Category Archives: Republicans

The rise of right-wing populists

The New York Times reports: Mass shootings by Islamist militants. Migrants crashing borders. International competition punishing workers but enriching elites.

Across the Western world, a new breed of right-leaning populists like Donald J. Trump, Marine Le Pen in France and Viktor Orban in Hungary are surging in popularity by capitalizing on a climate of insecurity rivaling the period after the First World War.

Many of them — as Mr. Trump did this week — have made headlines by railing against Muslim immigrants, calling them a threat to public safety and cultural identity. Left-leaning critics have compared the populists to the fascists of the early 20th century. Some riding the wave, like the Freedom Party in Austria or Golden Dawn in Greece, have specific neo-Nazi roots.

Unlike earlier right-wing movements, this generation of populists disavows the overt racism, militaristic rhetoric and associations with fascism that until recently scared away many mainstream voters.

Before the recent terrorist attacks or the European migrant crisis cast a spotlight on Muslim immigration, the populists had built support as trade protectionists or economic nationalists appealing to working-class voters who felt disaffected from established parties and political elites. And, for the first time in nearly a century, established parties across Europe and the United States are struggling to fend off or counter the populist insurgents as their competition pulls the mainstream to the right.

“What you are seeing here is quite a radical shift,” said Roger Eatwell, a political scientist at the University of Bath who studies right-wing parties.

Ms. Le Pen is the best-known figure from more than a dozen right-leaning populist parties across Europe that have scored big gains over the last two years. This week, her National Front party won the largest share of the vote in the first round of regional elections in France, with 30 percent, making her a contender for the presidency in 2017. She campaigns against what she calls the Islamization of France and has compared Muslims praying in French streets to the Nazi occupation.

But Ms. Le Pen fuses her cultural chauvinism with appeals to the economic anxieties of working or lower-middle class voters who — like their counterparts across Europe — have suffered from high unemployment, stagnant wages and growing income inequality, especially since the financial crisis of 2008.

“They are pulling out all the stops for the migrants, the illegals, but who is looking out for our retirees?” Ms. Le Pen asked in a recent campaign appearance. “They are stealing from the poor to give to foreigners who did not even ask our permission to come here.”

Mr. Trump on Monday evoked comparisons to Ms. Le Pen and her European counterparts with his call to close American borders to all Muslims “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”

Ms. Le Pen said that was too much for her, perhaps in part because she feared jeopardizing the progress she had made in shedding her party’s previous image as racist and anti-Semitic.

“Seriously, have you ever heard me say something like that?” she asked on Thursday when questioned about Mr. Trump’s comments during a television interview. “I defend all the French people in France, regardless of their origin, regardless of their religion.”

Others in Europe’s right-leaning populist parties, though, are applauding Mr. Trump for breaking with what they call the multiculturalist orthodoxy of dominant political elites. [Continue reading…]

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Lindsey Graham: Trump leading because 40% of GOP voters think Obama is Kenyan Muslim

BuzzFeed reports: South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said his presidential opponent Donald Trump is leading in the polls because nearly half of Republican primary voters hate Obama and think he is a Kenyan-born Muslim.

“Well there’s about 40% of the Republican primary voter who believes that Obama was born in Kenya and is a Muslim,” Graham said on Boston Herald Radio on Friday. “There’s just a dislike for President Obama that is visceral. It’s almost irrational.” [Continue reading…]

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For Muslims in the U.S. military, a different U.S. than the one they swore to defend

The Washington Post reports: U.S. Marine Gunnery Sgt. Emir Hadzic was a Muslim refugee.

“The way Americans welcomed us made such a huge impression on me that I felt like I owed something back,” said Hadzic, a Bosnian-Muslim who fled Sarajevo in 1995. Shortly after arriving in the United States, Hadzic joined the Marine Corps as an infantryman — hoping to help peacekeepers deploying to his homeland.

