Obama-era counterterrorism propaganda used multicultural imagery to mask imperial policy
Evidence
In 2010 DHS launched the nationwide “See Something, Say Something” campaign, which took a multicultural approach to fighting terrorism. As I have argued elsewhere, counterterrorism propaganda took a decidedly anti-racist hue, with white terrorists as the bad guys in DHS YouTube videos and brown and black people as the good informants. Obama’s national security leadership team consisted of significantly more women and people of color. The process begun in the early post–Cold War era was taken to new levels in the Obama administration as multicultural imperial feminism became more prominent. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 614
Categorization
- XREF: Direct dialogue with the vault claim that Islamophobia operates as imperial policy: Kumar shows how multicultural representation (white villains, brown informants) functioned as propaganda for continued surveillance — parallels Razack’s analysis of the Muslim as the perpetually suspicious figure. — connects to: Obama’s liberalism and right-wing Muslim-baiting both served US imperial hegemony — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 512; Obama’s election rebranded rather than ended American imperial policy — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 495; Obama’s Cairo speech repackaged rather than abandoned the imperial frame (+5 more)
- SEED: An essay angle: the co-optation of anti-racist aesthetics into counterterrorism propaganda — how ‘See Something, Say Something’ recruited people of color as informants against their own communities while appearing diversity-forward.
Broader Connections
- Liberal hegemonic soft power rhetoric masked imperial ethnocentric racism.
#expands(0.90) - US imperialism abroad and domestic counterterrorism form one interconnected racial system
#expands(0.85) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 22 - Islamophobia functions as a transnational tool advancing American imperial aims
#expands(0.75) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1826 - Racial subhuman propaganda was institutionally sponsored and persists in images
#expands(0.72) — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 800