The war on terror brand relied on activists policing academic dissent

Evidence

The rights of women in particular have been frequently invoked to justify the war on terror. One of the most celebrated high-level interventions came when U.S. First Lady Laura Bush, deputizing for her husband in his weekly radio broadcast to the nation in November 2001, took oppression of women in Taliban-held Afghanistan as her topic. “Civilized people throughout the world are speaking out in horror,” she opined, “not just because our hearts break for the women and children in Afghanistan, but also because in Afghanistan we see the world the terrorists would like to impose on the rest of us.” Here, smuggled in with sympathy for the powerless, we find the additional frisson provided by the final clause: the Taliban and their ilk have their own imperial designs on us, so acting to depose them satisfies both our human altruism and our long-term self-interest. Hyperbole masquerading as common sense is a hallmark of the discourse and brings forth rhetorical connections that would otherwise surely be debatable; Laura Bush ended her broadcast by observing that “the fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women,” effectively challenging the more usual solidarities between feminism and antiwar struggles. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 210 (#complicates, via linked claim)

In its civilizational bluster, “Old Europe”–type criticisms of dissent abroad, and persistent disregard for the negative consequences of U.S. meddling, Terror and Liberalism is a pitch-perfect document of the liberal case for the war on terror. Although the book stakes a claim as an explanatory metanarrative for modern history, it was less than prescient about how the Bush doctrine—with its disregard for fundamental rights and freedoms—paved the way for renewed U.S. exceptionalism, paranoia, race thinking, and Islamophobia in the years after it was published. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 123 (#complicates, via linked claim)

In the decade after 9/11, the approach to law and order in the United States changed drastically with surveillance being a necessary and supported tactic in a society hyperconcerned with preventing another terrorist attack. Surveillance is the observation and monitoring of behaviors and actions that are deemed suspicious. The domestic and international War on Terror legitimizes the political and economic need for increased surveillance, resulting in the corporatization and federalization of surveillance. In other words, surveillance has become big business in the United States, where companies profit from surveillance technologies and tools, such as maintaining databases of information on the general public and then selling them to the government for purposes of security. A surveillance society can only survive as long as there is a need to monitor and observe bodies that threaten security. The War on Terror created conditions where Muslim bodies are racialized, justifying the need for their surveillance. But surveillance does not impact Muslim men and women in the same way; rather, surveillance is gendered, highlighting how racialization is also gendered. — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 29 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The terrorist label flexibly expands to smear domestic dissenters and protesters — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 91; State-allied propagandists and activists jointly policed campus critique of US foreign policy. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 666; Anti-Muslim sentiment predated and undergirded the War on Terror — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 283 (+17 more)

Broader Connections

• Feminist rhetoric was co-opted to justify the war on terror #complicates (1.00) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 210
• The liberal case for the war on terror abetted later Islamophobia #complicates (1.00) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 123
• Personnel rotation across military, academic, and think-tank spheres sustains the Islamophobia industry #qualifies (1.00)
• The War on Terror racialized Muslim bodies to justify their surveillance #complicates (1.00) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 29
• Anti-brand activism makes personal-brand defense self-contradictory #complicates (0.95) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 154
• The War on Terror was deliberately marketed globally from its start #complicates (0.90) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 285
• The war on terror fought a parallel battle over the nature of reality #complicates (0.85)
• The War on Terror recycled COINTELPRO-era racial policing tactics against Muslims #complicates (0.84) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 263
• The global war on terrorism rhetorically morphed into a war on Islam and Muslims #complicates (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 43
• Media diversity gestures enabled denial of institutionalized racism during the War on Terror #complicates (0.80) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 164
• The War on Terror recycled pre-existing Orientalist academic discourse into state violence #complicates (0.80) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 267
• Anti-Muslim sentiment predated and undergirded the War on Terror #complicates (0.78) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 283
• The word terrorism became inflated as the war it names commercialized #complicates (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2431
• Assimilationist discourse fuses directly with the war on terror’s logic #complicates (0.75) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 382
• The War on Terror laid foundations for policies white supremacists later claimed as inspiration #complicates (0.70) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1038