One insidious way to torture the detainees at Guantanamo was to blast music at them at all hours. The mixtape, which included everything from Metallica to the Meow Mix jingle, was intended to disorient the captives and impress upon them the futility of resistance. It worked: this soundtrack from hell did indeed break several inmates.

For four years, Americans had to deal with a similar sonic blast, namely the “music” of Donald Trump. His voice was everywhere: on TV and radio, screaming from the headlines of newspapers, pumped out nonstop on social media. MAGAmen and women danced to the repetitive beat of his lies and distortions. Everyone else experienced the nonstop assault of Trump’s instantly recognizable accent and intonations as nails on a blackboard. After the 2016 election, psychologists observed a significant uptick in the fears Americans had about the future. One clinician even dubbed the phenomenon “Trump anxiety disorder.”

The volume of Trump’s assault on the senses has decreased considerably since January. Obviously, he no longer has the bully pulpit of the Oval Office to broadcast his views. The mainstream media no longer covers his every utterance.

Most importantly, the major social media platforms have banned him. In the wake of the January 6 insurrection, Twitter suspended Trump permanently under its Glorification of Violence policy. Facebook made the same decision, though its oversight board is now revisiting the former president’s deplatforming.

It’s not only Trump. The Proud Boys, QAnon, the militia movements: the social media footprint of the far right has decreased a great deal in 2021, with a parallel decline in the amount of misinformation available on the Web.

And it’s not just a problem of misinformation and hate speech. According to a new CSIS report on domestic terrorism, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots and 91 fatalities since 2015, with the number of incidents rising in 2020 to a height unseen in a quarter of a century. A large number of the perpetrators are loners who have formed their beliefs from social media. As one counterterrorism official put it, “Social media has afforded absolutely everything that’s bad out there in the world the ability to come inside your home.”

So, why did the tech giants provide Trump, his extremist followers, and their global counterparts unlimited access to a growing audience over those four long years?

Facebook Helps Trump

In a new report from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), Heidi Beirich and Wendy Via write, “For years, Trump violated the community standards of several platforms with relative impunity. Tech leaders had made the affirmative decision to allow exceptions for the politically powerful, usually with the excuse of ‘newsworthiness’ or under the guise of ‘political commentary’ that the public supposedly needed to see.”

Even before Trump became president, Facebook was cutting him a break. In 2015, he was using the social media platform to promote a Muslim travel ban, which generated considerable controversy, particularly within Facebook itself. The Washington Post reports:

Outrage over the video led to a companywide town hall, in which employees decried the video as hate speech, in violation of the company’s policies. And in meetings about the issue, senior leaders and policy experts overwhelmingly said they felt that the video was hate speech, according to three former employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg expressed in meetings that he was personally disgusted by it and wanted it removed, the people said.

But the company’s most prominent Republican, Vice President of Global Policy Joel Kaplan, persuaded Zuckerberg to change his position. In spring 2016, when Zuckerberg wanted to condemn Trump’s plan to build a wall on the border with Mexico, he was again persuaded to step back for fear of seeming too partisan.

Facebook went on to play a critical role in getting Trump elected. It wasn’t simply the Russian campaign to create fake accounts, fake messaging, and even fake events using Facebook, or the theft of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica. More important was the role played by Facebook staff in helping Trump’s digital outreach team maximize its use of social media. The Trump campaign spent $70 million on Facebook ads and raised much of its $250 million in online fundraising through Facebook as well.

Trump established a new paradigm through brute force and money. As he turned himself into clickbait, the social media giants applied the same “exceptionalism” to other rancid politicians. More ominously, the protection accorded politicians extended to extremists. According to an account of a discussion at a Twitter staff meeting, one employee explained that “on a technical level, content from Republican politicians could get swept up by algorithms aggressively removing white supremacist material. Banning politicians wouldn’t be accepted by society as a trade-off for flagging all of the white supremacist propaganda.”

Of course, in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, social media organizations decided that society could indeed accept the banning of politicians, at least when it came to some politicians in the United States.

The Real Fake News

In the Philippines, an extraordinary 97 percent of the population has accounts with Facebook, up from 40 percent in 2018 (by comparison, about 67 percent of Americans have Facebook accounts). Increasingly, Filipinos get their news from social media. That’s bad news for the mainstream media in the Philippines. And that’s particularly bad news for journalists like Maria Ressa, who runs an on-line news site called Rappler.

At a press conference for the GPAHE report, Maria Ressa described how the government of Rodrigo Duterte, with an assist from Facebook, has made her life a living hell. Like Trump, Duterte came to power on a populist platform spread through Facebook. Because of her critical reporting on government affairs, Ressa felt the ire of the Duterte fan club, which generated half a million hate posts that, according to one study, consisted of 60 percent attacks on her credibility and 40 percent sexist and misogynist slurs. This onslaught created a bandwagon effect that equated journalists like her with criminals.

This noxious equation on social media turned into a real case when the Philippine authorities arrested Ressa and convicted her of the dubious charge of “cyberlibel.” She faces a sentence of as much as 100 years in prison.

