Islam is just the tip of the Iceberg for the centuries-old Western tradition of invoking the menacing silhouette of an orientalized, nonwhite horde to justify imperial violence and subjugation, at least since the Spanish Reconquista and subsequent age of colonization. When rightoids are hand-wringing about Muslim refugees supposedly preying on women, it is almost always the image of a brown or black man “defiling” a white woman. Islam is simply a convenient shorthand for that, which has the fig leaf of technically not being a race. And recent events have shown that’s Islamaphobia is as useful for the ruling class of today as it was to Iberian Christian monarchs.
it’s fundamentally the same mechanisms at play here behind yellow peril and anti-China hysteria. Which in itself intersects with racialized anticommunism (as Nazi propaganda depicting “asiatic” reds demonstrates), despite Marxism’s origins in Europe.
Nothing like an Islamic enemy to unite all the imperialists
Islam is just the tip of the Iceberg for the centuries-old Western tradition of invoking the menacing silhouette of an orientalized, nonwhite horde to justify imperial violence and subjugation, at least since the Spanish Reconquista and subsequent age of colonization. When rightoids are hand-wringing about Muslim refugees supposedly preying on women, it is almost always the image of a brown or black man “defiling” a white woman. Islam is simply a convenient shorthand for that, which has the fig leaf of technically not being a race. And recent events have shown that’s Islamaphobia is as useful for the ruling class of today as it was to Iberian Christian monarchs.
it’s fundamentally the same mechanisms at play here behind yellow peril and anti-China hysteria. Which in itself intersects with racialized anticommunism (as Nazi propaganda depicting “asiatic” reds demonstrates), despite Marxism’s origins in Europe.