All Politics Is Local As Tip O’Neill famously said, and it’s no less true when we consider Daesh, despite Paris, Beirut, Libya, Egypt, etc. The Daesh leadership are politically motivated: they seek to establish themselves as a state. They cloak their ambition in religious justifications, millenarianist claims that their “caliphate” will bring about Armageddon and the return of the Mahdi, the Islamic “second coming” and the kingdom of heaven on earth. There are indications that this philosophical justification is increasingly central to their ambitions, which must be seen, as it is in all apocalyptic cults, as evidence of insanity. Madmen with tanks, guns, bombs, and internet outreach. It’s still political, and they use political tools to promote their claims to legitimacy and to recruit new members. Even the terrible acts of violence they commit are political messages. So, too, are the West’s acts of violence and oppression, especially when we turn on those Daesh’s recruitment pool and those in fear or in opposition to them. The Grand Mufti of Australia, for example, has repeatedly condemned the Paris attacks, as he has other Daesh atrocities, yet the right-wing Murdoch media continually misrepresent or ignore his statements, so as to characterise Australian Muslims as “sleeper cells” waiting to strike. That we have had three violent incidents and can point to a not-insignificant number of young men who have sought to or accomplished travel to Syria to join the criminals there hasn’t helped the moderate Muslims get their viewpoint out or accepted by a large part of Australian society (but there are at least a few of us listening). The Abbott government’s demonization of refugees has also been highly effective among the ignorant and cowardly: all asylum-seekers now appear as potential terrorists, infiltrators and invaders. Labor’s me-too policies on immigration just entrench the problem. Tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Syria, as well as the various conflicts in North Africa, in Afghanistan, continuing in Iraq, along with all the rest of the world’s oppressed who seek a better, peaceful life, are affected by the hateful, political, rhetoric of both Daesh and our own politicians, whether in Australia, Europe, or the US. Daesh would kill or convert them, but succeed in co-opting them as proxies with the complicity of Western populations and politicians willing to let fear trump sense, or doing so in their own pursuit of power. We give too much legitimacy to Daesh by giving them too much air. While Daesh need to be stopped in Syria and Iraq, where they seek to establish their state, they also need to be stopped elsewhere, but that won’t be as easily accomplished with guns and bombs. We need to show that we are not cowards, not fascistic power-hungry ideologues willing to sacrifice a minority to our fears and desires. We can do that by reaching out to our Muslim neighbors, accepting difference, offering tolerance, and by making an honest effort to take in the refugees. We can do more to end terrorism by requiring more from ourselves, and from those we do business with or treat as allies and equals, but it starts at home. If we hold ourselves to a higher standard, we have the right to hold others to the same standard.