“Our dystopian present is your dystopian future,” she observed. What happened in the Philippines in that first year of Duterte became the reality in the United States under Trump. It was the same life cycle of hate in which misinformation is introduced in social media, then imported into the mainstream media, and supported from the top down by opportunistic politicians.

The Philippines faces another presidential election next year, and Duterte is barred from running again by term limits. Duterte’s daughter, who is currently the mayor of Davao City just like her father had been, tops the early polls, though she hasn’t thrown her hat in the ring and her father has declared that women shouldn’t run for president. This time around, however, Facebook disrupted the misinformation campaign tied to the Dutertes when it took down fake accounts coming from China that supported the daughter’s potential bid for the presidency.

President Duterte was furious. “Facebook, listen to me,” he said. “We allow you to operate here hoping that you could help us. Now, if government cannot espouse or advocate something which is for the good of the people, then what is your purpose here in my country? What would be the point of allowing you to continue if you can’t help us?”

Duterte had been led to believe, based on his previous experience, that Facebook was his lapdog. Other authoritarian regimes had come to expect the same treatment.

In India, according to the GPAHE report, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, the BJP,

was Facebook India’s biggest advertising spender in 2020. Ties between the company and the Indian government run even deeper, as the company has multiple commercial ties, including partnerships with the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Ministry of Women and the Board of Education. Both CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have met personally with Modi, who is the most popular world leader on Facebook. Before Modi became prime minister, Zuckerberg even introduced his parents to him.

Facebook has also cozied up to the right-wing government in Poland, helped get Jair Bolsonaro elected in Brazil, and served as a vehicle for the Islamophobic content that contributed to the rise of the far right in the Netherlands.

But the decision to ban Trump has set in motion a backlash. In Poland, for instance, the Law and Justice Party has proposed a law to fine Facebook and others for removing content if it doesn’t break Polish law, and a journalist has attempted to establish a pro-government alternative to Facebook called Albicla.

Back in the USA

Similarly, in the United States, the far right has suddenly become a big booster of free speech now that social media platforms have begun to deplatform high-profile users like Trump and take down posts for their questionable veracity and hate content. In the second quarter of 2020 alone, Facebook removed 22.5 million posts.

Facebook has tried to get ahead of this story by establishing an oversight board that includes members like Jamal Greene (a law professor at Columbia University), Julie Owono (executive director, Internet Sans Frontiere) and Nighat Dad (founder of the Digital Rights Foundation). Now Facebook users can also petition the board to remove content.

With Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others now removing a lot of extremist content, the far right has migrated to other platforms, such as Gab, Telegram, and MeWe. They continue to spread conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine misinformation, and pro-Trump propaganda on these alternative platforms. Meanwhile, the MAGA crowd awaits the second coming of Trump in the form of a new social media platform that he plans to launch in a couple months to remobilize his followers.

Even without such an alternative alt-right platform—Trumpbook? TrumpSpace? Trumper?— the life cycle of hate is still alive and well in the United States. Consider the “great replacement theory,” according to which immigrants and denizens of the non-white world are determined to “replace” white populations in Europe, America, and elsewhere. Since its inception in France in 2010, this extremist conspiracy theory has spread far and wide on social media. It has been picked up by white nationalists and mass shooters. Now, in the second stage of the life cycle, it has landed in the mainstream media thanks to right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson, who recently opined, “The Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of the voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.”

Pressure is mounting on Fox to fire Carlson, though the network is resisting. Carlson and his supporters decry the campaign as yet another example of “cancel culture.” They insist on their First Amendment right to express unpopular opinions. But a privately owned media company is under no obligation to air all views, and the definition of acceptability is constantly evolving.

Also, a deplatformed Carlson would still be able to air his crank views on the street corner or in emails to his followers. No doubt when Trumpbook debuts at some point in the future, Carlson’s biggest fan will also give him a digital megaphone to spread lies and hate all around the world. These talking heads will continue talking no matter what. The challenge is to progressively shrink the size of their global platform.

Via Foreign Policy in Focus

—-

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

AP: Reporters without Borders sues Facebook for dissemination of Hate Speech

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, made a decision on July 6 regarding international students in the U.S. that will affect far more than just the roughly 870,000 international students themselves.

Based on what I know about the power and influence of higher education in the U.S., this decision could increase the tuition American students pay, cost thousands of jobs throughout the nation and erode America’s stature in the world.

Under this new rule, international students may stay in the country only if they attend a college or university offering in-person classes this fall. Otherwise, they won’t be able to get visas, enter the country or stay here if they plan to attend one of the many schools that are teaching students entirely online.

In effect, thousands of students from other countries who attend schools that do not plan any in-person instruction this fall may have to immediately transfer to another school or leave the country. Otherwise, they could face deportation.

Against the backdrop of what top U.S. public health officials describe as an out-of-control virus, this new immigration rule puts U.S. colleges in a jam. Schools must choose between bringing students together on campus to comply with the immigration restrictions, or adhere to public health precautions related to physical distancing.