“I thought I would sign up and pay my debt and on behalf of my family,” he added.

Eight deployments later and still in the Marine Corps, Hadzic has become disturbed by the rising anti-Muslim sentiment in this country after the recent Islamic State attacks in Paris and last week’s San Bernardino shootings. GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump, a candidate Hadzic used to support, has called for barring Muslims from entering the United States.

“We used to be a balanced people. We used to be true to our values, but now we’re willing to betray our values because of a sense of fear? That’s not American,” said Hadzic. “What the hell happened to that America I immigrated to?” [Continue reading…]

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Trump is no more racist than mainstream Israeli policy

Mairav Zonszein writes: Racism — and various forms of discrimination against Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians — is just as rampant here in Israel as it is inside the Trump camp, if not more so. Except in Israel, racism and ethno-religious discrimination is not only accepted rhetoric in the halls of power and the sidewalk cafes of Tel Aviv, it is also long-standing formal state policy.

Trump called to ban Muslims from entering the United States. In Israel, there is already a law banning Muslims from immigrating — the “Law of Return” which gives that right to Jews alone. Even those who were born here but fled, or whose families lived here for generations upon generations, are forbidden from returning.

The Anti-Defamation League on Monday called Trump’s plan to “bar people from entry to the United States based on their religion” is “deeply offensive and runs contrary to our nation’s deepest values.” Has the ADL ever spoken out against Israel’s Jewish-only immigration law and discriminatory border control policies?

Inherent institutional racism can also be seen in the two separate-and-unequal legal systems for Palestinians and Israelis living meters from one another in the occupied West Bank. It can be seen the total negligence of infrastructure, resources and education for Palestinians in annexed East Jerusalem as opposed to Jewish neighborhoods in the same territory. It can be seen in the rampant and deep-seeded discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel when it comes to housing, land confiscation and re-distribution, education and employment. And these are just the most obvious examples. [Continue reading…]

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Netanyahu to meet Trump despite outcry over call for Muslim ban

The Guardian reports: The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has confirmed he will meet Donald Trump despite an international outcry over the Republican presidential frontrunner’s suggestion that Muslims should be banned from entering the US.

The meeting – scheduled before Trump’s remarks triggered outrage in the US and globally – is due to take place on 28 December and is certain to be controversial in a country where a large minority of Israeli citizens are Muslims of Palestinian origin. Dozens of Israeli MPs have called for the invitation to be rescinded.

Visits by US presidential candidates to Israel are often seen as much a part of their campaigning as stumping in Iowa or New Hampshire. The decision to go ahead with the meeting comes 24 hours after Trump’s comments and after the Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment on the Republican’s remarks in light of his planned visit. Trump will not, however, be visiting neighbouring Jordan as had earlier been suggested.

The meeting was arranged a couple of weeks ago, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday, adding that the prime minister would meet any candidate from any party who arrives in Israel and seeks a meeting.

Trump announced on 3 December his plan to visit Israel. “Very soon I’m going to Israel,” Trump said at a rally in Virginia. “I’m going to be meeting with Bibi Netanyahu who’s a great guy – I love Israel and will support it wholeheartedly.”

The visit seems certain to be a minefield of protocol and diplomatic stage management, not least because of inflammatory remarks made by Netanyahu during Israel’s elections this year when he warned voters of “Arab voters coming out in droves”. [Continue reading…]

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How does someone become an alien in the country of their birth?

America is a country with few deep-rooted natives. Nearly everyone’s ancestral tree leads somewhere else. In spite of this, the mark of foreignness is skin color. If you’re white and have an American accent, no one’s going to ask you when your family emigrated here — even though, without exception, every single white American’s roots lead overseas.

The truism that this is a nation of immigrants, repeatedly gets denied by a white America endowed with a sense of belonging which often doubts the capacity of non-whites to be full equals in sharing an American identity.

How then, can someone who knows no other country than this one and yet who is perceived and treated as though in some subtle or crude sense they are foreign, fully share in the experience of belonging that every human being deserves?

