Terror revisited Spain with tragic results last week as a bunch of madmen ran amok in the heart of Barcelona killing half-a-dozen people and injuring many more. The scale of the terror and destruction bears little resemblance to the carnage visited upon another Spanish city thirteen years ago but that does not make it any less criminal and cowardly.In 2004, as the attention of much of Spain was focused on the general election a few days away, serial bomb blasts ripped through the heart of Madrid’s commuter train system in morning rush hour killing nearly 200 people. The attacks ignited public anger, unseated the centre-right government in the elections that immediately followed and led to the exit of Spanish troops from Iraq.In terms of scale, devastation and implications for Spain’s relationship with its important partners, the Madrid attacks were a terrible, unforgettable tragedy. It seemed to reinforce the view that Western aggression was the root of cause of Muslim anger with transgressions like the Iraq war (Spain initially sent troops) only fanning the flames of Al-Qaeda-style radicalism.Conservatives, academics and researchers who believed otherwise, who believed that this rise of Islamic fundamentalism/terrorism had nothing to do with justice but was instead, an attempt to seek global domination for one demented worldview with its roots in Salafism, a belief in return to the Caliphate and a contempt for other religions, were unfortunately on the backfoot. Events thereafter appear to prove this Leftist worldview.George W Bush’s muscular war on terror foundered due to inept handling and a lost campaign in Iraq; Barack Obama’s ascendancy and Cairo speech of 2009 seemed to suggest that the US would deemphasise combat as a way to counter the spread of Salafism/fundamentalism. In India , the setbacks to the BJP and the ascendancy of the Congress/Left style of politics dealt a blow to the belief that the vile terrorist ideology can be countered by aggressive policing at home and a no-nonsense approach towards truculent neigh neighbours.Appeasement, lackadaisical approach and the bogey of ‘Hindu terror’ were the ‘weapons’ in Congress-UPA government’s arsenal against Islamic terror! Scale and destruction apart, there is one more crucial difference in the response to the Barcelona attack. And that difference is important because it just shows how the liberal/Leftist worldview on Islamic terror has changed dramatically in light of the Islamist terror rampage across countries. Madrid was Spain’s fault, Aznar (former Spain PM, Jose Maria Aznar) fault just like 9/11, which was blamed on everything from CIA activities to American troops in Saudi Arabia and support for Israel.In India, this manifested itself in a ‘hate-Modi’ campaign which looked at every terrorist attack on home soil through the prism of Gujarat. Attempt was made to link every atrocity to what happened in Gujarat so as to suggest that somehow that Narendra Modi was responsible for all the tragedies. The bottom started falling out of this insidious campaign when the terrorists refused to play ball. Far from being freedom fighters interested only in Kashmir/Palestine liberation, they showed their true colours with the rise of ISIS and the campaign of terror unleashed on the heart of Europe. For liberals, it was a painful decision.Difficult to blame western imperialism when innocent Germans, Belgians and Spaniards are being slaughtered. Difficult also to blame ISIS atrocities on Iraq war when France, which had nothing to do with it, is attacked. The silence on Barcelona from the usual ‘blame-the-west’ gang exemplifies this confusion. The latest liberal smear effort is to equate the thugs of Charlottesville with terrorist scumbags of ISIS and Al-Qaeda . Make no mistake, there is a lot of difference between ISIS and the white nationalist/supremacist gangs or groups in the US. The former is a disaster for civilisation as we know it.The latter are a localised danger to parts of American society if allowed to grow and become big, especially with their vile, racist rhetoric. That’s it. They are not a national or an international security threat on the scale of ISIS. A similar effort is underway in India to link fringe Hindu groups with Taliban in Afghanistan. There is an even more sinister effort to paint Hindu/Indian society as intolerant and anti-Muslim and out to deny minority rights Recent articles in international publications point to a larger effort in this direction. India we are told is seeing aggressive Hindutva, rising Hindu intolerance. This will be used at next available opportunity to smear Indian society, to wash off the sins of Islamic radical preachers and extremists and whitewash the depredations of Islamic terrorists from across the border.We have seen this movie before and know how it is going to play out. Liberals in India and the west are no different when it comes to smear tactics or acting as apologists for Islamic terror.They know the real villain is Islamic terrorism . But much like their forefathers who whitewashed the sins of Soviet communism in the name of the fight of justice or equality, the modern day liberals and Leftists in the west and India will cry ‘wolf ’ at non-existent threats from white nationalist groups in the US and or allegedly militant Hindus in India to hide the real problem of Islamic fundamentalism. The game has just begun.