Alex Galbraith at Salon reports that disgraced former New York mayor, Rudi Giuliani, went out of his way to bash Palestinians. Giuliani has been ordered to turn over most of his wealth to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, African-American election workers whom he defamed with hate speech and false allegations. He has been disbarred for his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

Giuliani alleged that Hamas trains Palestinian toddlers at two years old to hate Americans: “The Palestinians are taught to kill us at two-years old.”

In his fact-free universe, he alleged that Kamala Harris is attempting to bring Palestinian refugees to the US, saying, “She wants to bring them to you.” He added, “They may have good people. I’m sorry I don’t take a risk with people who are taught to kill Americans at two.”

Since Giuliani’s own children are embarrassed by his descent into whatever that is, he may not be much in touch with them or remember much about them. But my recollection is that when you tell two-year-olds to do something, they typically reply “No!” Actually I think that is their standard response to most assertions, though they will say “yes” if you ask them if they want to go to a toy store or go see a cartoon at the movies.

I actually know something about Palestinians and their history. See my new book, Gaza Yet Stands.

Let’s just recall who Giuliani is talking about when he talks about Palestinians in America, who are listed at Wikipedia. John H. Sununu, who served both as governor of New Hampshire (1983–89) and as George H. W. Bush’s chief of staff in the White House, had a Greek-Palestinian ancestor from Jerusalem. His son, John E. Sununu, served as a senator for New Hampshire. The Sununus are Republicans.

Gibran Hamdan played in the NFL for the Washington Redskins. Tarek Saleh also played in the NFL for the Cleveland Browns.

We have Hashem El Serag, a renowned medical researcher on liver cancer who chairs the Medicine Department at Baylor University. I don’t know about you, but I want Dr. El Serag here and working on treatments for liver cancer and other diseases. He’s a million times more useful to America than a scoundrel like Giuliani.

Then there is retired Col. Peter Mansoor, a professor of history at the Ohio State University, who served in Iraq and was part of General David Petraeus’s brain trust there. He is half Palestinian.

Justin Amash represented Michigan’s Third Congressional District from 2011 to 2021. Amash was a Republican but became a Libertarian to protest Trumpism. That is, this Palestinian American is a more loyal and patriotic American than Giuliani can ever dream of being.

Or DJ Khaled, who responded to Trump’s visa ban and wall-building this way, “Bless up 🙏 I am a Muslim American love is the 🔑 love is the answer. It’s so amazing to see so many people come together in love ! I pray for everyone I pray we all love and live in peace .. #NoBanNoWall 🙏.”

DJ Khaled once took his family on a trip across America, visiting numerous cities, out of love for his country. He raps peace and love, and said that the lack of love in Trump is what repelled him.

DJ Khaled, “God Did”

Then we have Dean Obeidallah, an actually funny American comedian and savvy political commentator whose father hailed from the British Mandate of Palestine.

Or take Bella Hadid, the Palestinian-American supermodel who loves America so much that she moved to Texas and adopted a cowboy lifestyle.

Or her sister Gigi, also a supermodel, and an activist in encouraging voting. Tommy Hilfiger went so far as to suggest that Gigi Hadid could help create a love between the US and the Middle East.

While you wouldn’t want to underestimate the influence of a dynamic supermodel, that hope may be unrealistic. Still, no one thinks Rudi Giuliani has the potential to create peace between anyone and anyone else. It is Gigi Hadid who is the real American, Palestinian heritage and all.

The driving force behind Trump’s alleged “love” for Israel is to strengthen his hold on the Evangelical community; not the Jewish one. That has driven what Republican support there is for Israel since Christian Zionists took over the party beginning in the 1980s. Trump argues that Jews have an obligation to support him because he’s been Israel’s “best friend;” when in reality, he has abetted and enabled Israel’s political-economic suicide by granting PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s (Bibi) entire wish list. This includes appointing David Friedman as ambassador to Israel, whose understanding of Israel-Palestine history is limited to Temple Sunday School myths, which ignores and whitewashes the Palestinian Nakba (Holocaust). It includes Trump and Bibi’s evil political alliance, all but positioning them as running mates on the same ticket. 

Trump earned his popularity among wealthy, Republican Jews by pandering. Except when he said, “You have to support me because you’re all brutal killers.” But they forgave that because they believe his con about “loving Israel,” and also buy the myth that he’s been good for the investment economy. There can be destructive ignorance among intelligent people, as not all bright and successful people are deep thinkers.

Many progressive Jews have abandoned support of Israel over the genocide in Gaza and fascist elements of Bibi’s government. The alliance between Bibi and Trump is as destructive as the alliance between Elon Musk and Trump. It’s become a Fascist Axis among very wealthy entrepreneurs and deeply corrupt politicians, more interested in their wealth and political survival, rather than the health, wealth and security of the countries and corporations they govern. Or in Trump’s case, want to govern again from a purely statist, Fascist standpoint.

Trump is already forecasting his upcoming electoral defeat, and pro-actively placing blame on outside agents, including Jews who don’t vote for him and even Taylor Swift. While he whines about “all he has done for Israel,” the reality is that his policies have severely weakened Israel by granting impunity to its most self-destructive elements, and thus helped turn it into a global pariah by pledging support for the genocide in Gaza, and promising to grant Bibi his wish list of being free to terrorize and murder innocent Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It was Trump who initiated the move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in violation of International Law. Jerusalem is just as much a Muslim and Orthodox Christian city as it is a Jewish one. (There, I said it!)

“Demagoguery,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

The alliance of Trump and Musk has dragged American political discourse to an all-time low. Trump has brought the Republican Party to an unprecedented low of dysfunction, abetted by Musk buying Twitter/X. As Trump has marginalized the Republican Party into a clownish state of lurid sensationalism, Musk has turned Twitter/X into a platform for unfettered defamation, hate, racism and divisiveness. Musk is allied with Trump to better secure his wealth, and is investing $45M per month in his campaign.

