brand as a prominent atheist as an excuse to go big on Islamphobia and congratulate himself on his horrendous views on sexual assault.And it’s pathetic that Maher and Dawkins are wrapping themselves up not in the rigorous quest for knowledge they claim to stand behind but their own petty prejudices and fears — and they’re basically the same baseless, dumb crap you could get from a doofus like Sarah Palin. The difference is that their schtick has its following not among the “Duck Dynasty” watchers but the C-Span ones. And even as they peddle ignorance, they have the arrogance to believe themselves incapable of it.

Notice the tribal signaling going on here. The Badwhites who like Sarah Palin or watch "Duck Dynasty" can obviously be dismissed. But the real danger is that heretical views may penetrate the "C-Span" crowd. And this is a problem, because the job of Goodwhites in this multicultural utopia of ours is to bestow rewards on the victim classes and punish oppressors, not muck everything up by asking awkward questions. (What if people start stalking about IQ studies?)

What #IStandWithAhmed really shows is that Muslims are like blacks in the liberal imagination. They are agency free moral mascots who exist to be oppressed by Badwhites and saved by Goodwhites. They are not capable of acting on their own agenda or group interests because to admit they have an agenda or group interests would lead to questions about whether Whites have a group interest. And we all know where that leads.

The result of all this is that the most socially libertine people in our society are eager to prostrate themselves before a religious cult far more regressive than any Christian denomination simply because it is the Other. And the daughters of those participating in the Slutwalks today (those they don't abort anyway) will be the Muslim converts of tomorrow. After all, the same motivation lies behind each activity.

It's all about striking back at a Western culture they have been carefully taught to hate. The actual reasons for this hatred (women's rights, homosexual rights, etc) are secondary to the hatred itself. And the facts behind each case are utterly irrelevant.