Of course, I knew Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism (really, those two concepts are inseparable and feed each other) were very prevalent in American society going back a long time, with it really ratcheting up after 9/11. But ever since the Zionist entityā€™s terrorist pager attack last month, the sheer depth, pervasiveness, and how itā€™s just out there in the open and considered perfectly acceptable has genuinely surprised me. It seems to have started with that attack and subsequent events have only reinforced it.

White Americans just seem to delight whenever they think the Arab/Islamic ā€œterroristsā€ are attacked. They do not care about who the ā€œterroristsā€ actually are or how many people suffer. Itā€™s not worth interrogating what the ā€œterroristsā€ are fighting for or who was harmed because to the white folks, the Muslim/Arab people donā€™t matter. Theyā€™ve been dehumanized to the point where their lives are considered worthless.

To give an example, there is a person in my life who Iā€™m about to cut out (should have a long time ago) who texted me something to the effect of ā€œthat pager thing was crazy, but looks like they got a lot of terroristsā€. I tried to keep my cool and explain how normal people like doctors and ambulance drivers were hurt and killed too, because lots of people use those pagers. Dude literally just used a shrug emoji in response, because I guess those people arenā€™t worth giving a care about.

Everything Iā€™ve seen especially in recent weeks really shows how bad it is. Brown people in Western Asia donā€™t matter because they have a different religion and they are ā€œprone to violenceā€ and they arenā€™t as ā€œdevelopedā€ as us. I feel like this is really where the support for Israel comes from. Not from ideas of Israel fulfilling apocalyptic prophesy, but just because white Americans can turn on the TV and see people in Israel who look like them, who have a religion that is semi-compatible with theirs, and who live in a society that seems to be very ā€œWesternā€ fighting off the ā€œsavage Islamistsā€. It plays into their already primed-for-racism-and-chauvinismā€ brains.

While I donā€™t think American media is the source of racism and Islamophobia, I do think the last 20+ years of movies, shows, and games has really fueled the fire. I think (hope?) in the future people will look back on this period of ā€œcorn-fed white bearded operators killing all the Muslim terroristsā€ media in the way we look at minstrel shows now.

  • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    23 days ago

    If you pointed this out, like I did, some people would get mad at you. Honestly I stand by one of my other comments telling another user here, that if theyā€™re so invested in this war they can join an organization or go fight on the front themselves.

    Hypocritical too since one of the rightly favoured tricks when dealing with bloodthirsty pro-Ukraine types is telling them to go join the war. Wasnā€™t very cool seeing people treat it like a sport or something.

    • GlueBear [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      22 days ago

      No it wasnā€™t, I didnā€™t even want to report anyone because I didnā€™t even know how I was going to report a single user for doing what several others were doing in the news mega.

      It was mind numbing, westerners in their arm chairs just over analyzing and thinking they knew more than Iran. Like some of the users here were actual analysts by trade (Scott Ritter types) then I would tolerate it. But no. Itā€™s probably just crackers seething that Iran is making them lose their cringe twitter debate against a nafo dunce.