Framing victims as white supremacists won the Ground Zero Mosque battle despite Muslim deaths

Evidence

The Islamophobia network’s effort to brand the center as the “Ground Zero Mosque,” even though it was several blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center, succeeded. Their construction of the victims of 9/11 erased the multiracial and multinational character of the dead. The narrative was one of white victimhood at the hands of the racialized Muslim, which has a longer history in the United States. As shown in Chapter 2, there was a groundswell of demand at the turn of the nineteenth century not only for Native American captivity stories but also the white US captive stories related to the Barbary Coast. Implicit and explicit white supremacy centered on white victimhood served not only to erase the Muslims who died on that day but to homogenize all Muslims. The Right was so successful in setting the terms of discussion that polls taken at the time showed that anywhere between 54 and 68 percent of Americans expressed opposition to the project at its proposed location. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 658

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s core gap: this is an actual documented case of a representational frame (white victimhood) succeeding as causal machinery over a competing factual frame (multiracial dead + Arab enclave). — connects to: Mass progressive mobilization defeated the Islamophobia network in the Ground Zero Mosque fight; Mass progressive protest defeated the Right and secured the Ground Zero mosque; A coordinated Islamophobia industry orchestrated the Ground Zero Mosque protests (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• A coordinated Islamophobia industry orchestrated the Ground Zero Mosque protests #corroborates (0.95)
• The Ground Zero Mosque backlash was orchestrated by organized Islamophobia networks #corroborates (0.90) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 274
• Mass progressive mobilization defeated the Islamophobia network in the Ground Zero Mosque fight #contradicts (0.80)
• Mass progressive protest defeated the Right and secured the Ground Zero mosque #contradicts (0.80)