If at this moment of heightened xenophobia, we look at alienation through the narrow prism of counter-terrorism and only ask how just a handful of individuals become radicalized, we are likely to ignore the implications of much wider issues, such as inequality, cultural identity, and citizenship.

America succeeds or fails by one measure alone: its ability to sustain an inclusive society.

Donald Trump could not currently threaten this inclusivity were it not for the fact that that he speaks for so many other white Americans who have conferred on themselves the right to determine who does or does not belong here.

America doesn’t need to wall itself in; what it needs is fewer self-appointed gatekeepers.

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Experts: Trump’s Muslim entry ban idea ‘ridiculous,’ ‘unconstitutional’

The Washington Post reports: Donald Trump’s proposal to bar all Muslims from entering the United States violates U.S. and international law and would never be allowed by the courts, legal scholars said late Monday.

“Oh, for the love of God,” said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University. “This would not only violate international law, but do so by embracing open discrimination against one religion. It would make the United States a virtual pariah among nations.’’

The GOP presidential candidate on Monday called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States, including immigrants, tourists and even Muslims who are U.S. citizens and travel abroad. His plan to bar U.S. citizens drew particular ire from legal experts, some of whom fumbled for words as they tried to explain its illegality, since none had considered the matter before.

“That’s blatantly unconstitutional if it excludes U.S. citizens because they are Muslims. It’s ridiculous,” said Richard Friedman, a law professor at the University of Michigan. He cited the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause and the First Amendment’s doctrine of freedom of religion. [Continue reading…]

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How fringe attacks on American Muslims became mainstream

Christopher Bail writes: Donald Trump recently claimed that he saw Muslims celebrating in New Jersey after the September 11 attacks. He later reaffirmed this account despite a lack of evidence, adding that suspected terrorists should be tortured during counterterrorism investigations even if it “doesn’t work” because they “deserve it anyway.”

Though such brazen criticisms of minority groups are characteristic of Trump, his comments also illustrate the degree to which fringe ideas about Islam have become mainstream. Public figures of all political stripes have proposed that Muslims are secretly a fifth column quietly plotting to implement shariah law under the guise of political correctness. Over the past decade, 32 states proposed shariah law bans, controversies about the construction of mosques have increased by more than 800 percent, and the number of Americans with negative opinions of Islam has more than doubled, as my research shows.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State delights in these developments. The group’s propaganda cites anti-Muslim sentiments as evidence for its claim that the United States is at war with Islam. The Islamic State has repeatedly stated that its goal is to make the West so hostile to Muslims that they have no choice but to side with the Islamic State.

The battle against the Islamic State therefore requires careful analysis of how fringe ideas about Muslims become mainstream and what might be done to stem the tide. [Continue reading…]

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Trump County, USA

Politico reports: The most accurate pundits in the history of American presidential politics reside far from the Beltway, on a 403-square mile patch of land along the western border of Indiana. At the intersections of U.S. Highways 40 and 41, and off Interstate 70, you find yourself in Vigo County, with its 108,000 residents and its ho-hum county seat, Terre Haute, situated along the Wabash River. Terre Haute is the land of Clabber Girl Baking Powder—and its citizens call it the “Crossroads of America.” It’s the place where both Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh and labor leader and Social Democratic Party founder Eugene Debs were born, and home to the U.S. penitentiary where the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh died.

And, in nearly every presidential election since 1888, voters here in this blue-collar county have selected the winning candidate, missing only twice: Once, in 1908, when they opted for Williams Jennings Bryan instead of William Howard Taft, and again in 1952, when they chose Adlai Stevenson rather than Dwight D. Eisenhower.

“It’s obviously because of our extraordinary intelligence and good sense,” said Bayh, whose father built the family’s political dynasty here. “It’s classic middle America. Small businesses. Family farms. Community schools. We care more about common sense results than we do about party labels and ideology. … You don’t get the excesses of New York or California. We keep it between the 40-yard-lines.”

