https://socialistaction.org/2017/02/01/widespread-protests-challenge-trumps-anti-muslim-order/
Widespread protests challenge Trump’s anti-Muslim order
/ 3 days ago
feb-2017-airport-pittsBy KAREN SCHRAUFNAGEL
Protests erupted throughout the United States and the world following
President Trump’s stunning order that suspended entry into the U.S. by
refugees and other travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries in the
Middle East and Africa. Thousands demonstrated at airports and federal
courthouses. Chants included: “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here!”
At least 10,000 rallied against the Muslim ban in New York City’s
Battery Park on Jan. 29, while taxi drivers held a one-hour strike in
solidarity. On the same day, massive crowds jammed Boston’s Copley
Square—more than 15,000, according to the police. Over 15,000 marched in
Minneapolis on Jan. 31. The protests have continued the momentum and
spirit of the massive Jan. 21 Women’s Marches in Washington and hundreds
of other cities.
The Trump administration’s anti-Muslim policies represent a significant
escalation in the U.S. war on Islam. At the same time, these policies
are logical extensions of the bipartisan assaults on the civil rights of
Muslims in this country spanning nearly two decades, and always
justified as important tools for fighting the “War on Terror.”
When a gunman opened fire inside the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Centre
on Jan. 29, killing six worshippers and wounding many more, the White
House and Fox News repeatedly characterized it as a terrorist attack by
a Muslim terrorist, audaciously exploiting this massacre of Muslims to
justify their escalating attack on Muslims. It was revealed quickly that
the Muslim man from Morocco blamed for the attack by reactionaries was
actually a witness to the massacre who had called the police.
The perpetrator of the Quebec attack, Alexandre Bissonnette, is a white
nationalist who admires Trump, illustrating how individuals with
prejudices are encouraged into action by powerful people using
inflammatory rhetoric, magnified by repetition in the sensationalist
capitalist media.
As the true story came out, the White House and Fox News continued to
maintain their “alt” interpretation of events. Meanwhile, in the rest of
the capitalist press, references to a “terrorist” attack quickly stopped
and were replaced with “lone gunman” stories more consistent with the
underlying narrative that recognizes violence as terrorism only if the
perpetrator is Muslim.
Trump issued his edict against Muslims as an Executive Order on Jan. 27.
Rudolph Giuliani explained on Fox News the next day that Trump had told
him he wanted a “Muslim ban,” but he wanted to do it legally. So the
administration hatched a plan: “And what we did was, we focused on,
instead of religion, danger! The areas of the world that create danger
for us, which is a factual basis, not a religious basis. Perfectly
legal. Perfectly sensible. That’s what the ban is based on.”
Of course “danger,” unlike religion, is a subjective notion. And many
see through this transparent rationale. Glenn Greenwald explained in a
recent Intercept article: “The sole ostensible rationale for this ban—it
is necessary to keep out Muslim extremists—collapses upon the most
minimal scrutiny.
“The countries that have produced and supported the greatest number of
anti-U.S. terrorists—Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, UAE—are excluded from
the ban list because the tyrannical regimes that run those countries are
close U.S. allies. Conversely, the countries that are included—Syria,
Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Iran, Sudan, and Yemen—have produced virtually no
such terrorists; as the Cato Institute documented: ‘Foreigners from
those seven nations have killed zero Americans in terrorist attacks on
U.S. soil between 1975 and the end of 2015.’ Indeed, as of a 2015 study
by the New America research center, deaths caused by terrorism from
right-wing nationalists since 9/11 have significantly exceeded those
from Muslim extremists.”
Democratic Party politicians, and some Republicans, also criticized the
directive from the White House—often with surprising frankness. Senator
Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) succinctly tweeted: “We bomb your country,
creating a humanitarian nightmare, then lock you inside. That’s a horror
movie, not a foreign policy.”
The Trump administration’s ban is a continuation of the Orwellian logic
that has been a centerpiece of the War on Terror from the start. It is
the same logic that justified invading Iraq when none of the 9/11
perpetrators were Iraqi, and that reclassified every male in a “combat
zone” as an enemy combatant in order to artificially reduce the number
of civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes.
It is the same logic that creates programs like Countering Violent
Extremism (CVE), tying funding for essential social services to
cooperation with surveillance and entrapment of entire “suspect”
communities. Yes, the ban is reprehensible, but within the logic of the
War on Terror, it is also logical.
Socialist Action says we must stand together against Trump’s ban, and
against Trump’s registry, but we must also stand together against the
illogical logic of the entire War on Terror. We say no to marginalizing
and criminalizing Muslims. Solidarity with Muslims and all oppressed
people! Join us!
Photo: Stephanie Strasburg / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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February 1, 2017 in Uncategorized.
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