Why is Musk so deeply invested in Trump’s return to the presidency? Because like Russia in Ukraine, Trump will let Musk “do whatever the hell he wants.” Trump will let Russia take over Ukraine and bully other European countries. He’ll let the Israeli Likud Party continue its reign of terror over Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank; thereby placing more kindling and gasoline onto an already-explosive situation. And he’ll let the Supreme Court continue to undo many generations worth of protective and progressive judicial rulings.

Trump’s campaign strategy is to tell so many lies so fast and furiously, that it’s hard to keep up, and impossible to address and debunk each one in the time allowed for rebuttal? As Hannah Arendt wrote, “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer,” enabling totalitarianism. Part of Trump’s strategy is also to undermine the free press, and depict journalists as “the enemy of the people.” That’s the dynamic of gaslighting. Or is it an effort to befuddle and flummox the mases to the point that people don’t know what to believe and stop caring?

Some are revising these policies to include swift consequences for those who dare to follow what have been student protest norms for decades. Similar threats loom for university staff and faculty – not only those who protest, but even some who simply speak out. 

Such policies will ultimately hamper universities from accessing a path towards their own goals of diversity and inclusion. 

In recent months, I visited more than half a dozen pro-Palestinian college encampments in North America, from the US Midwest, to the West Coast, to Canada. As an anthropologist, I was interested to observe that each called itself the “liberated zone”. 

At one encampment, I heard a participant laugh at the notion of university policies on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), saying: “It should be DIE, not DEI. They’re using it to justify killing us.” 

The camper articulated a common frustration regarding the increasingly performative function of DEI initiatives on college campuses across the country. What does this term mean without liberation?

Protesters themselves seem to be doing a better job of upholding such ideals. At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, during the Jewish holiday of Passover, campers held a Seder meal and welcomed everyone at the encampment to join in the celebrations. 

They did not interfere with a group of opposing protesters who gathered nearby, holding pro-Israel signs. It struck me that even in the context of allowing space for peaceful dissent and opposition, the encampment was liberated. 

‘We keep us safe’

From what I observed, these protest encampments aim to live by the ideals they are protesting for: freedom and justice for all, without the racially and economically infused hierarchies that dominate the world. 

At the University of California, Los Angeles, which was attacked by external Zionist agitators, campers protected each other while police stood by. The officers did not intervene, and the campers did not call on them. “We keep us safe,” campers chanted.

The morning the Ann Arbor encampment was raided and forcibly dismantled, Muslims had just completed the Fajr prayer and an interdenominational Christian worship service was in progress when officers moved in.

Several encampments I visited also observed Indigenous rituals, including a Cree tobacco ceremony – exactly the type of event one imagines taking place on a college campus. During meals, campers made an effort to include kosher, halal, vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options.

Being in a community together is the healthiest way for students to learn about, and from, each other, without objectifying or essentialising norms that might be unfamiliar to some. 

The encampments also featured diverse activities, from film screenings, to holiday celebrations, to topic teach-ins with expert guest speakers. One professor who lived more than an hour away from the encampment he was visiting told me: “I will drive down here if the students host an organising workshop. What they’re coordinating here is unbelievable.” 

Such sentiments were shared with me by many others from coast to coast. 

“Protest,” Digital, Dream / Dreamworld v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Endless cycle

After I was hired in 2017 in the first cohort of a fellowship that was a part of my university’s five-year DEI 1.0 plan (we are now on DEI 2.0), I asked a school official who was guiding the project to explain the use of the term “inclusion”.

What does it mean, I asked, for the institution to pursue inclusion, when this very concept entails a hierarchy, ie, one superior group gets to be the “includer”, while another inferior group is excluded until the former allows them in?

To his credit, he did not articulate a defence of this term, suggesting instead that we view it as a “placeholder”.

The administrations have aligned themselves with far-right interests, at the expense of the very cause of inclusion for which they’re supposedly fighting

Still, the concept itself remains a pursuit. Like past efforts to foster “multiculturalism” and “tolerance”, it seems that liberal-left initiatives to address histories of marginalisation and racism just can’t quite get it right. Higher education institutions have become the epicentre of both the responses to address these historic struggles for equality, and the critiques of these responses – an endless cycle. 

For years, I have studied how diversity’s self-contradictory reality in higher education institutions can lead to self-exclusion. Some campuses have grappled with this by substituting other words for the standard DEI label. New York’s Cornell University whittled their office name down to “Belonging at Cornell”.

What I didn’t predict when I began this journey more than a decade ago was the accompanying attack on DEI at universities and beyond by the far right, leading some states to restrict funding for DEI work at public colleges. 

Thinking about it more deeply, this move shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. DEI work is centred on identity politics, and for obvious reasons, it doesn’t make space for identities that are not marginalised, which has spurred some to revolt. 

This situation also puts critical progressives in a corner: do they continue to critique DEI, or pivot to defend it from right-wing attacks as the primary vehicle in higher education aiming to address histories of systemic bias and discrimination?

Valuable lesson

Amid this backdrop, I have been stunned by the response of most higher education institutions to the encampments on their campuses. 

Colleges are imagined to be sites of free speech and expression, intellectual inquiry, and encountering differences. For many, they form a bridge towards independence as adults. Most colleges have spent the better part of the new millennium ramping up their investments in DEI work.

But today, at a moment when students have united to erect encampments that have organically achieved – even amid their internal disagreements – pluralistic communities that welcome people from myriad backgrounds, universities are not embracing them, but rather treating them as a threat. 

Instead of joining the encampment communities and trying to learn from their students about how to foster a culture of liberation, most university administrations have at best kept them at arm’s length, or worse, violently dismantled them. Thus, the administrations have aligned themselves with far-right interests, at the expense of the very cause of inclusion for which they’re supposedly fighting.