It may be hard to do both if the online option is off the table when it comes to international students. Which means U.S. colleges and universities could take a significant financial hit in the form of lost tuition revenue beyond what they were anticipating as a result of COVID-19.

Colleges must scramble

As of July 6, more than 1,000 colleges and universities have already released plans for fall instruction. Of those, 60% plan currently plan to offer in-person classes, 24% plan to offer hybrid and 9% plan to offer courses online. The remaining colleges are still undecided.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]

Now, some institutions will have to scramble to develop alternatives that can enable international students to remain enrolled without breaking the new rule. Schools must report how they plan to proceed by Aug. 1, based on the ICE announcement.

Far-reaching impact

The impact of this rule is not just limited to the hundreds of thousands of international students enrolled at U.S. colleges, who represent 4.39% of the 20 million people who currently attend U.S. colleges and universities. It also affects their institutions, their faculty and the local communities as well.

Consider that colleges and universities, which are the largest employers in 1 in 5 states, are already reeling from heavy financial losses associated with the pandemic.

While many schools have had to slash budgets due to refunds issued to students in the spring of 2020, disruptions to research, canceled athletic events and cuts to state funding, others are still waiting to see whether or not they will meet their enrollment targets for fall.

Still, more than 200 colleges and universities have already announced layoffs, furloughs or contract nonrenewals.

At a time when the U.S. is trying to overcome record unemployment and manage its biggest public health crisis in a century, international students seem to be caught in the middle of a partisan divide on reopening the country.

The new guidelines could place many colleges and universities in an impossible position: Increase the number of in-person classes and risk that COVID-19 will spread further.

What they bring to the table

Given how much international students contribute to the economy, you might assume ICE would find a way to keep them in the U.S.

The students affected by the new rule are the same people who help support about 460,000 American jobs.

The higher tuition and fees they pay helps keep tuition lower for American students. But their contributions transcend economics.

Their academic talents help advance scientific discoveries, which are more critical than ever given the nation’s ongoing battle against COVID-19. The fallout will be severe should these students choose to study in other countries instead. Australia and New Zealand, for example, have recently made their policies more welcoming.

Giving ground to other nations

Booting international students would surely reduce America’s influence in the world as well.

According to the State Department, the alumni of educational and cultural exchange programs include more than 75 Nobel Laureates and nearly 450 current and former heads of state and government. Having established personal ties, international students often return home as unofficial ambassadors for the U.S.

International alumni are more likely to look to the U.S. for ideas and trade agreements and to otherwise exert influence abroad that benefits U.S. interests.

While the share of international students studying in the U.S. has steadily declined – from 28% of the world’s 2.1 million international students in 2001 to 21% of the world’s 5.3 million international students in 2019 – other countries have made significant gains in attracting global talent due to national strategies.

Most notably, China now hosts nearly 1 in 10 students who study abroad globally, including more students from Africa than the U.K. and U.S. combined. One reason for China’s rise as a study destination is its leaders’ realization that it is lagging behind the U.S. in terms of soft power with only a few world leaders having graduated from Chinese institutions.

In my view, ICE’s new guidance is only the latest step in a steady retreat from global engagement that clears the path for other nations to attract more of the students that might otherwise study in the United States.

David L. Di Maria, Associate Vice Provost for International Education, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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

—–

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

CNBC: “How new immigration rules for foreign students could impact college finances”

Now Donald Trump has finally backed out of the Iranian nuclear deal, the rest of the world is trying to understand the thinking that went into his decision. High up the list of factors is a longstanding American unease about Iran in general. But while most Americans don’t like the Islamic Republic of Iran, some dislike it much more virulently than others. Why?

The broad American antipathy towards the Iranian government can be traced back to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and in particular to the Iranian hostage crisis, which saw 52 American citizens held hostage in Tehran for months on end. That event, described by one scholar as “one of the most devastating non-war related events to have ever occurred between two nations”, baffled and traumatised the American people in equal measure.

The sight of US diplomats held hostage while baying crowds chanted “death to America” were incomprehensible to most Americans. Few were aware of their country’s past involvement in the 1953 coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh, or of the oppression meted out by the Shah whom the US supported instead. Most simply assumed that the American presence in Iran was fundamentally benevolent. Accordingly, they looked to explain the sudden explosion of hatred by looking at those who expressed it, not by reflecting on the legacy of American foreign policy.

That recourse was made easier by the nature of those who damned the US. As far as the average American was concerned, the Muslim clerics who led the revolution were about as alien as could be. As such, they were easily reduced to a crude caricature of religious fanatics who hated America merely because they were in thrall to a crazed and bigoted ideology.

Although nearly 40 years have passed since the hostage crisis, the American image of Iran as a country of Muslim fanatics who hate the US for no good reason has proved remarkably resilient, and Iran still regularly features at the very bottom of the list of America’s favourite foreign countries most disliked by Americans. That said, not all Americans dislike the Islamic Republic equally.

