Labeling anti-Muslim groups fringe obscures their integration into imperial infrastructure
Evidence
When the authors of Fear Inc. insist that the Islamophobic Right are a “fringe” and that anti-Muslim racism is not a significant problem in the United States, they not only fail to acknowledge how the individuals they name sit comfortably within the imperial infrastructure but also discount the dialectical relationship between liberal, conservative, and Far Right racism. After all, more than 70 million people voted for Trump in 2020.155 It is no wonder then that by 2020, QAnon, the internet-based social movement with religious underpinnings that peddles a range of conspiracy theories, gained ascendance. The core claim of this movement is that an elite Satan-worshiping cabal has corrupted the United States and runs a global child-sex trafficking ring. QAnon followers believe that top military generals recruited Trump to run for the presidency in 2016 in order to break up this cabal. Largely a fringe movement, it went mainstream in the summer of 2020, spreading conspiracies about Covid-19, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the presidential election. QAnon also claimed that wearing masks during the pandemic will lead to the full burqa in a few years and the institution of Sharia in the United States. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 736
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Connects to the thread ‘What Actually Breaks the Loop’ — the ‘fringe vs. mainstream’ debate being contested here is exactly the representational contest framing the MOC argues is the trap.
- ADDENDUM: The 70-million-voter scale of mainstreamed reactionary politics and its conspiracy offshoots offers factual grounding for the article on complaints about immodesty — mask-to-burqa conflation is a dress-panic instance.