US Politics in an Age of Uncertainty

by Lance Selfa

  When Michael Tomasky called for Muslim Americans to prove their loyalty, he was simply reinforcing what President Obama had said in his December 6, 2015, speech. Obama argued that because “an extremist ideology has spread within some Muslim communities,” it is the responsibility of Muslims to “confront, without excuse” this problem.

  Presumably, in Obama’s book, an example of such an excuse is the argument that Muslims are no more to blame for San Bernardino than white Christians are for the actions of Robert Dear, the Planned Parenthood shooter. Yet, we know that Dear is an evangelical Christian who idolizes the Army of God, an antiabortion group that is responsible for numerous bombings and murders, and that right-wing terrorists have been responsible for more murders since 9/11 than jihadists.

  Why then are white Christians not being called upon to take “responsibility” for the far right, and why has all attention shifted from Dear’s crimes to those in San Bernardino? When Obama states that it is “the responsibility of Muslims around the world to root out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization,” he is articulating a liberal version of Islamophobia, according to which Islam is culpable for violence committed by Muslims, even if most Muslims are “peaceful.”

  Thus, following every controversy, the range of debate remains restricted to right-wing and liberal variants of Islamophobia, although with an overall steady shift to the right. Hence, just as it is correct to point out that Republican denunciations of Trump’s rhetoric ring hollow, given strong Republican support for the logic that underpins it, the same applies to Democratic denunciations of Republicans, and for the same reasons.

  While the right views all Muslims as a problem and as a fifth column in Western nations, the liberal establishment sounds more reasonable in that it differentiates between terrorists and the majority of Muslims—between “good” and “bad” Muslims. But it nevertheless holds an entire group of people responsible. This is why establishment liberals believe that “moderate Muslims” should “take responsibility” for denouncing the terrorists, that leftists and antiracists should get over their political correctness, and that everyone should join them in supporting the war on terror and its practices of war, surveillance, indefinite detention, and drone strikes.

  Absent from the discussion is the context of empire, i.e., what imperial intervention produces abroad, how those interventions produce blowback on US soil, what they mean for racialized subjects, and what role the entire US political establishment has long played in advancing imperialist intervention and provoking violence both at home and abroad.

  What role do the media play in stoking this sort of panic and bigotry?

  There is a lot of discussion about how Trump’s crazy rhetoric is getting so much play only because the corporate media have devoted so much attention to it. There is some truth to this, of course.

  The corporate media eagerly cover controversial and sensational material because it draws larger audiences and serves to pad the bottom line. Trump’s horrific rhetoric—e.g., his calls to deport millions of Latino/a immigrants or to bring back waterboarding—is thus seen as newsworthy for this reason. The major broadcasting companies therefore certainly have a financial interest in cheering on the Trump phenomenon.

  But it would be wrong to see the escalation of Islamophobia as simply the product of Donald Trump or the corporate media by themselves. In my book on Islamophobia, I examine what I call the “matrix of Islamophobia,” which outlines the structures and institutions responsible for shaping anti-Muslim ideology and practice. These include the political establishment (including both Democrats and Republicans), the national security apparatus, and universities and think tanks—all of which contribute to the production of the two strands of Islamophobia (liberal and conservative).

  The key arena in which these ideas are propagated to the public is in the mainstream media. They amplify the rhetoric from these other institutions, but also play a part in limiting the range of debate between the liberal and conservative poles. It is only on rare occasions that anyone to the left of the permissible range can enter this space, and those occasions are almost always the product of protests and social movements that are strong enough to force the media to broaden the range of debate (a phenomenon I examined in my book on the 1997 UPS strike).

  After receiving pushback for his Muslim ban, Trump snorted that the media do not report on terrorist attacks. He stated that “radical Islamic terrorists are determined to strike our homeland, as they did on 9/11, as they did from Boston to Orlando to San Bernardino and all across Europe,” and that “it’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported, and in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it.”

  This is exactly the opposite of the truth, as a study at Georgia State University found. Researchers studied all attacks between 2011 and 2015, and found that even though a minority are committed by Muslims, Muslims received disproportionate media coverage. In fact, the corporate media not only report on a continuous loop every attack committed by a Muslim in the West, they also cover fake terror plots instigated by the FBI with great zeal. As Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has repeatedly documented, sting operations by the FBI, where undercover agents or informants recruit vulnerable individuals to carry out attacks, are covered extensively by the media, who fail to reveal that without the help of the FBI the “terrorist plot” would not have come into being in the first place.

  In the absence of attacks, other events carried out by the national security state—such as the apprehension of high-profile terrorism suspects or the execution of leaders of various jihadist groups through drone strikes or other such methods around the world—become major news stories and serve as reminders that the world is a dangerous place and that the United States is a guarantor of global safety and security. Each of these moments—the attacks on Western targets, the announcements of arrests, the assassination of jihadist leaders, and the prevention of real and fake terror plots, all covered extensively by the corporate media—serves to entrench US imperialism and to sustain the war on terror.