Rather than continuing to target students and tear down encampments, university administrations should go out and witness liberation in action. Perhaps then it could dawn on them that to centre DEI without centring liberation is a futile endeavour, resulting in DEI initiatives being viewed as performative by the very communities they claim to serve.

Liberation should not be complicated. It is most definitely possible on university campuses and around the world, if people believe in it rather than fearing it. The student encampments, at the very least, have taught us that.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Reprinted from the Middle East Eye with the author’s permission.

Here are my two cents. Americans generally know nothing to speak of about Islam. I mean, almost zero. But a majority of them know that they do not like the Islamic religion, at least in the post-Cold War period. Actually Islam and Muslims in general were quite popular with Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, when they were mainly fighting godless Communism and appreciated having allies. In all the Muslim world, only little South Yemen went Communist, whereas a lot of Christian-majority countries did. The Eisenhower administration hoped to build a Muslim bloc to oppose the Soviet Union and Ike funded better railway links with Mecca because he wanted to encourage Muslims to go on pilgrimage and be pious and reject dialectical materialism. That’s right, the US used to promote sharia law.

Nowadays a lot of Americans say that “Islam” is incompatible with American values. Personally, I think they say this because they like the idea of being the sole superpower and don’t approve of any group that is hard to dominate. There has been a lot of opposition to American dominance in Latin America, Africa, and Asia — even Europe — but somehow that flies under the radar. Muslims overthrowing the Shah in Iran, a close US ally, somehow really ticked them off. And of course the main guerrilla groups opposing the US in Iraq and Afghanistan were religiously-driven or at least -identified, though secular groups were more important in Iraq than was generally recognized.

This perception of Muslims as generally oppositional, however, doesn’t comport with reality. Muslim-majority countries account for one NATO ally pledged to defend the US (Turkey) and for 8 of the 18 formally designated major non-NATO allies of the US — Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Qatar, and Tunisia. Even without the designation, the US has close security ties to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia. Of the non-NATO allies only one, Argentina, is in Latin America. The Muslims are more tightly allied to the US than is the Western Hemisphere!

Americans like Muslims slightly better than they like Islam. Go figure.

In 2015, at the height of ISIL, the so-called ‘Islamic State’ group, which had taken over northern Iraq and eastern Syria and blew up Paris, only 48% of Americans said they were favorable toward Muslims. Actually that wasn’t bad given the circumstances, of nearly a decade and a half of the Bush “War on Terror” and invasions of lots of Muslim countries, the citizens of some of which fought back.

Possibly because Donald J. Trump was so mean to them, Muslims rose in the opinions of Americans after 2017. In 2021 and 2022 they reached a 78% favorability rating. That’s actually fantastic. It means most Americans really thought well of Muslims by then.

“Muslim Americans,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024.

But by February of this year, Muslims had lost 11 points and were down to 67% favorability. Although 80% of Muslims in the world are not Arabs, and the majority of Arabs are not religious fundamentalists, Hamas seems to have managed to cast a large shadow on the community. As for Islam, it had gone up to 57% favorability in 2021, but plummeted back down to 48% this year (i.e. back down to what it was in 2015 at the height of ISIL). Although, remember, most Americans couldn’t tell you for the life of them what Islam is.

Telhami notes that Muslims especially lost favorability with Democrats this year, and implies that President Joe Biden’s rhetoric is likely to blame. Biden has shown not the least sympathy for the plight of millions of Palestinian civilians and has often repeated false propaganda against them, to the point that the State Department’s dissent channel slammed him roundly as a major source of disinformation on the Gaza situation.

But it isn’t only Muslims. Many Americans at least perceived that there was “a lot” more prejudice this year against Jewish Americans (29%). Presumably this is because Jewish Americans are seen to be unfairly tarred with the brush of the far right, extremist Israeli government and its total war on Gaza civilians.

Some 22% thought there was “a lot” more prejudice against Muslim Americans in 2024. The perception of a substantial increase in prejudice toward other minorities, including Blacks and Hispanics, was much lower, in the range of 13%- 16%.

Paradoxically, although Americans had a high opinion of Muslims in 2022, they didn’t think Muslim Americans were of much account. Only a little over a fourth of Americans thought Muslims strengthen the fabric of US society. That’s terrible. And very unfair, since Muslim Americans produce physicians, engineers, entrepreneurs, inventors and others who demonstrably strengthen US society. When Trump needed a czar to head up the joint US government-Moderna moonshot to produce a COVID vaccine, he turned to Moncef Slaoui, a Moroccan-born Muslim, one of the world’s top immunologists.

On the other hand, I wonder if Americans didn’t object to the tenor of the question, since only 41% thought white people strengthen the fabric of US society. I suspect a lot of the 58% didn’t so much disrespect white contributions to the country as they just didn’t think an ethnic approach to the problem of the American fabric was very useful. Still, the 28% figure for Muslim Americans is substantially lower.

Most Americans in 2022 were all right with a Protestant, Catholic or Jewish president, with only about 11% or 12% opposed. On the other hand, many had qualms about a Mormon, Buddhist, Hindu or Agnostic one, with over 20% opposed in each case. But about a third really did not want an atheist or Muslim president (32% opposed, rising to over 50% among Republicans).

Ironically, they may well get a Hindu-ish president, since Kamala Harris seems to practice a syncretic mix of her mother’s Hinduism and her father’s Jamaican Christianity.

(The Conversation) – As someone who has researched Islamophobia in Britain for a quarter of a century, it is clear to me that the current violence on the streets of Britain is an example of it.

This was true from the first outbreak of violence, after a peaceful vigil for the three young girls who were fatally stabbed in an attack in Southport. A group of several hundred people began throwing bottles and bricks at police. They then directed their anger on the local mosque and those inside, with some even attempting to set fire to it.