So, when it comes to 2016, you might expect these “between-the 40-yard-lines” voters to be soberly weighing the merits of Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio, with maybe an occasional flirtation with Bernie Sanders or Mike Huckabee. And yet, when I spent two days traveling around its gathering places and watering holes, I discovered that, while the county’s Democrats have, for their part, coalesced around Clinton, its Republicans mostly wanted to talk about just one candidate: Donald Trump. [Continue reading…]

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Right-wing populism is surging on both sides of the Atlantic – here’s why

By Ruth Wodak, Lancaster University

On both sides of the Atlantic, right-wing populist parties are enjoying another moment in the sun. In Europe, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) recently doubled its vote in a state election. Fellow travellers are making headway across Europe – France’s Front National, Hungary’s Jobbik, Bulgaria’s Ataka, and the party formally known as True Finns.

Many explanations for the European surge point to a xenophobic knee-jerk reaction to the refugee crisis, but that’s far too simplistic; the phenomenon is hardly confined to Europe. Look at the surprising success of Donald Trump in the US’s Republican party primary campaign. Many of his fellow candidates are struggling to keep up with his firebrand pronouncements, not least his proposal to deport millions of illegal immigrants.

So why exactly are these leaders and parties enjoying such success – and are they really all birds of a feather?

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Republicans have spent years expanding the popular base for Trump’s fascism

When a country is ripe for fascism, a fascist leader will emerge. The mistake we commonly make is to focus all our attention on such a leader, while being less critical of those who follow him — because they are uneducated, misinformed, and gullible. After all, it’s easier to express contempt for a man like Donald Trump than it is to criticize ones own neighbors.

As conservative politicians and commentators are becoming increasingly vocal in their criticisms of Trump — many are now openly calling him a fascist — the fact is, many of those critics have also long fanned the same bigotry around which Trump has built his presidential campaign, especially the Islamophobia that has been the backdrop of American politics for over a decade.

CNN reports: “Trump is a fascist. And that’s not a term I use loosely or often. But he’s earned it,” tweeted Max Boot, a conservative fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who is advising Marco Rubio.


“Forced federal registration of US citizens, based on religious identity, is fascism. Period. Nothing else to call it,” Jeb Bush national security adviser John Noonan wrote on Twitter.


Conservative Iowa radio host Steve Deace, who has endorsed Ted Cruz, also used the “F” word last week: “If Obama proposed the same religion registry as Trump every conservative in the country would call it what it is — creeping fascism.”

[Continue reading…]

Moreover, as Trump’s popularity is viewed in the context of contemporary American culture — the Tea Party, the polarizing effect of social media, fear of government, xenophobia, and isolationism — let’s not forget that as Hitler’s fascism rose in Germany, some of its most outspoken supporters could be found in the United States.

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Trump receptive to idea that Muslims in the U.S. be treated like Jews in Nazi Germany — ‘security is going to rule’

Yahoo News reports: After Paris, Trump said “security is going to rule” in the United States, in order to take on what he calls “radical Islamic terrorism.” America has currently agreed to take in 10,000 refugees from the ISIS stronghold in Syria. However, if he is elected, Trump said he would deport any Syrian refugees allowed to enter this country under President Obama.

“They’re going to be gone. They will go back. … I’ve said it before, in fact, and everyone hears what I say, including them, believe it or not,” Trump said of the refugees. “But if they’re here, they have to go back, because we cannot take a chance. You look at the migration, it’s young, strong men. We cannot take a chance that the people coming over here are going to be ISIS-affiliated.”

Yahoo News has reported that about half of the approximately 2,000 refugees from Syria who have come to the U.S. so far have been children. Another quarter are more than 60 years old. The Obama administration has maintained that the extensive screening process for these refugees makes the program safe to maintain — not to mention a reflection of America’s core values.