It seems right-wing Americans are more disgusted at Iran than liberal ones. In one 2016 poll, a mere 18% of Democrats held a favourable view of Iran but among Republicans the number fell to 4%. The explanation for this lies not in the nature of Iran (the same split appears if the “other” in question is Cuba or North Korea) but in the politics of the American right and how it views the world.

Fear and loathing

Many on the conservative wing of American politics tend to see the world in stark Manichean terms of good versus evil. To paraphrase George W. Bush, you are either with them or you are against them, and if you’re against them, no compromise is possible.

In a world divided into good guys and bad guys, any kind of accommodation with the bad guys amounts to an unacceptable surrender. The notion that the US might choose to tolerate the existence of a hostile regime because the alternative would be far worse is fundamentally alien to this mindset.

Another reason why conservatives are less willing to live with Iran than liberals is that they are simply more scared of it. Extensive psychological research has demonstrated that American conservatives consider the world more dangerous than liberals do. Various similarly fearful and suspicious ideological and cognitive biases appear to shape American conservatives’ views on policy – their opposition to gun control, for example, may be powerfully shaped by the fact that they have a higher expectation of needing to defend themselves from crime than liberals do.

The same holds true for the American right’s hostility to Iran, and to the 2015 nuclear agreement. It’s clear that many on the right are simply more intensely fearful of the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran than those who do not share their worldview.

Israel first

There’s another factor besides that’s helped turn the American right against Iran since the revolution: the rise of politically engaged evangelical Christians.

Evangelicals have been a pillar of the Republican electoral coalition since the rise of Ronald Reagan, and as the 2016 election proved, they still are. Their influence explains a lot about the way American conservatism has changed over the decades – not just its general rightward shift, but specifically its increasingly unconditional support for Israel.

Since they fundamentally believe that God gave the land of Israel to the Jews, most Christian evangelicals take an uncompromisingly “pro-Israeli” stance. That stance has in turn become the default position of the Republican party. The upshot is that the Israeli government’s profound and growing hostility towards Iran, which it sees as the primary threat to its security, has been mirrored on the American right in general.

Taken together, this heady mix of historical grievance and deeply held ideology explains why American conservatives’ hatred of the Islamic Republic is quite so vitriolic. And so long as the Republican party’s base subscribes to a fearful, black and white worldview, it will never revise its opinion of what it still considers the US’s most dangerous enemy.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Cover Image: An American protester makes his feelings plain during the Iranian hostage crisis, 1979. From the US News & World Report archives at the Library of Congress.

——

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Vox: “Trump quits Iran nuclear deal, undoing years of diplomacy”

Understand this: I’m an American veteran. I’m also a Muslim-American in a country in which, in these years, that hasn’t exactly been the happiest category to fall into. Now, let me tell you a little story.

Recently, I had an ominous dream. It was noon on a grey, cold January 20th, 2020, and Donald Trump was being sworn in for his second term as president. Massive inaugural crowds cheered him exuberantly as a gentle snow fell upon a sea of MAGA red-hats and TRUMP banners waving in front of the Capitol.

In my dream, however, the Capitol wasn’t quite the same as I remembered it from my days stationed there as a young Navy sailor. It seemed almost war-torn as clouds of dark smoke billowed up on the horizon and the sound of gunfire could be heard somewhere in the distance. In my dream — don’t ask me how — I could also hear the terror-filled voices of people screaming or crying out for help as ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents, clad in black uniforms, stormed local Washington homes and businesses, arresting people and loading them onto large unmarked cargo trucks.

Meanwhile, those inaugural crowds — I have no idea if they were the largest in the history of dreams — were flanked by military Humvees as heavily armed soldiers in unfamiliar camouflage uniforms stood behind the president while he delivered his second inaugural address. I could even hear his words eerily reverberating through the Capitol. “The enemy,” he exclaimed, “has infiltrated our great nation because of weak immigration laws allowed by treasonous politicians!”

At that very moment, he told the exuberant crowd, he was already singlehandedly purging “those terrorists and their enablers from our ranks.” The MAGA banners waved ever more frantically and the crowd roared as he declared, “Law and order are now being restored to our great nation once again!”

I awoke in a cold sweat. Unlike the sort of nightmare I’d normally shake off as a fantasy of slumber, the result perhaps of that late night dose of Ben and Jerry’s I had meant to resist, this one stuck with me and, I’m sorry to say, recurred.

American Fear-scapes

Worse yet, these days I no longer have to drop into some deep, unnerving dream state to experience it. Though few of us are likely to admit it, some version of that dream of mine is, in fact, the secret daily nightmare of millions of my fellow Muslim-Americans. In a moment, when immigrants in this country live in a fear-scape all their own, believe me, so do we. In our living nightmare, an administration that can seem not just ineffective but hapless beyond imagining, plagued by scandal, and stocked with staff members heading for the exits (or being escortedoff White House grounds) might nonetheless transform itself into something even more deeply threatening to Americans like us. It might sooner or later consolidate power and, eager to distract the public from its actual plutocratic and other grim policies, turn on us “bigly.” Without dropping into another dream state, I can easily enough imagine how, with the tacit endorsement of Trump’s base, that administration might prepare itself to use a future devastating terror attack, the next Orlando or San Bernardino, to skewer American Muslims or the immigrant community and so pave the way for a true living nightmare.

