The tragedy of 9/11, the fall of the Twin Towers, and the deaths of thousands of people in the United States left a scar on the world. The imagery will forever play in the minds of those who witnessed it, while also serving as an archive for future generations. Many prefer to look back on the attacks as a unifying moment for the country and the world. But in the United States, that unity lasted just days and immediately devolved into the hate machine we have today.
Within days, we heard of delivery drivers refusing to offload goods at stores owned by a brown person who may or may not have been Muslim. We began hearing speeches that pitted the U.S. as being involved in a holy war. We began hearing about the border and how it is now a matter of “national security,” despite the 9/11 attackers entering the country through legal means. We saw various nonwhite groups become the victims of hate crimes. Arabs, Persians, Muslims, Sikhs, Latinos, and anyone who remotely resembled what many perceived as hating America.
Brown people.
That racism was used in nationalist messaging to justify going to war in Afghanistan and later, Iraq, Syria, and many other countries – all under the guise of a global war on terrorism. Wars that led to millions being either displaced or killed. Countless innocent lives were lost based on an ideology of hate, only to surrender each country back to the state they were in before 9/11, but with billionaires getting a piece of the economic pie. All of it manufactured; all of ot for greed.
But the hate machine didn’t stop there
While many, including me, will credit the Tea Party movement for much of the overt racism and bigotry we see today, its foundation was built on the racism that fueled the ensuing “Global War on Terror,” the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the birth of the surveillance state with the Patriot Act, and equating immigrants at the southern border with criminality, even going so far as to claim terrorists had training camps in both the U.S. and Latin America. Today, that same propaganda still fuels politics in the U.S. and much of the West.
The difference today, however, is how much more overt it is. Sitting lawmakers and candidates alike regularly express Islamophobic ideas. While some still prefer the dog-whistle politics of yesteryear, most are no longer hiding it. We see this in attacks against progressive candidates with popular ideas while ignoring the blatant racism seen across the political spectrum. But it’s not just Islamophobia; it’s equating “leftists” with “Islamism” (a dog whistle for radical Islam) and associating both with a manufactured version of “communism” that they can’t define.
The hate machine that was born in the ashes of 9/11 can be seen in the data centers, tracking systems that monitor our every move, a surveillance state that knows more about people than most know about themselves, and a militaristic approach to all things, from petty crimes and homelessness to immigration and pushing back against social justice. These are all systems being used primarily against Latinos, Black, Indigenous, and impoverished people, and women.
As we sit in remembrance of the tragedy that struck 25 years ago, we don’t have to look far to see how our news media played a role, either. Twenty-five years later, many questions about the 9/11 attacks remain, and yet, pundits are still rationalizing the wars and blaming straw men, thus fueling much of the Islamophobia that has made being overtly anti-Black, anti-Latino, and anti-anything that isn’t a straight white male a normal occurrence in political discourse.
As the Department of Homeland Security, with the Patriot Act under its arm, does precisely what it was designed to do: surveil and oppress, the Department of War, under the rules granted to the president in the aftermath of 9/11, is doing its part overseas. Continuing to rationalize war based on incomplete information, alongside bolstering the blistering level of hate in the United States that was born in the ashes of 9/11, is not just a disservice to the victims, but a dishonor.
Do better.
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