But Trump doesn’t buy it. He also has concerns about the larger Muslim community here in the U.S., he said.

Yahoo News asked Trump whether his push for increased surveillance of American Muslims could include warrantless searches. He suggested he would consider a series of drastic measures.

“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said. “And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”

Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.

“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.” [Continue reading…]

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Anti-refugee stance by Republican politicians is alienating some of their own supporters

Jason Boyett writes: Throughout the Gospels, Jesus taught his followers to love their enemies (Matthew 5:43-44), welcome strangers (Matthew 25:40), and show mercy to those in need (Luke 10:25-37). No doubt these teachings apply to families on the run from Isis.

These passages represent only a sliver of biblical teaching on the topic, and the Christians I know don’t just believe these verses, but act on them.

Consider my conservative Republican family. We live in Amarillo, Texas, a highly religious, conservative stronghold in a very red state. Amarillo also has an abnormally high ratio of new refugees to residents – higher than any Texas city. What’s more, many in the city are on the front-lines of welcoming those fleeing war or persecution. You wouldn’t know this from the political stances of the Republican lawmakers claiming to represent Texas, or Amarillo, as their constituents.

My mother and mother-in-law teach English to refugees and immigrants at my childhood Southern Baptist church. Both women love interacting with these foreign families, many of whom are Muslims from war-torn nations like Iraq, Iran and Sudan. They have shared meals together. They have visited these families in the hospital. They have become friends.

My brother, who runs a religious nonprofit, mentors youth at apartment projects across Amarillo. In recent years, the resident base at these complexes has shifted from low-income minorities to immigrant and refugee families. This makes my brother one of the first Americans they meet – and definitely one of the first they trust.

On a typical weekday after school, he might lead activities for 15 children and hear 15 different languages. He tells me the Muslim families in particular work harder than anyone else and are more welcoming to him than anyone else. They have never made him feel unsafe.

Unfortunately, the politicians claiming to represent us don’t feel that way. [Continue reading…]

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McCain tells fellow Republicans: ‘Refugees are not the problem — they are the symptom of the problem’

The Hill reports: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned his fellow Republicans on Wednesday not to place too much emphasis on Syrian refugees following the terrorist attacks in Paris last week, calling their focus misguided.

“I believe the overwhelming focus on the refugee program in recent days is misplaced,” said McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a written statement. “I especially encourage my fellow Republicans to recognize that refugees are not the problem — they are the symptom of the problem.”

Since attacks credited to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) killed at least 129 people on Friday, Republicans have called for pausing — or in some cases stopping altogether — the admission of Syrian refugees into the U.S. [Continue reading…]

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GOP governors rely on ISIS lies to reject Syrian refugees

The Daily Beast reports: One of the Paris attackers was supposedly found with a Syrian passport—leading Republican governors here in America to vow to block Syrian refugees from entering their states.

But that passport was a fake, French officials told The Wall Street Journal, which means the governors’ freakout over refugees was likely based on a lie.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, a former member of ISIS emphasized that Syrian passports, like the one found on that Paris terrorist, can be bought from the Syrian regime.

“There are people who go back and forth to Aleppo or Hama or Latakia or Tartus—you give them $1,000 and a nice photograph, and they’ll print you a good passport,” Abu Khaled, a former member the Islamic State’s internal security service, Amn al-Dawleh, said Monday.

“The guys with the regime are corrupt; they’ll give you whatever you want for money,” he added.

That’s not the only way, though. A reporter for the London Daily Mail purchased an identical passport online for $2,000. German customs agents in September seized a shipment of fake Syrian passports being sold to asylum seekers from countries like Iraq, Libya, and Egypt. (Syrians get automatic refugee status in the European Union.) Many of the forgeries are suspected to come from Turkey.

French officials told the Journal that Ahmad al-Mohammed, who blew himself up outside the Stade de France, was carrying a counterfeit Syrian passport made for him. Al-Mohammed’s fingerprints matched those on the passport found near his body, the French added.

