LGBTQ inclusion served imperial racial othering of Muslims

Evidence

Additionally, as Jasbir Puar argues, large sections of the global gay left were also incorporated into this paradigm through a “wholesale acceptance of the Islamophobic rhetoric that fuels the war on terror,” even going so far as to tacitly endorse the forces “pushing for an Iranian invasion” and occupation. This embrace of imperial ethnocentric racism and the war on terror by gay subjects was met with an incorporation of certain homosexual constituencies within the United States’s new national identity in a process that Puar calls “homonationalism.” US exceptionalism was embellished through its purported gay-friendly credentials. The imperial cooptation and incorporation of normative homosexuality also served to create Muslims as cultural and civilizational others. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 366

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• DEFINE: Introduces Puar’s term ‘homonationalism’ — the incorporation of normative homosexuality into US national identity as a tool of imperial exceptionalism.
• SEED: An essay angle: how identity-group inclusion (LGBTQ, feminist, etc.) gets weaponized as cover for imperial projects — the ‘we’re better than the barbarians’ logic.
• XREF: Resonates with the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ piece — both show how cultural/identity signaling gets deployed as political cover, here for empire rather than class.

Related

• Imperial powers recruit gay acceptance to cast Muslims as civilizational others (similarity 0.91)
• Co-opting gay rights rhetoric into national identity racialized Muslims as civilizational others. (similarity 0.79)