Buy Alfred W. McCoy’s “In the Shadows of the American Century”

Such a crisis could take many forms, but imagine, for instance, a “dirty bomb” attack (the use of conventional explosives to spread radioactive nuclear waste materials across a wide area of some urban neighborhood). Just such an attack has certainly been a focus of concern in the U.S. intelligence community for years now. In fact, in 1999, while on active duty as a new member of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the first interagency briefing I attended at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, focused on that very issue.

Should that happen or anything like it, it’s easy enough to imagine how the Trump administration might use it to enhance its own power at our expense. With the public cowering in fear, martial law might be declared. Meanwhile, a Congress that, in the face of the imperial presidency, has already abdicatedits constitutional duty to declare war, might grant Donald Trump far greater authority than he already possesses, thanks to the unprecedented post-9/11 powers any president now wields — and the American people (or enough of them, at least) would “rally ’round the chief.”

And then, or so I imagine (and, at least among American Muslims I know, I’m not alone in this), so much worse would begin to unfold and my recurring nightmare would become a nightmarish reality. In the aftermath of such an attack, so much in our world, from the Women’s March to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, would become distant and forgotten memories. Dissent would be denounced as unpatriotic, perhaps ultimately illegal, and basic human rights might be suspended.

By now, I’m sure you see where I’m going. In my nightmare at least — and I’m talking about the waking one now, the one I live with every day — countless immigrants and American Muslims are in camps awaiting who knows what. It’s not as if there is no precedent for anything like that in America, given the experience of Japanese-Americans rounded up and kept in just such camps during World War II.

In this moment of growing Islamophobia, at a time when a president has a desire to simply ban foreign Muslims and cast American ones as the worst of the worst, it’s just one more step into my fears of the future for me to imagine myself, an American veteran, as well as my family and other members of the Muslim community, sitting inside darkened train cars on our way to internment camps, while we desperately try to convince ourselves that surely the Supreme Court will overturn such an injustice.

And given our world, given the history of racism in this country, it’s not that hard to imagine scores of broken men, women, and children already at our destination as we hurtle down the tracks to join them. Nor is it that hard to imagine the Trump administration dismissing those who protest such treatment as disloyal co-conspirators, and then using militarized police raiders to hunt some of them down, too. I can even imagine mosques being set ablaze and synagogues and churches that attempted to protect citizens fleeing all of this being raided at the government’s orders.

Heading for a Dark Destination

In some dark corner of my mind, given what we know about what we human beings are capable of, I can almost imagine some kind of Muslim-American version of the Holocaust, the ultimate nightmare that immigrants and Muslim-Americans have dreaded since Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2016, but dare not whisper. There’s nothing sadder to say than that such fears do not completely lack historical precedent: the world has, of course, been here before.

If the fate of the millions who perished during World War II, thanks to Adolf Hitler and his minions, doesn’t seem real enough to you, just pay a visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. There, you can witness the haunting images of our human brethren who, by virtue of their faith or background, were destroyed, some by their own countrymen.

Now, I know perfectly well that those of you who aren’t Muslim-Americans are likely to find such fantasies at best extreme; at worst, beyond conception. The reason isn’t hard to imagine, because of course Donald Trump isn’t Adolf Hitler; White House adviser Stephen Miller isn’t Joseph Goebbels; White House Chief of Staff John Kelly isn’t Hermann Göring; and former CIA Director and next Secretary of State Mike Pompeo isn’t Heinrich Himmler. Yes — but Pompeo, a major Islamophobe in an administration filled with them, has insisted that all Muslims are potentially complicit in terrorism and that “people who deeply believe that Islam is the way” are a “threat to America.” He has also received the “National Security Eagle Award” from a noted anti-Muslim hate group, ACT for America, and has been interviewed more than 20 times by Frank Gaffney, “the country’s most influential Islamophobe,” on his radio show. And when it comes to Islamophobia (and Iranophobia as well), in this administration Pompeo is hardly alone.

Still, not even bans, insults, and a visible loathing for those of us who don’t look like and pray like the president and his men, not even torchlight parades by Trump-supporting American neo-Nazis, get you easily to anything like an American Holocaust. But know, when you read this, that there are those of us out here who, in the dark of night, are indeed haunted by such thoughts anyway and by thoughts as well of those in the 1930s who dismissed the fears of the worst to come as so much hyperbole.

Speaking just for myself, I can’t help but believe that, in our 241-year history that includes a bitter civil war, two world wars, and the Great Depression, this could turn out to be the most crucial moment of all. I can’t help but wonder, at least in my bleaker moments, whether there will be any coming back from the dark destination, whatever it turns out to be, that we, as a nation, now seem headed for. And if not, just remember that no one will be able to say that we didn’t know what we were doing, that there were no warnings as people like me were demonized in our own country.

