Economic crises of the 1960s-70s produced the Arab terrorist figure as a moral panic.

Evidence

Stuart Hall et al., in their pioneering book Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order, analyzed the fear generated towards racialized subjects. Methodologically, this book employs a similar approach. Using a historical materialist mode of analysis, Hall and his collaborators examined the legal arena, the police, and the media in the construction of a moral panic around the black “mugger” in early 1970s in the UK. They argued that the economic crisis of the time was solved by “law and order” solutions that were based on generating fear towards black criminals. The new project of racial formation involved a focus on the “mugger” coded as a security threat. Even though the crime known as mugging did not increase, a moral panic was generated to justify policing measures. I similarly argue that the economic, political, and social crises of the late 1960s and 1970s created the conditions for the production of the “Arab terrorist” threat, which later evolved into the “Islamic terrorist” threat. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 93

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes ‘Complaints go way back’ angle of manufactured moral panics; also connects to Hall’s Essential Essays on racism and state power. — connects to: Seven post-1948 crises drove American media portrayals of Arabs as violent and irrational — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 616; Moral panic is a widespread fear that some evil person or thing threatens the values of a community, first theorized by Stanley Cohen in 1972. — Moral panic — Wikipedia; Cohen (1972, p. 9) defined moral panic as a condition where a group emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests, presented in a stylized way by mass media. — Moral Panic (+6 more)
• QUESTION: The reader wants the specific channels of 1967-1979 - this states the causal claim but the mechanism detail (which legal/media/foreign-policy venues) is what chapters 2 will carry.

Broader Connections

• The global Arab terrorist image was produced by empire crisis and counterinsurgency with Israel #corroborates (0.88) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 203
• Seven post-1948 crises drove American media portrayals of Arabs as violent and irrational #corroborates (0.85) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 616
• The Arab terrorist figure predates and evolves into the Islamic terrorist. #expands (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 97
• Moral panics can produce long-lasting changes in society. #expands (0.80) — Lynley Hood, A City Possessed, 55
• The produced moral panic far exceeds the actual terrorist threat #expands (0.78) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 762
• The oil crisis felt like an anonymous threat that anxious publics projected onto Arabs #exemplifies (0.78) — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 167