  A December 2015 mass shooting/suicide in San Bernardino, California, led police to talk about the gunman’s “radicalization” into a jihadist, and led politicians to call for halts to Muslim immigration into the United States. How have the media covered San Bernardino and other acts of violence committed by Muslim Americans compared to those committed by non-Muslims?

  First off, let me say a few things about gun violence, which, by the way, is as American as apple pie. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that 406,496 Americans have been killed by firearms on US soil since 2001, in comparison to 3,380 killed worldwide due to terrorism. In the United States, jihadists have killed forty-five people since 9/11—in other words, a ratio of almost ten thousand to one between deaths from gun violence and those from terrorism.

  In cases of school shootings or other mass shootings, the perpetrators are overwhelmingly white men and boys. Yet, when a Muslim American is involved in this most American of traditions, as we saw with San Bernardino, it becomes the occasion to justify war, empire, and the national security state.

  There are two different frames used to cover violent acts in the United States, one that is applied to white perpetrators and another to Muslims. In the first case, the causes of violence are seen as individual (e.g., the product of mental illness), the solution to which lies in apprehending the perpetrator and bringing him or her (though usually him) to justice.

  In the case of Muslims, violence is explained as a product of the “clash of civilizations,” to which war on entire groups of people is seen as the only appropriate response. This is what Albert Memmi, the French philosopher, meant when he talked about the “mark of the plural,” in which the acts of racialized others are seen to be generalizable to entire groups, while those of whites are limited to the individual.

  This logic is true not only of those we call conservatives, but also of liberals. Proponents
of liberalism, which champions individual rights and freedoms, have long denied individuality—and therefore rights—to racialized “others,” whether in the metropole or in the colony.

  What impact has Trump’s anti-Muslim racism and immigrant-bashing had on national politics?

  The Trump effect, as I noted earlier, is very much like the Enoch Powell effect. There is a codependent relationship that exists between the Democratic and Republican parties.

  On the one hand, the Democrats’ complicity in the war on terror, the construction of the national security state, and the systematic discrimination against Muslims not only serves to legitimize the Republicans’ own role in these developments, but also gives the latter the freedom to adopt ever more extreme positions.

  On the other hand, as the Republicans move further and further to the right, the Democrats are able not only to obscure their own culpability by pointing fingers at Republican extremism, but also to adopt more extreme measures themselves, albeit with less incendiary rhetoric and accompanied by assurances that they’re only after “bad” Muslims.

  In this respect, Donald Trump represented a political godsend for the Democratic Party establishment, a bogeyman whom they could use to frighten voters into supporting an “anybody-but-Trump” option in the 2016 general election. This strategy failed, and Clinton lost in an election that was widely regarded as a contest between the two most unpopular candidates in a generation, if not all time. Since then, with an eye towards the 2018 congressional elections and the 2020 presidential election, the liberal establishment has denounced Trump as a fascist. While Trump’s agenda is vile and reprehensible, to call him a fascist plays into the hands of the Democrats, because the whole notion of a united front against fascism gives the Democratic Party greater freedom to carry out its own imperialist agenda, unencumbered by any criticism from its left.

  To be sure, Trump does represent a frightening turn in US politics. However, to see him as an anomaly in US politics is to downplay and misunderstand the no-less-frightening political dynamic that makes Trump possible, a dynamic that is a product of the political system in its entirety. It bears reiterating that we need to understand this phenomenon in systemic terms—not as the product of a single individual or a single political party.

  For instance, Trump’s anti-immigrant bashing, whether directed at Mexicans or Muslims, fits into a long-established pattern of scapegoating. Like virtually all members of his class, Trump understands that immigrants are a source of cheap labor that has long been integral to the US economy, and that is especially true today. He also understands that keeping immigrants vulnerable keeps them cheap, while scapegoating them serves to distract attention from the dismal conditions affecting the US working class as a whole.

  And here, too, we would be remiss to ignore the role that US administrations have long played both in generating displacement and immigration (e.g., NAFTA, the wars in the Middle East, the drug war in Mexico and Central America) and in subjecting immigrants to punitive treatment (e.g., Obama’s policies of mass deportation). All of this is a reminder that racism is a product of the class oppression and imperialist domination that are integral to the history of capitalist development.

  I would add that, at least in part, the obsession with Russian meddling in the US elections is a reflection of the liberal establishment’s attempt to place blame elsewhere, outside the fundamentally flawed US electoral system. The logic is that it must be the Russians, otherwise a character like Trump would never have come to power in the “exceptional” United States. To admit otherwise would be a blow to US exceptionalism, the idea that the United States is a beacon of democracy and an example to the rest of the world—an image, moreover, that has served to justify US imperialism.

