The global Arab terrorist image was produced by empire crisis and counterinsurgency with Israel
Evidence
Scholars in the field of Arab American studies have shown that starting in the late 1960s, Arab Americans were turned into a threatening race of people. Drawing on this work, I argue that terrorist racial formation is an evolving project that goes from a focus on Arabs to include Iranians and later South Asians. It was the crisis of empire and the use of counterinsurgency methods to handle threats abroad and at home that gave rise to the global “Arab terrorist,” produced in conjunction with Israel. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 203
Categorization
- XREF: Corroborates and specifies Rana’s terror-race thesis and Aziz’s claim that Islamophobia tracks US imperial needs; adds the under-appreciated Israeli co-production angle. — connects to: Postwar empire-building and the Israel partnership produced the racialized Arab terrorist category — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 91; Economic crises of the 1960s-70s produced the Arab terrorist figure as a moral panic. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 93; The black criminal and brown terrorist were twin products of empire in crisis — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 237 (+6 more)
- SEED: Essay angle: the 1967-1979 periodization of when ‘Arab’ became a racial threat category in US state discourse.
Broader Connections
- Cold War counterinsurgency logic fused foreign and domestic Arab threats
#corroborates(0.95) - US counterinsurgency logic fused foreign and domestic Arabs into one terrorist threat
#expands(0.90) - Postwar modernization theory and the Israel partnership produced the Arab terrorist race
#expands(0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 103 - The War on Terror functions as an imperial project spreading Islamophobia globally
#expands(0.80) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 43 - The global war on terror ideology originated in Israeli religious-right domestic politics
#corroborates(0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 445 - Empire’s rhetoric of the terrorist enemy wavers between singular and plural under U.S. influence
#expands(0.75) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 814