The terrorism label is a trans-ideological tool for suppressing dissent, not Muslim-specific

Evidence

In the context of the mass multiracial BLM uprisings against police violence in the summer of 2020, Trump declared his intention to designate the anti-fascist political movement Antifa as a terrorist organization. This should not surprise anyone since measures used to control Communists and later the New Left, anti-war, and civil rights activists like COINTELPRO were applied to Arab Americans and later Iranian Americans. The McCarran–Walter Act originally designed to target leftists was expanded to include supporters of Palestinian rights. Whether during the Cold War and the “red scare” or the war on terror and the “green scare,” the imperial state is ever vigilant, seeking to quell insurgency before it can threaten the system. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 643

Categorization

• XREF: Strongly relevant to the reader’s MOC thread: the red-scare/green-scare symmetry suggests the ‘standing apparatus’ is content-agnostic — the same COINTELPRO/McCarran-Walter machinery targets communists, Muslims, and BLM alike, supporting the regime-independent reading over a capitalism-specific one. — connects to: The terrorist label flexibly expands to smear domestic dissenters and protesters — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 91; Terrorism labeling expands opportunistically to discredit domestic protest movements; Terrorism labeling follows political allegiance, not acts of violence — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 413 (+7 more)
• QUESTION: If the same anti-subversion apparatus moves from communists to Muslims to Antifa, does this disambiguate the capitalism-specificity question the reader is testing? It points toward a generic state logic of quelling insurgency rather than a specifically anti-Muslim or anti-poor logic.

Broader Connections

• Radical Islamic critique of US policy gets suppressed regardless of threat #exemplifies (0.85) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 415
• Labels like fundamentalist, Islamist and radical reduce Islam to political-military confrontation #expands (0.82) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 215
• Official rhetoric framing Islam as ideology licensed anti-Muslim suspicion #expands (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 864
• The Islam-terrorism link is a culturally embedded hard discourse resistant to contestation #expands (0.80) — Nasar Meer, Tariq Modood, Refutations of Racism in the ‘Muslim…, 107
• Terrorism is a political act, not a religious one #expands (0.78) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 616
• Opponents argue Islamophobia labels are deployed politically to suppress legitimate criticism. #responds-to (0.78) — Nasar Meer, Tariq Modood, Refutations of Racism in the ‘Muslim…, 65
• Terror is defined by independence from opposition, not suppression #contradicts (0.75)