US imperial machinery adopted Muslim-origin intellectuals to supply legitimizing narratives.
Evidence
This market, which flourished at the cost of demonizing 1.5 billion human beings, was on the lookout for the best and the brightest—individuals with a pigment to their complexion who could tell their tales with an accent to their English. The native informers stepped forward to oblige, accommodate, and entertain as the US military machinery flexed its muscles around the Muslim world. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 100
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the law-marchant/reputation literature on how incentive structures manufacture useful knowledge, and to Said’s Orientalism as knowledge production under duress.
Related
- So-called ex-Muslim spokespeople serve imperial audiences by manufacturing a Muslim enemy (similarity 0.81)
- European native informers serve local anti-immigrant racism rather than US imperial aims. (similarity 0.81)
- Native informer intellectuals have replaced Orientalists in serving imperial capital (similarity 0.80)
- Empires recruit native intellectuals to season their self-justifying narratives (similarity 0.80)
- Ex-Muslim ‘native informants’ profit by denouncing Islam to Western audiences (similarity 0.80)
- Native informers have internalized Orientalist discourse, making expert knowledge unnecessary. (similarity 0.79)
- Exiled intellectuals can become native informers who manufacture consent for empire (similarity 0.79)
- Field operatives translated academic Orientalism into practical imperial effectiveness. (similarity 0.78)