The targeting of Muslims was initially put down to misinformation on social media claiming the perpetrator was a Muslim who had arrived in a small boat the year beforehand. Both of these claims have been refuted, yet Muslims and mosques continue to be targeted in the violence across the country, along with hotels known to be housing migrants.

Politicians have shied away from calling it Islamophobia, instead describing the violence as “far-right thuggery” and “anti-immigration protests”. Islamophobia and anti-immigration sentiment have been par for the course for the British far right since the turn of the century.

Beginning with the British National Party – a far-right political party that had unprecedented electoral success in local council elections in the early 2000s – a similar ideological trajectory can be traced through a number of far-right street movements that emerged between 2009 and 2018. These included the English Defence League (EDL) in around 2010, Britain First, Football Lads Alliance and Democratic Football Lads Alliance among others.

These groups have couched racist ideology in the notion of “defence”. Initially in providing a defence against a perceived threat from Muslim “extremists”, at times this has been used as code for all and every Muslim. More recently, far-right groups have mobilised to defend free speech and “our” women and girls from “grooming gangs”. Underlying all of this is a desire to defend “our” country, way of life and culture from threatening enemy others.

This is evident in the activities of the far-right group, Britain First. Claiming to provide “the frontline resistance to the Islamification of Britain” they conflate the threat they claim is posed by Muslims with the threat posed by “illegal immigration”. The group has taken to patrolling beaches near the English Channel with the intention of stopping “illegal” Muslims from entering the country.

Today, Muslims and immigrants, particularly asylum seekers from the Middle East, are two sides of the same problem for the British far right. But this conflation of the two groups has not occurred in a vacuum.

Much of the far-right rhetoric about Muslims and migrants has been replicated by at least some mainstream politicians. Just look at the similarities between the language used in the ongoing riots and the rhetoric used by politicians. Some are chanting “stop the boats” – Rishi Sunak’s own policy on irregular migration.

The vilification of Muslims and their communities has become normalised by both Labour and Conservative parties, as well as Ukip and Reform UK. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi spoke of Islamophobia having passed the “dinner table test”, where ordinary people would say things about Muslims in company with others that they would never say about other minority communities.

This is partly the legacy of the Brexit Leave campaign’s toxic rhetoric on popular views about immigration that continued right up to the recent general election.

Over the years, large sections of the public have become receptive to and accepting of Islamophobia (including far-right messages), and of the demonisation of migrants. Politicians of all stripes have enabled this by avoiding explicitly discussing Islamophobia.

The I-word

In his response to the unrest, Keir Starmer told Muslims: “I will take every step possible to keep you safe.” He continued: “Whatever the apparent motivation … we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or our Muslim communities.”

Surely, the “apparent motivation” is Islamophobia?

This has been pointed out by both MP Zarah Sultana and general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, Zara Mohammed. For them, the motivation was clear and unequivocal, and both wanted the prime minister to name it for what it is.

Starmer choosing not to use the “I-word” is far from surprising. As my research has repeatedly shown, few politicians are willing to do so. Acknowledging that Islamophobia exists would mean having to do something about it. And as we know, this has never happened.

Few politicians can be seen to truly care about Islamophobia. As a result, it is rendered unimportant by most politicians and the parties they represent. Despite some paying lip service to the matter, it always quickly disappears from the political agenda. Maybe this is what Starmer is hoping for.

Furthermore, mainstream political actors have been able to deploy Islamophobia for personal and political gain without fear of recourse or censure. There is no better illustration than Boris Johnson referring to Muslim women who wear the niqab looking like “letterboxes” or “bank robbers”. Not only did Johnson refuse to apologise but shortly after, he became prime minister. Another example is Lee Anderson, whose comments accusing London mayor Sadiq Khan of being controlled by Islamists were never called Islamophobic by the party.

The consequences of refusing to address (or even acknowledge) Islamophobia are now playing out in towns and cities across the country. The longer politicians pretend that Islamophobia doesn’t exist, the worse the problem will get, and the more permission the far right will feel they have to get away with violence.

Chris Allen, Associate Professor, School of Criminology, University of Leicester

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Zeteo Video: “The UK’s “far right, racist, islamophobic riots,” Mehdi Talks To British Muslim MP Zarah Sultanah”

The frightening scenes of far-right extremists clashing with police and even rioting in British towns and cities in recent days have many wondering how to stop the spread of the propaganda that encourages racism, violence and misogyny.

The tough truth is that in seeking to fact check misinformation and force social media companies to remove hateful content, we are doing it wrong. Another message will simply pop up in place of each that is removed. The people who plant propaganda are far more advanced in their methods than the people trying to stop them. They are not thinking about messages but about audience. Hate is clickbait. And social media algorithms put it on steroids.

The unrest started in Southport where a group who claimed to be “protesting” over the deaths of three young girls during a knife attack in the area attacked a mosque. They seemed to believe that the attack was perpetrated by a migrant (which was untrue). More than 50 police officers were injured when they responded to the emergency.

Misleading messages about the Southport attack were posted online and Reform MP Nigel Farage “questioned” whether we were being lied to about the Southport attacker’s identity (although he told the BBC that he had “merely expressed a sense of sadness and concern that is being felt by absolutely everybody I know”).

Our working definitions of propaganda are hopelessly outdated because they all focus on message. And message is unimportant because propagandists will say anything to generate clicks, income or power. They will post calls to “build a wall” and “stop the boats”. They will claim “those kids were murdered in the name of Islam”. Factual accuracy is not important, what matters is that those who wield online influence identify and target a powerbase.

If what they say is taken down, they will simply find a different way to say it to the people they are trying to reach. In the meantime, then they can claim to be censored victims of the establishment. They appeal to emotion rather than rationality, and while their messaging is equal parts ludicrous and disturbing to the rest of us, it wins an audience. Therefore, that audience – rather than the messaging – should be our focus.

