US officials pathologized anti-Western nationalists as psychologically or racially unfit.
Evidence
John Foster Dulles, as Eisenhower’s secretary of state, called Nasser and other Arab nationalists like him “pathological” for their suspicion of the West and referred to the secular nationalist Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh as “a wily Oriental.” Eisenhower himself believed that secular nationalists were little more than Oriental despots. He said: “If you go and live with these Arabs, you will find that they simply cannot understand our ideas of freedom and dignity… . They have lived so long under dictatorships of one form or another, how can we expect them to run successfully a free government?” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 207 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: US officials pathologized Arab nationalists as unfit for democracy — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 207; US elites pathological labeled Arab nationalists resisting Western interests; US officials racialized Muslims as incapable of democracy while arming their dictators — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 368 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- US officials pathologized Arab nationalists as unfit for democracy
#corroborates(0.92) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 207 - US elites pathological labeled Arab nationalists resisting Western interests
#corroborates(0.88) - US presidents racialized Arabs as incapable of understanding freedom
#corroborates(0.85) - US officials racialized Muslims as incapable of democracy while arming their dictators
#expands(0.82) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 368 - Western states reframed non-state political violence as psychopathology to strip it of legitimacy
#expands(0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 660 - US officials blamed Islam rather than Western-backed autocracies for extremism.
#expands(0.75) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 726