Of course, I knew Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism (really, those two concepts are inseparable and feed each other) were very prevalent in American society going back a long time, with it really ratcheting up after 9/11. But ever since the Zionist entity’s terrorist pager attack last month, the sheer depth, pervasiveness, and how it’s just out there in the open and considered perfectly acceptable has genuinely surprised me. It seems to have started with that attack and subsequent events have only reinforced it.
White Americans just seem to delight whenever they think the Arab/Islamic “terrorists” are attacked. They do not care about who the “terrorists” actually are or how many people suffer. It’s not worth interrogating what the “terrorists” are fighting for or who was harmed because to the white folks, the Muslim/Arab people don’t matter. They’ve been dehumanized to the point where their lives are considered worthless.
To give an example, there is a person in my life who I’m about to cut out (should have a long time ago) who texted me something to the effect of “that pager thing was crazy, but looks like they got a lot of terrorists”. I tried to keep my cool and explain how normal people like doctors and ambulance drivers were hurt and killed too, because lots of people use those pagers. Dude literally just used a shrug emoji in response, because I guess those people aren’t worth giving a care about.
Everything I’ve seen especially in recent weeks really shows how bad it is. Brown people in Western Asia don’t matter because they have a different religion and they are “prone to violence” and they aren’t as “developed” as us. I feel like this is really where the support for Israel comes from. Not from ideas of Israel fulfilling apocalyptic prophesy, but just because white Americans can turn on the TV and see people in Israel who look like them, who have a religion that is semi-compatible with theirs, and who live in a society that seems to be very “Western” fighting off the “savage Islamists”. It plays into their already primed-for-racism-and-chauvinism” brains.
While I don’t think American media is the source of racism and Islamophobia, I do think the last 20+ years of movies, shows, and games has really fueled the fire. I think (hope?) in the future people will look back on this period of “corn-fed white bearded operators killing all the Muslim terrorists” media in the way we look at minstrel shows now.
Like I don’t even agree with where Russia is now and I only have family connections (haven’t talked to most since before the SMO), but it’s still family and I know they’re not monsters, even the more “patriotic” ones.
AIt was tremendously alienating after '22 when suddenly I’m hearing the libs in my life talking about the combat footage they watched of “orcs” getting killed with like an excited fervor and I’m just the fly on the wall going 😬
It’s categorically less bad than the racism and chauvinism directed towards Muslims, but if you’re from a state enemy it’s what you can expect I guess.
A common tactic applied by almost all populations is dehumanization so it makes it easier to “pull the trigger”. It’s a tactic that’s been applied and used for eons. The use is prevalent in history. Its psychology is also proven as you are less likely to be empathetic to something that is not human and a proven enemy. Aliens are a perfect example in science fiction they are often portrayed as the bad/enemy but in reality we are nothing but a xenophobic and warring species. District 9/ET shows the complexity.
I think part of the issue burgerlanders have with conflict is that they’ve never really had to worry about it impacting them
The US hasn’t been invaded in literal centuries, the only real attacks on it’s soil in the last 100 years being a military attack on a naval base in Hawaii and a couple of targeted terror attacks
The inhabitants have never experienced what it’s like to be indiscriminately bombed or occupied, nor have they really had to fear that since WWII
Of course, this is obviously only a small part of the issue, but still
It took a loooong time of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan being clearly a pointless quagmire for the bloodthirsty islamaphobia of post 9/11 to die down to a simmer. The only way for Americans to ever care about a war is if Americans are dying and it’s not going anywhere. This comes at a massive cost to those they invade. Once Americans spend 10 years getting killed over this and not reaching any conclusive victory, the American people will mildly criticize it.
the only real attacks on it’s soil in the last 100 years being a military attack on a naval base in Hawaii and a couple of targeted terror attacks
Incidentally, your first example wasn’t on American soil—occupied Hawaii was not absorbed into the Union until 1959.
