The black criminal and brown terrorist were twin products of empire in crisis

Evidence

Building on this work, I have argued elsewhere that the project of terrorist racial formation occurred in the context of empire in crisis. The national security state designated Arab Americans as “terrorists” or “potential terrorists” through the counterinsurgency logic of the Cold War era that saw threats abroad and at home in similar ways. Operation Boulder, a modification of the infamous COINTELPRO project used to target the New Left and activists in the civil rights, black power, American Indian, Puerto Rican, anti-war, and other groups was deployed to target and racialize Arab Americans. As part of the effort to restore US hegemony, conservatives in the United States and Israel played a central role in advancing a counterterrorist program and imperialist agenda on a global scale. Two crucial conferences organized by the Israeli Jonathan Institute (discussed in Chapter 4) played a role in the development of the global “Arab terrorist” as a threat to democracy. More broadly, the attempt to resuscitate empire/colonialism, after successful national liberation movements had discredited colonialism not only in the minds of the colonized but also sympathetic sections in Western nations, provided the context for the evolution of terrorist racial formation. Moreover, the global economic crisis and the crisis of US imperialism in the late 1960s and 1970s created the conditions, I have argued, for two simultaneous racial projects: the criminalization of blacks and the terrorization of Arabs (and later Iranians, Muslims, and South Asians). The “black criminal” and the “brown terrorist” were birthed in the womb of a national security state seeking to quell threats to the restoration of US economic and political hegemony through the logic of counterinsurgency. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 237

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The thesis that criminalization of blacks and terrorization of Arabs were concurrent racial projects of one national security state, not separate phenomena, is a dense paradigm-shifting framework tying together racial formation, imperial crisis, and counterinsurgency.
• XREF: Connects to earlier chapters on the Jonathan Institute and to broader work on racial formation theory (Omi and Winant) that a reader knowledgeable about racial formation would recognize. — connects to: Late-1960s empire crisis birthed black criminal and brown terrorist jointly — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 249; Economic crisis birthed twin racial projects criminalizing blacks and Arabs — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 237; Political and economic crises are resolved through manufactured fear of racialized criminals — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 81 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Late-1960s empire crisis birthed black criminal and brown terrorist jointly #expands (0.90) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 249
• The global Arab terrorist image was produced by empire crisis and counterinsurgency with Israel #expands (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 203
• Economic crisis birthed twin racial projects criminalizing blacks and Arabs #qualifies (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 237
• Political and economic crises are resolved through manufactured fear of racialized criminals #expands (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 81
• Two separate Islamophobic tropes merged as Black and Arab struggles converged #expands (0.75) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 581
• Moral panics about racialized criminals resolve economic crises via law-and-order solutions #expands (0.72) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 93