Whatever hell might still come, for this veteran at least, Donald Trump’s America is already hell enough.

Nate Terani is a veteran of the U.S. Navy and served in military intelligence with the Defense Intelligence Agency. He is currently a spokesperson for Common Defense PAC and regional campaign organizer with Veterans Challenge Islamophobia. He is a featured columnist with the Arizona Muslim Voice newspaper. This is his second TomDispatch piece. Follow him on Twitter at @NateTerani.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, as well as John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, John Feffer’s dystopian novel Splinterlands, Nick Turse’s Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt’s Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2018 Nate Terani

Tomdispatch.com)

The original measures tried to prohibited travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the U.S.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel ban is expected to be altered to tailor it to several specific countries deemed not to comply with the Department of Homeland Security regulations.

Reports from Washington say the new restrictions would replace the ban on entry for citizens of six Muslim-majority nations.

8 or 9 countries are expected to be targeted.

The original measures, implemented in January, tried to prohibited travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the U.S.

Demonstrations against the ban took place across the country.

On February 9 the San Francisco court of appeals overturned the order.

The administration then implemented a new travel ban on March 6 limiting the number of refugees who could enter the country from 110,000 to 50,000, and keeping nearly all of the original restrictions.

This second decree was halted by two district court judges, but in June the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to come into effect for 90 days.

It is due to expire on Sunday.

Trump was given the new recommendations by Elaine Duke, the acting Homeland Security Secretary.

The White House has not confirmed the tailored measures, but said in a statement: “The Trump administration will ensure we only admit those who can be properly vetted and will not pose a threat to national security or public safety.”

Via TeleSur

———

VOA: “Trump Travel Ban Among Factors Affecting US Tourism Industry”

New government agency blasted as ‘a blatant attempt to humiliate and scare immigrants’

Groans and boos greeted President Donald Trump’s announcement of an Orwellian new government agency—”VOICE (Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement)”—during his address to Congress Tuesday night.

“I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American Victims,” Trump said, eliciting gasps. “The office is called VOICE—Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests.”

Watch below:

Trump’s VOICE office announcement was met by audible groans

The dismay wasn’t limited to those in the chamber; outrage—and fear—rang out online, as well.

— Advancement Project (@adv_project) March 1, 2017

ThinkProgress reported last week that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly signed off on the creation of the new office in a memo entitled “Enforcement of the Immigration Laws to Serve the National Interest.”

“I am establishing the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office within the Office of the Director of ICE, which will create a programmatic liaison between ICE and the known victims of crimes committed by removable aliens,” Kelly wrote. “To that end, I direct the Director of ICE to immediately reallocate any and all resources that are currently used to advocate on behalf of illegal aliens to the new VOICE Office, and to immediately terminate the provision of such outreach or advocacy services to illegal aliens.”

An executive order from Trump, signed in late January, also instructed DHS to “make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens.”

Writing at The Atlantic on Wednesday, Peter Beinart noted that statistics on immigrant crime don’t support Trump’s actions. “As far as researchers can tell, unauthorized immigrants commit crimes [pdf] at a lower rate than the American population at large,” he reported.

As such, Beinart wrote, “if Trump’s goal is increasing public safety, publishing a list of crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants is irrational. It’s like publishing a list of crimes committed by people with red-hair.”

“If, however, Trump’s goal is stigmatizing a vulnerable class of people,” he continued, “then publicizing their crimes—and their crimes alone—makes sense. It’s been a tactic bigots have used more than a century.”

Further underscoring the administration’s xenophobic campaign (despite claims that he struck a “softer tone” during the Joint Address), Trump invited families of people killed by undocumented immigrants as his personal guests to Tuesday night’s speech. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that by doing so, Trump was “stirring up fear and hatred against immigrants and trying to divide our nation.”

“Trump, any murder is a tragedy,” Sanders wrote in a Facebook post ahead of the speech. “Don’t use these tragedies to stir up divisions by race and nationality.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Via Commondreams.org

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

The Majority Report with Sam Seder: “Trump Announces ‘VOICE,’ a Nazi-Inspired Way to Persecute Immigrants”

It is alleged that Adam W. Purinton, a regular at a bar and grill, went up to two Indian-American patrons on Wednesday night in Olathe, Kansas and screamed racial slurs at them. He was asked to leave by the bartender, but 15 minutes later came back, shouted “get out of my country!” and shot them. One victim, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, died of his injuries in a Kansas City hospital. He is said to have left behind a wife who is five months pregnant.

The other intended victim, 32-year-old Alok Madasani of Overland Park, is wounded and in hospital.

It is speculated that Purinton, who had served in the Navy and worked in internet technology, thought that the men were Middle Eastern Muslims rather than Indian Hindus.

Also shot and wounded in the hand, chest and neck is 24-year-old Ian Grillot, who just happened to be at the bar and grill, and who tried to stop Purinton as he fled. Grillot, from his hospital bed, told the story of how he was under a table and counted out nine shots then pursued the alleged assailant. But apparently he miscounted, and the gunman still had a shot to get off.