Greek officials said the information on Al-Mohammed’s passport was run against police databases after he landed in Leros on Oct. 3 and nothing was found. Another man carrying a passport with identical information, but a different photograph, was being used by a man in Serbia who was arrested on Monday.

In a sense, Republican governors of 14 states took ISIS at their word, accepting the counterfeit Syrian passport as the reason to deny 10,000 thousands of Syrian refugees from settling in the United States. [Continue reading…]

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Sheldon Adelson warms to Marco Rubio

Politico reports: Sheldon Adelson, one of the Republican Party’s most sought-after contributors, is leaning increasingly toward supporting Marco Rubio — and the Florida senator is racing to win the backing of other uncommitted megadonors who have the potential to direct tens of millions of dollars his way and alter the contours of the Republican primary fight.

Last week, during a campaign swing through Las Vegas, Rubio held a meeting in Adelson’s offices at the Venetian Las Vegas, one of a number of five-star luxury casinos the billionaire mogul owns around the world. Adelson, seated at the head of his conference table, heaped praise on Rubio’s performance while he discussed the dynamics of the 2016 race. Those briefed on the meeting described it as short but said it had an air of importance, with the two joined by Rubio’s campaign manager, Terry Sullivan, and a pair of senior Adelson advisers, Rob Goldstein and Patrick Dumont.

Those close to Adelson — who spent more than $100 million on Republican candidates and causes during the 2012 campaign and has been aggressively courted by most would-be Republican nominees — stressed that the 82-year-old gambling magnate had made no final decision on whom he’d support but said that momentum had strongly shifted to the Florida senator. A formal endorsement, they said, could come as soon as the end of the month — and with it, the potential for a multimillion dollar contribution. With a net worth of $25.7 billion, according to Forbes, Adelson can afford to spend freely. [Continue reading…]

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Donald Trump: I would send Syrian refugees home

BBC News reports: Donald Trump has said he would send home all Syrian refugees the US accepts, if he becomes president.

The billionaire, who is the current frontrunner in the Republican race for the White House, told a New Hampshire rally: “If I win, they’re going back.”

It marks a reversal in policy – earlier this month he told Fox News the US should take in more refugees.

A migrant crisis has gripped parts of Europe and the US has pledged to take 10,000 refugees from Syria next year.

Half a million people have crossed the Mediterranean into Europe in 2015, with the largest number from Syria, where 250,000 people have been killed in a civil war.

On Wednesday night, Mr Trump told an audience at Keene High School: “I hear we want to take in 200,000 Syrians. And they could be – listen, they could be Isis [Islamic State].”

Describing them as a “200,000-man army”, he later added: “I’m putting the people on notice that are coming here from Syria as part of this mass migration, that if I win, if I win, they’re going back.” [Continue reading…]

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Islamophobia has a long history in the U.S.

Khaled Beydoun writes: On the morning of 19 April 1995, the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was rocked by a bomb. The domestic terrorist attack killed 168 people and injured 680 more. Minutes after, media reports speculated that “Islamic extremists” or “Arab radicals” were the culprits.

Ninety minutes after the explosions, Timothy McVeigh – a white, Christian male – was arrested and later linked to the attack. There had been no evidence to support the idea Muslims had anything to do with the bombing.

Despite people with similar ideologies to McVeigh were responsible for the majority of domestic terrorist attacks in 1995 – a figure still true today – the legislation that followed the Oklahoma city bombing did not place its focus there.

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) was the beginning of policing of Muslim subjects and communities. One part of this legislation led to the disparate investigation of Muslim American political and social activity, while another led to the deportation of Muslims with links – real or fictive – to terrorist activity.

This policing was broadened and intensified after the 9/11 terrorists attacks. More recently, US Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programme, as well as political demagoguery, further expands the suspicious focus on Muslims. [Continue reading…]

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