‘Imagined communities’

The modern propagandist creates what political scientist Benedict Anderson described as “imagined communities”. He argued that states and nations (and mass media) are founded by successfully creating a community with its own foundation myths, symbols and history. This chimes with the work of propagandist theorist Jacques Ellul, who argued that myths were central and necessary to successful propaganda.

Some symbols are well known and largely shared among us all – spitfires, the British bobby, royalty. But others, like the “cockroach” immigrant, the loss of national agency, and the language of conspiracy theories, are foundational to a community that speaks only to itself. Worse still, those who don’t share their beliefs are naive and need to “do their own research”. Marianna Spring, the BBC disinformation and social media correspondent, found in her book Among the Trolls, algorithmic rabbit holes with their own imagined communities.

Such myths are also fundamental in the process of generating “agitation” propaganda. Traditionally, agitation propaganda is the casus belli summoned by states to send people to war. In the same way, the hatred of today’s racist bigot and the misogyny of the incel are both founded in “agitation” propaganda. Influencer Andrew Tate, for example, has made his name summoning an army of men to fight for his cause.

As Ellul would have it, “hate is generally its most profitable resource … Hatred is probably the most spontaneous and common sentiment, it consists of attributing ones misfortunes and sins to ‘another’… Propaganda of agitation succeeds each time it designates someone as the source of all misery, provided that he is not too powerful.”

Add to this mix social media bots and it brews a poison for our democratic public sphere.

Finding the lost

Fact checking is not useless, but it doesn’t resolve the central problem. Better to identify the silos, and work with their members. We could water down the messaging being sent out to the people causing unrest on the streets with other, better sources. We might even even block some of the networks that deliver the content.

This is better than playing fake news whack-a-mole. Once we have identified the silos of information, we can target the algorithms that create them, and those being targeted or isolated. We can then mediate and ameliorate the problem by reaching out to these groups, spending our energies introducing alternative views, new symbols and foundational myths, negating the effects of algorithm that led them to their silo.

Spring writes of people whose lives have been ruined, of charlatans who create clickbait, but most of all the pathos of those dragged down. Factchecking simply convinces the converted that those who don’t share those views have taken the blue pill of blissful ignorance, rather than the red pill of painful knowledge.

Malicious actors are more than prepared to “flood the zone with shit”, as Trump adviser Steve Bannon puts it. This makes clearing the misinformation impossible, but, by thinking about audience first, we can, maybe, find the lost, and lead them through the storm.

Richard Fern, Lecturer, media, Swansea University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

—

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Channel 4 News: “Rioters attack hotel housing asylum seekers amid far-right violence”

The little-known charity is backed by famous conservative donors, including the families behind Hobby Lobby and Uline. It’s spending millions to make a big political push for this election — but it may be violating the law.

By Andy Kroll, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented | –

( ProPublica; Co-published with Documented ) – A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.

These previously unreported plans are the work of a group named Ziklag, a little-known charity whose donors have included some of the wealthiest conservative Christian families in the nation, including the billionaire Uihlein family, who made a fortune in office supplies, the Greens, who run Hobby Lobby, and the Wallers, who own the Jockey apparel corporation. Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian legal group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the national pro-Trump group Turning Point USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy groups.

ProPublica and Documented obtained thousands of Ziklag’s members-only email newsletters, internal videos, strategy documents and fundraising pitches, none of which has been previously made public. They reveal the group’s 2024 plans and its long-term goal to underpin every major sphere of influence in American society with Christianity. In the Bible, the city of Ziklag was where David and his soldiers found refuge during their war with King Saul.

“We are in a spiritual battle and locked in a terrible conflict with the powers of darkness,” says a strategy document that lays out Ziklag’s 30-year vision to “redirect the trajectory of American culture toward Christ by bringing back Biblical structure, order and truth to our Nation.”

Ziklag’s 2024 agenda reads like the work of a political organization. It plans to pour money into mobilizing voters in Arizona who are “sympathetic to Republicans” in order to secure “10,640 additional unique votes” — almost the exact margin of President Joe Biden’s win there in 2020. The group also intends to use controversial AI software to enable mass challenges to the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in competitive states.

In a recording of a 2023 internal strategy discussion, a Ziklag official stressed that the objective was the same in other swing states. “The goal is to win,” the official said. “If 75,000 people wins the White House, then how do we get 150,000 people so we make sure we win?”

According to the Ziklag files, the group has divided its 2024 activities into three different operations targeting voters in battleground states: Checkmate, focused on funding so-called election integrity groups; Steeplechase, concentrated on using churches and pastors to get out the vote; and Watchtower, aimed at galvanizing voters around the issues of “parental rights” and opposition to transgender rights and policies supporting health care for trans people.

In a member briefing video, one of Ziklag’s spiritual advisers outlined a plan to “deliver swing states” by using an anti-transgender message to motivate conservative voters who are exhausted with Trump.

But Ziklag is not a political organization: It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity, the same legal designation as the United Way or Boys and Girls Club. Such organizations do not have to publicly disclose their funders, and donations are tax deductible. In exchange, they are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” according to the IRS.

ProPublica and Documented presented the findings of their investigation to six nonpartisan lawyers and legal experts. All expressed concern that Ziklag was testing or violating the law.

The reporting by ProPublica and Documented “casts serious doubt on this organization’s status as a 501(c)(3) organization,” said Roger Colinvaux, a professor at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law.

“I think it’s across the line without a question,” said Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a University of Notre Dame law professor.

Ziklag officials did not respond to a detailed list of questions. Martin Nussbaum, an attorney who said he was the group’s general counsel, said in a written response that “some of the statements in your email are correct. Others are not,” but he then did not respond to a request to specify what was erroneous. The group is seeking to “align” the culture “with Biblical values and the American constitution, and that they will serve the common good,” he wrote. Using the official tax name for Ziklag, he wrote that “USATransForm does not endorse candidates for public office.” He declined to comment on the group’s members.