Grillot said: “It’s not about where he [victim] was from or his ethnicity. We’re all humans, so I just did what was right to do.”

Grillot’s injury is a badge of honor and courage, and he should be saluted by all right-thinking people. But it is a dark parable. White terrorism against people the white supremacists code as non-white or foreign will also victimize white people.

Purinton was picked up at another bar 80 miles away from the scene of the crime, where he allegedly confessed to having shot two “Middle Eastern” men. That kind of stupidity is an active danger to the survival of our species.

Remember, the shooter had been told by Trump-Bannon that Muslims hate America and should be excluded from the US.

Kuchibhotla was a star software engineer originally from Hyderabad, India (his wife is also from there). He had degrees from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in Hyderabad and from the University of Texas. His co-workers say he was the nicest person. His bereaved wife and his family are trying to raise money to send his body back to India for his funeral.

He and Madasani worked at Garmin International.

The White House sets a tone in a country. Trump’s assertion that “Islam hates us” and his project of a Muslim ban sent a signal permitting hate crimes to the millions of unbalanced people in the US into whose hands the National Rifle Association has insisted on putting firearms.

But ironically, Trump would approve of Kuchibhotla.

As Willa Frej tells the story, then Steve Bannon had a radio show on Sirius XM in 2015, he had Donald Trump on as a guest and complained about all the foreigners in the US. Trump pushed back, saying that a lot of bright people come to America and get Ivy League degrees, and we should try to keep them.

Bannon told Trump, “When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think… A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.”

Needless to say, Bannon’s “facts” are fake. Asian-Americans actually account for 14 percent of CEOs in Silicon Valley. And, as we social scientists use the phrase “civil society” (non-governmental public organizations), there is no reason to exclude Asian-Americans. That is, there is no analytical reason, assuming you’re not, like, a racist bigot.

Bannon speaks of a “civilizational war” with Muslims and through the executive orders he crafter for Tump he has laid the ground work for blood in the streets.

Bannon is not fit to shine the shoes of any of the three victims here, who actually contribute positively to our country rather than trying to Nazify it.

Two of my uncles fought the Nazis. I mind anyone trying to import racist thuggery into this country. There’s no difference between publishing a rag like Breitbart and going out to Arlington cemetery and spitting on the graves every day.

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Related video:
KCTV5 News: “Witnesses say Olathe bar shooting may have racial overtones”

I’m a Muslim woman and a social justice advocate.

I’m terrified, heartbroken, and outraged by Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban.” As I watched administrative chaos and rapidly organized protests unfold at airports all over America, I was overwhelmed with messages from friends fearing they’d never be able to see their loved ones again.

Though the executive order doesn’t use these exact words, this is no doubt a Muslim ban.

It’s not just that the countries Trump wants to prohibit immigration from — Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, and Somalia — are majority-Muslim. It’s that religious minorities (i.e. anyone who isn’t Muslim) from those countries will be prioritized for entry into the U.S.

Refugees, immigrants, and Muslims are human beings — regardless of their age, status, skills, or nation of origin. Many Americans realize this, which is why thousands have turned up at protests to speak out against the ban.

But while they mean well, non-Muslim opponents of the ban still have to be careful not to repeat dangerous stereotypes when pushing back against this extreme action.

For instance, you may have heard that Trump’s order left off the Muslim-majority countries where President Trump has business deals — some of which, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, happen to be where individuals who’ve carried out violent attacks hailed from.

All of that’s true, of course, and there’s value in pointing out Trump’s unprecedented conflicts of interest.

But in reality, Muslims in these countries are the primary victims of extremist violence there. And suggesting that Trump should ban those countries too only encourages broadening the Muslim ban, not ending it.

Another common argument I’ve heard is that Muslim refugees and immigrants strengthen national security by acting as police informants and joining the military, and that this ban could break the bonds of trust that enable those partnerships.

It’s true that Muslims are leading providers of tips to law enforcement agencies investigating “terrorism.” But it’s not like all Muslims are somehow connected to or aware of extremist plots. We’re ordinary people, and we shouldn’t have to be “useful” to law enforcement to deserve fundamental rights.

The narrative link between Islam and violence is used to justify military intervention abroad, which in turn is used to justify suspicion of Muslims at home. Muslims are seen as potential “terrorists,” to the point that the word is popularly linked with Islam — despite repeated horrific acts committed by white men in the U.S. in the name of Christianity or white nationalism.

This stereotyping feeds into increased hate crimes and harassment, as well as profiling and government surveillance of Muslims.

Sadly, Donald Trump isn’t the first president to make things worse for Muslims.

The Obama administration’s wars were often justified through the demonization and dehumanization of Muslims. So were its expansion of the drone program, unwarranted surveillance, militarization of our borders and policing, and record-breaking numbers of deportations.

Trump’s latest action is reminiscent of past immigration bans, and the implications of where we could go from here are terrifying. Scary precedents include the ban on immigration from Asia and the great national shame of Japanese internment.