  How should we think about Islamophobia and the far right in the United States and in Europe?

  The relationship of the far right to Islamophobia is, in fact, different in Europe. The main difference is that Europe has a long colonial history in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. What this means is that racist discourses about Muslims are much more entrenched both ideologically and in practice in various European countries.

  In the case of France, Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 and France’s later conquest of Algeria were instrumental in the production of racist and Orientalist rhetoric. France also created systematic discrimination through the Code de l’indigénat, a set of laws first applied in Algeria and later to other French colonies, where the native population was accorded inferior status. Even after decolonization, racist ideas and practices continued. The National Front is a reflection of this longer historical process.

  In the United States, however, the history of Islamophobia is more recent. It is only after the United States took over the imperial reins from France and Britain in the Middle East and North Africa following World War II that it had seriously to contend with the region. US Orientalism and Islamophobia have also been shaped by its close relationship with Israel. The production of the “terrorist threat” began in the 1970s, with the 1979 Iranian Revolution playing a key role in shaping this construction. As I have argued elsewhere, the neocon-Likud alliance shaped the development of the “Islamic threat” in the 1980s.

  Thus, it was only in the 1990s that the far right in the United States began to engage with Islamophobia, and even then it was only after 9/11 that it started to get some traction around it. This is in part because anti-immigrant rhetoric in the United States does not neatly line up with Muslim immigrants, as in Europe. It is primarily Latino/a immigrants who are scapegoated here in the United States. That said, the US far right collaborates with and learns from its European counterparts and vice versa in this global counterjihad movement.

  The far right in Europe has also seen much more electoral success using anti-Muslim rhetoric than its counterpart here. The key turning point was 2010, when far-right-wing parties across Europe, using anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric, made unprecedented electoral gains both domestically and in the European Parliament elections.

  The British National Party, which has its roots in fascist parties of the past, got almost a million votes and its first two seats in the European Parliament. Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom in Holland made significant gains as well. Even in countries considered liberal, such as Holland and Sweden, far-right-wing parties had breakthroughs. In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats gained power in the parliament running on a blatantly anti-Muslim campaign. Its leader, Jimmie Akesson, called for restricting immigration and stated that Islam was the greatest threat facing the Swedish nation.

  The European far right has made gains in the context of a prolonged economic crisis, once again illustrating the connection between the diminished life conditions of the working class and the salience of racist appeals. European governments responded through imposing austerity measures and attacking the most vulnerable. Unfortunately, traditional left parties have failed to offer an alternative. In this political vacuum, the right has been able to tap into voter anxiety by scapegoating Muslim immigrants.

  In 2010, France’s upper house voted almost unanimously to ban the burqa. When the vote passed in the lower house, the left parties (the Socialists, Greens, and Communists) abstained. Rather than put up a principled defense of Muslims and try to defeat the measure, they decided to sit out the vote instead. The Socialist Party then came forward and stated that it too objected to the veil, but didn’t support constitutional measures banning it. This pathetic response from the left has only strengthened the far right.

  How do those similarities and differences from Europe affect how we organize against racism and Islamophobia? What should the left in the United States and elsewhere be doing to combat the increase in Islamophobia?

  The first lesson from Europe is that we cannot fight the right from the center. In the face of hyperbolic rhetoric that blatantly demonizes Muslims, a weak-kneed response that attempts to be moderate only strengthens the far right. This is what the Democrats ha
ve done in the United States, which paved the way for a Trump victory.

  The second lesson is that the right is facing resistance from ordinary people, sometimes organized by smaller far-left groups who have tied together anti-austerity with antiracism. The nonmain-stream left in various European nations has a historical memory of what it takes to fight the right.

  For instance, the Anti-Nazi League in Britain that successfully pushed back the fascist National Front, the precursor to the British National Party, organized on two fronts. First, they articulated a principled defense against racism. And second, they also articulated a broader politics that situated racism within the broader political economy, thereby putting forward a systematic critique and a progressive alternative.

  Brexit and the Trump victory represent racist and xenophobic solutions to the crisis of neoliberal globalization. While Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen couldn’t reproduce the Trump victory in the Dutch and French elections in 2017, their parties nonetheless gained significantly. What is noteworthy is that far-left parties also did well in these elections.

  The lessons for us in the United States is to build a left, independent of the Democratic Party, around a program that opposes racism in all its forms and offers a positive solution to the crisis of neoliberalism. We need a strategy that not only deals with the immediate threats posed by the far right emboldened by Donald Trump but also addresses the root causes that make these (and other) threats possible. In other words, we need to learn how to walk and chew gum at the same time, devising short-term tactics that put out fires in the present but without undermining the prospects for long-term change and thereby forcing us to confront even larger and more frequent fires in the medium- to long-term.