There are no bright lines or magic words that the IRS might look for when it investigates a charitable organization for engaging in political intervention, said Mayer. Instead, the agency examines the facts and circumstances of a group’s activities and makes a conclusion about whether the group violated the law.

The biggest risk for charities that intervene in political campaigns, Mayer said, is loss of their tax-exempt status. Donors’ ability to deduct their donations can be a major sell, not to mention it can create “a halo effect” for the group, Mayer added.

“They may be able to get more money this way,” he said, adding, “It boils down to tax evasion at the end of the day.”

“Dominion Over the Seven Mountains”

Ziklag has largely escaped scrutiny until now. The group describes itself as a “private, confidential, invitation-only community of high-net-worth Christian families.”

According to internal documents, it boasts more than 125 members that include business executives, pastors, media leaders and other prominent conservative Christians. Potential new members, one document says, should have a “concern for culture” demonstrated by past donations to faith-based or political causes, as well as a net worth of $25 million or more. None of the donors responded to requests for comment.

Tax records show rapid growth in the group’s finances in recent years. Its annual revenue climbed from $1.3 million in 2018 to $6 million in 2019 and nearly $12 million in 2022, which is the latest filing available.

The group’s spending is not on the scale of major conservative funders such as Miriam Adelson or Barre Seid, the electronics magnate who gave $1.6 billion to a group led by conservative legal activist Leonard Leo. But its funding and strategy represent one of the clearest links yet between the Christian right and the “election integrity” movement fueled by Trump’s baseless claims about voting fraud. Even several million dollars funding mass challenges to voters in swing counties can make an impact, legal and election experts say.

Ziklag was the brainchild of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Ken Eldred. It emerged from a previous organization founded by Eldred called United In Purpose, which aimed to get more Christians active in the civic arena, according to Bill Dallas, the group’s former director. United In Purpose generated attention in June 2016 when it organized a major meeting between then-candidate Trump and hundreds of evangelical leaders.

After Trump was elected in 2016, Eldred had an idea, according to Dallas. “He says, ‘I want all the wealthy Christian people to come together,’” Dallas recalled in an interview. Eldred told Dallas that he wanted to create a donor network like the one created by Charles and David Koch but for Christians. He proposed naming it David’s Mighty Men, Dallas said. Female members balked. Dallas found the passage in Chronicles that references David’s soldiers and read that they met in the city of Ziklag, and so they chose the name Ziklag.

The group’s stature grew after Trump took office. Vice President Mike Pence appeared at a Ziklag event, as did former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Sen. Ted Cruz, then-Rep. Mark Meadows and other members of Congress. In its private newsletter, Ziklag claims that a coalition of groups it assembled played “a hugely significant role in the selection, hearings and confirmation process” of Amy Coney Barrett for a Supreme Court seat in late 2020.

Confidential donor networks regularly invest hundreds of millions of dollars into political and charitable groups, from the liberal Democracy Alliance to the Koch-affiliated Stand Together organization on the right. But unlike Ziklag, neither of those organizations is legally set up as a true charity.

Ziklag appears to be the first coordinated effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overtly Christian nationalist agenda, according to historians, legal experts and other people familiar with the group. “It shows that this idea isn’t being dismissed as fringe in the way that it might have been in the past,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal historian and University of California, Davis law professor.

The Christian nationalism movement has a variety of aims and tenets, according to the Public Religion Research Institute: that the U.S. government “should declare America a Christian nation”; that American laws “should be based on Christian values”; that the U.S. will cease to exist as a nation if it “moves away from our Christian foundations”; that being Christian is essential to being American; and that God has “called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.”

One theology promoted by Christian nationalist leaders is the Seven Mountain Mandate. Each mountain represents a major industry or a sphere of public life: arts and media, business, church, education, family, government, and science and technology. Ziklag’s goal, the documents say, is to “take dominion over the Seven Mountains,” funding Christian projects or installing devout Christians in leadership positions to reshape each mountain in a godly way.

To address their concerns about education, Ziklag’s leaders and allies have focused on the public-school system. In a 2021 Ziklag meeting, Ziklag’s education mountain chair, Peter Bohlinger, said that Ziklag’s goal “is to take down the education system as we know it today.” The producers of the film “Sound of Freedom,” featuring Jim Caviezel as an anti-sex-trafficking activist, screened an early cut of the film at a Ziklag conference and asked for funds, according to Dallas.

The Seven Mountains theology signals a break from Christian fundamentalists such as Jerry Falwell Sr. and Pat Robertson. In the 1980s and ’90s, Falwell’s Moral Majority focused on working within the democratic process to mobilize evangelical voters and elect politicians with a Christian worldview.

The Seven Mountains theology embraces a different, less democratic approach to gaining power. “If the Moral Majority is about galvanizing the voters, the Seven Mountains is a revolutionary model: You need to conquer these mountains and let change flow down from the top,” said Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies and an expert on Christian nationalism. “It’s an outlined program for Christian supremacy.”

“The Amorphous, Tumultuous Wild West”

The Christian right has had compelling spokespeople and fierce commitment to its causes, whether they were ending abortion rights, allowing prayer in schools or displaying the Ten Commandments outside of public buildings. What the movement has often lacked, its leaders argue, is sufficient funding.

“If you look at the right, especially the Christian right, there were always complaints about money,” said legal historian Ziegler. “There’s a perceived gap of ‘We aren’t getting the support from big-name, big-dollar donors that we deserve and want and need.’”

That’s where Ziklag comes in.