Only by acknowledging the history of these systems and policies — systems that existed long before Trump took office — can we understand how to resist them today.

Trump’s Muslim ban has already been widely applied, and we can’t ignore the threat of it growing. I, and so many Muslims, recognize this undeniable possibility. We’re not safe. We’re targets here and abroad.

So I’d ask this of my friends and neighbors: Don’t reinforce ideas that paint us as inherently violent and undermine our humanity. Reach out to us, support us, uplift our voices and humanity.

Dina El-Rifai is a Policy Fellow at the American Friends Service Committee. Distributed by OtherWords.org.

Via Otherwords.org

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

CCTV: “Yemenis and Muslim Americans pray, protest against Trump travel ban”

The New Xenophobia:

OXFORD – Democratic governments in the West are increasingly losing their bearings. From the shift toward illiberalism in Poland and Hungary to the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump’s victory in the United States’ presidential election, a particularly lethal strain of populism is infecting societies – and it is spreading.

The appeal of populism is straightforward. Faced with stagnant wages and a declining quality of life, people feel frustrated – all the more so when their leaders keep telling them that things are getting better. Then the populist appears and promises to shake things up, to defend the interests of the “people” (though really only some of them), and offers something arguably more attractive than feasible solutions: scapegoats.

At the top of the list of scapegoats are the “elites” – established political parties and corporate leaders. Rather than protecting the “people” from economic pressure and insecurity, this group, the populist declares, thrives on the people’s pain. By advancing globalization – by forcing ever-more openness down the people’s throat – they have accumulated massive wealth, which they then protect through tax avoidance, offshoring, and other schemes.

But it is not just the elites who are blamed. Yes, they have betrayed the people. But one way they do so is by foisting upon the people equal rights and opportunities for minorities, immigrants, and foreigners, who “steal” jobs, threaten national security, and undermine traditional ways of life.

Trump won the US presidency partly because of his pledges to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and ban Muslims from entering the country. The Brexiteers promised to end free immigration from the European Union. After the vote, Britain’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd suggested that firms hiring foreigners should be named and shamed.

Today’s populism advances a toxic new xenophobia, one that threatens to fracture our societies. For politicians, it offers an easy means of quickly transforming people’s fear and powerlessness into an intoxicating mix of anger and authority. It persuades intimidated (often elderly) voters that, in the parlance of the Brexiteers, they can “take back control” of their lives and their countries, primarily by rejecting foreigners.

Demography makes the new xenophobia particularly dangerous. In much of the West, societies are becoming increasingly diverse. Hispanics now account for 17.6% of the US population. One-third of Londoners were born outside the UK. In France, an estimated 10% of the population is Muslim. And an estimated 20% of Germany’s population have some immigrant background.

In this context, when politicians campaign for votes by advancing antagonistic and divisive identity politics, they sow the seeds of animosity, mistrust, and violence within their own societies. When candidates repeatedly call Muslims dangerous, for example, no one should be surprised by a surge in anti-Muslim hate crimes, as has occurred in the wake of both the Brexit vote and Trump’s victory. Such divided societies require a rising level of coercion and force to control.

Diversity should be a strength, one that helps societies to flourish. That is why it is so important to combat the new xenophobia. One way is by encouraging and enabling social mixing, interaction, and deliberation among diverse groups. Extensive psychological research shows that intergroup contact reduces people’s sense of threat, heightening the possibilities for building trust across society.

If community centers, schools, and public locations are places where people of different religions, cultures, and race meet, xenophobia is less likely to take root. Even living in an area where others mix can help. This is why the new xenophobia has largely been resisted in Europe’s most diverse cities.

A second way to combat the new xenophobia is to reinforce the protection of civil liberties. This means upholding the rule of law, even in the face of terrorist threats, and ensuring the independence of judges.

Yet, lately, there have been ominous moves in the opposite direction. Leaders in Hungary and Poland have been dismantling constitutional protections; France has used a lengthy state of emergency to suspend rights; and British and American politicians have publicly denigrated judges. Democracy was toppled by xenophobes in the 1930s not because of the strength of the anti-democratic parties, but because of democratic leaders’ failure to uphold their countries’ constitutions.

A third way to fight the new xenophobia is through innovation. For example, though the Internet is often viewed as a great equalizer, social media are contributing to fragmentation. The content to which people are exposed is filtered, whether through self-selection or algorithms.
Fake news or real views Learn More

The result is echo chambers in which like-minded people reinforce shared convictions, creating increasingly polarized silos. But, if social media platforms were reconfigured in innovative ways, they could have the opposite impact, creating spaces for citizens from diverse backgrounds to interact.

The threat posed by the new xenophobia should not be underestimated. Today, no less than in the past, the rejection of diversity is tantamount to the rejection of democracy. That is why it must be defended, before its opponents gain any more ground.

Ngaire Woods is Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government and Director of the Global Economic Governance Program at the University of Oxford.

Via Project Syndicate

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

CBS Los Angeles: “California Lawmakers Ready To Battle Trump On Immigration”