AKSHUALLLLYYYYY the Japanese did technically invade Alaska during the Aleutian Islands campaign in ww2 but your point still stands
Edit: yes I know it was a territory like Hawaii at the time but unlike Hawaii, Alaska is physically a part of North America. This made it seem much closer than when the Japanese attacked other pacific territories like Guam.
as a millennial person of burger i got to experience the immediate post-911 state encouraged racism first hand as a teen and later young adult
i came from a pretty lib family with a new deal/socdem political heritage that were never openly racist. my liberal internationalist grandfather wasn’t a Zionist but held weird ideas like that Palestine should be turned into a U.N. administered territory and totally demilitarized (with the IDF turned into a local police force at most)
had a (not really close) friend who was a Pashtun, immigrated when he was 8 or 9, and just kind of a chill grunge rock listening stoner guy. he was mostly secular, but similar to my Catholic upbringing he would be a nominally devout Sunni only when going home to visit family. i remember asking him how tough it was to fly in and out of Pakistan (this was 2003) and he said it sucked
another (white) friend went to Iraq as part of his army reserve unit and came back to tell me of the actual war crimes he committed and we all broke all contact with him. he recounted personally murdering wounded “insurgents”, encouraged by his squad, and should probably be in the Hague right now if that was legal
everything else came from media and was shaped by it. even my grandfather, as he got older and his only source was the news and newsweek magazine, started to believe the bullshit form the Bush era propeganda. meanwhile when i woke up the morning of 911 only thing i thought was “well that’s it our government is going to create a police state”. libertarian brained stuff
It was so intense, the anti-Muslim sentiment. I’m also in my 40s and I also remember it too well, unfortunately.
I remember arguing with my family why we shouldn’t go to war with Iraq. I told them how it would kill tens of thousands of people (I was off by an order of magnitude). Iraqis and Muslims were referred to by them in slurs. Every bit of propaganda you’ve ever heard was mentioned. There was no getting through to them. It’s probably one of the most radicalizing things I’ve ever seen first hand just how set they were in this. Like a switch had clicked on this topic and all you could hear was what was said in the news and from your worst coworkers in hushed tones.
But that’s the kicker, these things weren’t even said in hushed tones. You could be openly Islamophobic in public. You could use slurs in public against Arab peoples and get grunts of approval in the fucking grocery line at your local Piggly Wiggly. There was no mask. The only filter existed in liberal media and even then that filter was not N95, let me tell you.
What’s strange is I did now an older guy who was a family friend who had retired as a sniper and decided to do the PMC (Private Military Contractor) thing in Iraq when it kicked off. Mostly escorting convoys and shit. You’d think he’d be hoorah but for him it was just a money thing. And when he came back he had more sympathy for Muslims and Iraqis. He had some wild stories and some people he worked with were actually Iraqi themselves (one guy was a former Mr Iraq body builder guy who sadly died in an IED ambush). I think Iraq either woke some people up to the humanity of the other or cemented it in their minds.
In rural areas it never really died. I moved away from rural Tennessee in '04 and Islamophobia showed no sign of abating. Talking to my mom/grandmother over the last year who live in North Tennessee and South Kentucky reinforces that. They still have that same fucking mentality. It might have cooled for a few years but all you need is some white people dying at the hands of a guy in a turban and the hate boils back over again. Really gross.
You could be openly Islamophobic in public
this was so fucking bad during that period. like jim crow levels of racism. it’s just openly practicing Muslims were so rare in the area i lived. i really only came into contact with them closer to the big cities. and that was my Pashtun friend, hanging out with Iranian foreign exchange students, and this Syrian guy who liked to throw huge parties
so maybe i lucked out somewhat
i also had a (childhood) friend that did the PMC thing after serving. in Iraq then Afghanistan. he was a tech but last i talked to him he also seemed to have liberalized his war on terror-era brainwashing as well, probably from working alongside locals. big contrast to my other friend who became a bloodthirsty psycho.
but yeah i almost feel like i was really insulated, especially from things you describe. my parents are libs and I intergotated them on their feelings about israel and they agreed it was doing a fascism but refuse to shake off the news medias conditioning and still see the Palestinians as equally bad and think the campus protests are racist.
It comes and goes, really, along with other forms of hate.
Things get nakedly bad, which galvanizes people to organize and rise up and push back, the libs and cons get together to say "Whoah those people over there sure are hateful, let’s put a new holiday on the calendar and pass a law that says “hey you’re not allowed to officially discriminate against this group (wink)”, the capitalists pop champaign and celebrate their inclusiveness, things seem slightly less bad for a few weeks, then the extremists get pissed off about the tolerance of those groups, the elites use their anger as an excuse to neuter the (already basically meaningless) protections, the chuds celebrate this as a win and use that as a rallying cry to organize and recruit, and saying anything about it means you are either ignorant or an extremist because “there’s already laws protecting those people! There’s no laws protecting my way of life! (all of the other laws)”. Things get worse again, but now chuds are emboldened because they knew all along they were going to get their way like a child screaming for oreos at the grocery store.
Sometimes after a few hundred years things get marginally better! (on the surface)