Speaking late last year to an invitation-only gathering of Ziklaggers, as members are known, Charlie Kirk, who leads the pro-Trump Turning Point USA organization, named left-leaning philanthropists who were, in his view, funding the destruction of the nation: MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; billionaire investor and liberal philanthropist George Soros; and the two founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

“Why are secular people giving more generously than Christians?” Kirk asked, according to a recording of his remarks. “It would be a tragedy,” he added, “if people who hate life, hate our country, hate beauty and hate God wanted it more than us.”

“Ziklag is the place,” Kirk told the donors. “Ziklag is the counter.”

Similarly, Pence, in a 2021 appearance at a private Ziklag event, praised the group for its role in “changing lives, and it’s advanced the cause, it’s advanced the kingdom.”

A driving force behind Ziklag’s efforts is Lance Wallnau, a prominent Christian evangelist and influencer based in Texas who is described by Ziklag as a “Seven Mountains visionary & advisor.” The fiery preacher is one of the most influential figures on the Christian right, experts say, a bridge between Christian nationalism and Trump. He was one of the earliest evangelical leaders to endorse Trump in 2015 and later published a book titled “God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling.” More than 1 million people follow him on Facebook. He doesn’t try to hide his views: “Yes, I am a Christian nationalist,” he said during one of his livestreams in 2021. (Wallnau did not respond to requests for comment.)

Wallnau has remained a Trump ally. He called Trump’s time in office a “spiritual warfare presidency” and popularized the idea that Trump was a “modern-day Cyrus,” referring to the Persian king who defeated the Babylonians and allowed the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem. Wallnau has visited with Trump at the White House and Trump Tower; last November, he livestreamed from a black-tie gala at Mar-a-Lago where Trump spoke.

Wallnau did not come up with the notion that Christians should try to take control of key areas of American society. But he improved on the idea by introducing the concept of the seven mountains and urged Christians to set about conquering them. The concept caught on, said Taylor, because it empowered Christians with a sense of purpose in every sphere of life.

As a preacher in the independent charismatic tradition, a fast-growing offshoot of Pentecostalism that is unaffiliated with any major denomination, Wallnau and his acolytes believe that God speaks to and through modern-day apostles and prophets — a version of Christianity that Taylor, in his forthcoming book “The Violent Take It By Force,” describes as “the amorphous, tumultuous Wild West of the modern church.” Wallnau and his ideas lingered at the fringes of American Christianity for years, until the boost from the Trump presidency.

The Ziklag files detail not only what Christians should do to conquer all seven mountains, but also what their goals will be once they’ve taken the summit. For the government mountain, one key document says that “the biblical role of government is to promote good and punish evil” and that “the word of God and prayer play a significant role in policy decisions.”

For the arts and entertainment mountain, goals include that 80% of the movies produced be rated G or PG “with a moral story,” and that many people who work in the industry “operate under a biblical/moral worldview.” The education section says that homeschooling should be a “fundamental right” and the government “must not favor one form of education over another.”

Other internal Ziklag documents voice strong opposition to same-sex marriage and transgender rights. One reads: “transgender acceptance = Final sign before imminent collapse.”

Heading into the 2024 election year, Ziklag executive director Drew Hiss warned members in an internal video that “looming above and beyond those seven mountains is this evil force that’s been manifesting itself.” He described it as “a controlling, evil, diabolical presence, really, with tyranny in mind.” That presence was concentrated in the government mountain, he said. If Ziklaggers wanted to save their country from “the powers of darkness,” they needed to focus their energies on that government mountain or else none of their work in any other area would succeed.

“Operation Checkmate”

In the fall of 2023, Wallnau sat in a gray armchair in his TV studio. A large TV screen behind him flashed a single word: “ZIKLAG.”

“You almost hate to put it out this clearly,” he said as he detailed Ziklag’s electoral strategy, “because if somebody else gets ahold of this, they’ll freak out.”

He was joined on set by Hiss, who had just become the group’s new day-to-day leader. The two men were there to record a special message to Ziklag members that laid out the group’s ambitious plans for the upcoming election year.

The forces arrayed against Christians were many, according to the confidential video. They were locked in a “spiritual battle,” Hiss said, against Democrats who were a “radical left Marxist force.” Biden, Wallnau said, was a senile old man and “an empty suit with an agenda that’s written and managed by somebody else.”

In the files, Ziklag says it plans to give out nearly $12 million to a constellation of groups working on the ground to shift the 2024 electorate in favor of Trump and other Republicans.

A prominent conservative getting money from Ziklag is Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer and Trump ally who joined the January 2021 phone call when then-President Trump asked Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to flip Georgia in Trump’s favor.

Mitchell now leads a network of “election integrity” coalitions in swing states that have spent the last three years advocating for changes to voting rules and how elections are run. According to one internal newsletter, Ziklag was an early funder of Mitchell’s post-2020 “election integrity” activism, which voting-rights experts have criticized for stoking unfounded fears about voter fraud and seeking to unfairly remove people from voting rolls. In 2022, Ziklag donated $600,000 to the Conservative Partnership Institute, which in turn funds Mitchell’s election-integrity work. Internal Ziklag documents show that it provided funding to enable Mitchell to set up election integrity infrastructure in Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Now Mitchell is promoting a tool called EagleAI, which has claimed to use artificial intelligence to automate and speed up the process of challenging ineligible voters. EagleAI is already being used to mount mass challenges to the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in competitive states, and, with Ziklag’s help, the group plans to ramp up those efforts.

According to an internal video, Ziklag plans to invest $800,000 in “EagleAI’s clean the rolls project,” which would be one of the largest known donations to the group.

Ziklag lists two key objectives for Operation Checkmate: “Secure 10,640 additional unique votes in Arizona (mirroring the 2020 margin of 10,447 votes), and remove up to one million ineligible registrations and around 280,000 ineligible voters in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin.”

In a recording of an internal Zoom call, Ziklag’s Mark Bourgeois stressed the electoral value of targeting Arizona. “I care about Maricopa County,” Bourgeois said at one point, referring to Arizona’s largest county, which Biden won four years ago. “That’s how we win.”

