Islamophobic campaigns mobilize a recognizable cast of intermediaries and tactics.

Evidence

Waldman sets out those interest groups and tactics that have come to the fore in recent battles over Islam’s place in the United States. We meet members of the 9/11 families group, who feel betrayed that their representative on the memorial selection committee has approved Khan’s design; blue-collar protestor Sean Gallagher, whose firefighter brother was killed in the Twin Towers and who now labors always in that brother’s shadow, unable to bring himself to follow his better instincts and compromise; Debbie Dawson, professional anti-Islam campaigner—a fictional stand-in for Pamela Geller—who throws out menacing references to taqiya and dhimmitude and cherry-picks the most warlike aspects of the religion to hype up the threat to America; Alyssa Spier, ambitious and unscrupulous reporter from the New York Post who sees the story as a career opportunity; and scaremongering politician Governor Geraldine Bitman, on her way to becoming vice president. On the other side, defending Khan, are members of the Muslim American Coordinating Council (MACC) and their opportunistic leader Issam Malik, who prove to be no less adept at marketing and manipulation than their opponents. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 275

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘cast of characters’ of an Islamophobic panic — architect in the eye of the storm, professional campaigner, unscrupulous journalist, opportunistic communal leader — could seed an examination of how each of these roles functions as infrastructure.
• XREF: The anti-Islam campaign’s tactic of cherry-picking warlike Koranic elements resembles the selective-victimhood rhetoric examined in the immodesty moral panics; the professionalized campaigner is a structural counterpoint to the interest-group analysis. — connects to: Anti-Muslim propagandists specialize in campus outreach and coordinated media distribution.; A network of named think tanks and groups produced the Muslim takeover conspiracy narrative.
• SHARE: For someone studying Pamela Geller and the Ground Zero Mosque controversy — the fiction/nonfiction doublings here are precise enough to map.