Sleeper-cell logic previously justified Japanese American internment

Evidence

The sleeper cell theory is not a new one, as Volpp reminds us. It was used to justify the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War; in this instance too it turned on the logic that as inscrutable ‘Orientals,’ Japanese Americans were ‘patiently waiting to strike’ at America and therefore must be interned. … These ideas position non-Arabs and non-Muslims, in contrast, as belonging to a society of individuals who are rational and secular. As CSIS reiterates time and time again through the hearings, Arabs and Muslims are not like us. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 98

The sleeper cell theory is not a new one, as Volpp reminds us. It was used to justify the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War; in this instance too it turned on the logic that as inscrutable ‘Orientals,’ Japanese Americans were ‘patiently waiting to strike’ at America and therefore must be interned. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 98

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader history of racialized national-security panics and internment — parallels the moral panic literature and racial profiling work already in the library.
• SEED: An essay comparing how the ‘dormant threat’ narrative recurs across different racialized groups — Japanese Americans (1940s), Arabs/Muslims (post-9/11) — as a reusable security logic.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 98