For Operation Watchtower, Wallnau explained in a members-only video that transgender policy was a “wedge issue” that could be decisive in turning out voters tired of hearing about Trump.

The left had won the battle over the “homosexual issue,” Wallnau said. “But on transgenderism, there’s a problem and they know it.” He continued: “They’re gonna wanna talk about Trump, Trump, Trump. … Meanwhile, if we talk about ‘It’s not about Trump. It’s about parents and their children, and the state is a threat,’” that could be the “target on the forehead of Goliath.”

The Ziklag files describe tactics the group plans to use around parental rights — policies that make it easier for parents to control what’s taught in public schools — to turn out conservative voters. In a fundraising video, the group says it plans to underwrite a “messaging and data lab” focused on parental rights that will supply “winning messaging to all our partner groups to create unified focus among all on the right.” The goal, the video says, is to make parental rights “the difference-maker in the 2024 election.”

According to Wallnau, Ziklag also plans to fund ballot initiatives in seven key states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Montana, Nevada and Ohio — that take aim at the transgender community by seeking to ban “genital mutilation.” The seven states targeted are either presidential battlegrounds or have competitive U.S. Senate races. None of the initiatives is on a state ballot yet.

“People that are lethargic about the election or, worse yet, they’re gonna be all Trump-traumatized with the news cycle — this issue will get people to come out and vote,” Wallnau said. “That ballot initiative can deliver swing states.”

The last prong of Ziklag’s 2024 strategy is Operation Steeplechase, which urges conservative pastors to mobilize their congregants to vote in this year’s election. This project will work in coordination with several prominent conservative groups that support former president Trump’s reelection, such as Turning Point USA’s faith-based group, the Faith and Freedom Coalition run by conservative operative Ralph Reed and the America First Policy Institute, one of several groups closely allied with Trump.

Ziklag says in a 2023 internal video that it and its allies will “coordinate extensive pastor and church outreach through pastor summits, church-focused messaging and events and the creation of pastor resources.” As preacher and activist John Amanchukwu said at a Ziklag event, “We need a church that’s willing to do anything and everything to get to the point where we reclaim that which was stolen from us.”

Six tax experts reviewed the election-related strategy discussions and tactics reported in this story. All of them said the activities tested or ran afoul of the law governing 501(c)(3) charities. The IRS and the Texas attorney general, which would oversee the Southlake, Texas, charity, did not respond to questions.

While not all of its political efforts appeared to be clear-cut violations, the experts said, others may be: The stated plan to mobilize voters “sympathetic to Republicans,” Ziklag officials openly discussing the goal to win the election, and Wallnau’s call to fund ballot initiatives that would “deliver swing states” while at the same time voicing explicit criticism of Biden all raised red flags, the experts said.

“I am troubled about a tax-exempt charitable organization that’s set up and its main operation seems to be to get people to win office,” said Phil Hackney, a professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on tax-exempt organizations.

“They’re planning an election effort,” said Marcus Owens, a tax lawyer at Loeb and Loeb and a former director of the IRS’ exempt organizations division. “That’s not a 501(c)(3) activity.”

Via ProPublica

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

“Democracy Now! Video – “Ziklag Exposed: Secretive Christian Nationalist Network Tries to Purge Voters in Battleground States”

( Commondreams.org ) – A spike in “relentless” Islamophobia across the United States that began in October with Israel’s U.S.-backed attack on the Gaza Strip continued through the first half of this year, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group said Tuesday.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released data showing the sustained surge in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate from January to June 2024, with 4,951 documented complaints, a 69% increase over the same period in 2023.

That came after CAIR received 3,578 complaints from last October through December, a 178% increase from a similar three-month period the previous year, as Common Dreamsreported when the data was published in January.

The largest share of 2024 complaints related to immigration and asylum cases (19%), which is in line with 2023. That was followed by employment discrimination (14%), education discrimination (10%), and hate crimes and incidents (8%).

So far this year, May has had the largest number of education discrimination complaints—which CAIR tied to “university administrations cracking down on anti-genocide student protestors,” beginning with Columbia University in April.

“Too many places of higher education, which have historically permitted Islamophobic speakers to poison their campus in the name of academic freedom, apparently find anti-genocide speech intolerable,” said CAIR research and advocacy director Corey Saylor in a statement. “Since last fall university administrators have been a primary perpetrator of anti-Muslim racism.”

“Our data shows that as student protests dominated media coverage of the movement opposing the Gaza genocide, employers also continued punishing their employees for their viewpoints,” Saylor added. “We are also seeing federal agencies like Customs and Border Protection and the FBI interpreting being Muslim or anti-genocide as suspicious activity.”

CAIR’s data release followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States last week to address Congress—which was boycotted by dozens of lawmakers—and meet privately with President Joe Biden; Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the November election; and former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate.

Enabled by weapons and diplomatic support from Biden and Congress, Netanyahu launched Israel’s ongoing assault of Gaza in retaliation for the deadly Hamas-led October 7 attack. As of Tuesday, Israeli forces have killed at least 39,400 Palestinians and wounded another 90,996, according to local officials—though experts anticipate the final death toll will be far higher.

South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, which ruled on July 19 that the decadeslong Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is illegal and must end. United Nations human rights experts said Tuesday that Israel must comply with the ruling, though Netanyahu’s government has shown no signs that it plans to do so.

CAIR has labeled the recent rise in hate across the United States “the Biden-backed Gaza genocide Islamophobia wave.”

“Islamophobia in the U.S. comes in cycles, with the last two large waves generated by Donald Trump’s 2015 announcement and 2017 implementation of his Muslim ban,” the group explained Tuesday. “As we have noted previously, this wave exceeds the combined totals of incoming incidents received during those two cycles.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).