the elephant in the room

In a year saddled with so much voter apathy, Zohran Mamdani’s campaign seemed to have done the impossible: get people excited about politics (and politicians) again. Like everyone else in this country, I had been closely following the New York City mayoral race for months. Watching the results come in on election night, I realized that his campaign had reignited something in me that I thought had been long gone: genuine optimism. 

And while I would love to continue to revel in the joy of the election night win, I woke up the next morning and was quickly reminded of the relentless Islamophobia that had plagued this election cycle. From Cuomo’s racist AI-generated ads portraying "Criminals for Mamdani", or his insistence that Mamdani would cheer on another 9/11, or even Rudy Giuliani’s post-election day crashout (complete with images of 9/11), much of the response to his candidacy had dredged up some of the most racist and Islamophobic tropes. One of Cuomo’s ads even went so far as to darken and lengthen Zohran’s beard, lightening his skin, clearly trying to portray a distinct image of him laden with Islamophobic intent. 

With all of that in mind, I think it’s imperative to consider how the tropes deployed against him worked in concert to push a much deeper anti-immigrant sentiment. Politicians throughout this cycle relied on false narratives about both immigrants and crime to manipulate the ongoing moral panic about both issues. This was very clearly wielded against Zohran at many points and was only enhanced through Islamophobia. When Republicans called for his denaturalization, I was reminded of a few things: how easy it is for the state to render you stateless; how Islamophobia provides space for immigrants to be rendered “The Other”; and how that otherization, combined with the criminalization of immigrant groups, both work to rationalize any abuse as a necessary evil by the state.

Many of us have grown accustomed to some of the pettiness that often emerges in politics, but this race felt markedly different. It certainly didn’t help that the attacks surfaced in tandem with a notable absence of support from his would-be allies, other members of the Democratic Party. I expected opposition from his actual opponents, but watching the endorsements roll in for this guy felt very telling. 

You might assume that the same party that had suffered such a catastrophic loss in the last election would have rushed to endorse the young, exciting candidate who had energized people across the country. Unfortunately, nope. That was simply too much to expect from the octogenarians at the helm of the party. Notably, Chuck Schumer never endorsed Mamdani; a glaring omission, considering how much Mamdani had been so well-received by young people across the country. Hakeem Jeffries had also been under pressure to endorse him for months, finally doing so a little over a week out from the election. Although you can’t expect much from the same people who are more focused on prostrating themselves for AIPAC money and who see their role as “keeping the left Pro-Israel." It all feels particularly damning when you think about the kinds of people the Democratic Party has been much more eager to embrace.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò recently wrote about shame and the departure from political correctness over the last few years. His words are ones I continue to return to as I metabolize moments like the responses to the Mamdani campaign. 

“A key aspect of the way we lived with each other before these self-styled epochal developments involved exactly the ‘social shame and cultural pressure’ that Klein and other influential voices now come to condemn: ‘political correctness’ as it was known in earlier days, or ‘wokeness’ as it has come to be rebranded in recent years.” 

When considering the consequences of the collective abandonment of political correctness, it comes as no surprise that we have seen the normalization of such flagrant bigotry. Pushing the line on the norms governing moral etiquette, the Overton Window has shifted so far to the right that all of the -phobias and -isms that were once seen as reprehensible and career-damaging have now become commonplace. Plainly, so many of the hateful things that people say publicly out loud now would have had them ostracized just a few years ago. This shift away from political correctness, coupled with the shortage of tangible social penalties, has made space for an outward embrace of open white supremacists, Nazis, Islamophobes, etc. 

And say you choose to defend marginalized groups? There are now swaths of people who will flatten your position as “virtue signalling” and “performative activism.” What does it say about where we are in society that extending care to other people is automatically perceived as performance? But, I digress.

Throughout the election cycle, there were a few moments when the candidates were asked various questions to indicate their stance on Israel and Palestine. (A little odd, given the fact that Israel is not located within any of the boroughs of New York City). Regardless, this has obviously become a much more politically salient conversation across the country, especially in the last year. In the New York mayoral race, I think it’s important to understand how this question was leveraged strategically, specifically against Mamdani.

Any answer other than a resounding affirmation that Israel has the right to exist would have lent itself to the deployment of one of the most successful tools of Israeli propaganda: the conflation that any critique of Israel is a critique of Jewish people everywhere. Israel, as a colonial, political project, has been extremely effective in conflating antisemitism with antizionism. Antizionism is an opposition to Zionism (the movement for the creation of the Jewish state in the Middle East); antisemitism is the prejudice and discrimination towards Jewish people. Suppose you can get people to accept the conflation of antizionism with antisemitism, the Israeli state becomes much more effective at nullifying the protest movements against the genocide. As a result, this conflation has been extremely effective in manufacturing consent with the actions of the state of Israel. When deployed, it dually silences efforts in support of Palestinians and shields the Israeli government from legitimate criticism.

To his part, Mamdani reiterated a clear, coherent, and fair position on Israel every single time. In one debate, the candidates were asked where they would travel on their first foreign trip as Mayor, with both Andrew Cuomo and Whitney Tilson responding that they would travel to Israel. Mamdani answered that he would stay in New York City, focusing on New Yorkers. Oddly enough, the moderator then asked (only Mamdani) if he would visit Israel, to which he responded that he wouldn’t. Rather, his focus remained on standing up for Jewish New Yorkers and meeting them wherever they were in the city, whether in their boroughs or synagogues. Bizarrely, the moderator continued to press the question: "Yes or no, do you believe in a Jewish State of Israel?” Mamdani answered, "I believe Israel has a right to exist." The moderator asked, "As a Jewish state?" Mamdani replied: "As a state with equal rights." Setting aside the devious implications behind this line of questioning, the implication that a man running for mayor of an American city must pledge his allegiance to a foreign state, or be deemed otherwise traitorous, is objectively baffling. 

Further, this line of interrogation towards the sole Muslim candidate in the race is illustrative of how much of a stronghold the conflation of antisemitism and antizionism has in American political discourse, and how much more dangerous it becomes when weaponized with Islamophobia. This line of questioning is also unhelpful because it forces people into making a false choice; reinforcing this framing implies that you can only support Jewish people or Palestinian people (not both). Personally, I think that is patently false. And I think it plays into the reality that many people treat politics like a zero-sum game, internalizing one community's gain as a loss to themselves. I firmly disagree with that notion and would argue that you can support a free Palestine while remaining steadfastly in support of Jewish people. Support of one community doesn’t inherently quash any efforts in support of the other. Speaking out against the actions of the Israeli government should not be taken as an indictment on all Jewish people - that would be antisemitism at work.

One of the most prominent organizations against antisemitism, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), has unfortunately helped steward Islamophobia in the name of combating antisemitism. Following his election-night victory, the ADL announced the launch of the Mamdani Monitor to track the new administration’s priorities and appointments, as well as a tip line for people to report antisemitic incidents in NYC. Considering that tracking elected officials would be an unprecedented effort for the ADL, this immediately felt unsettling for many reasons. 

Firstly, in his election night speech, Mamdani explicitly named antisemitism as one of his priorities: “... and we will build a City Hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism.” Secondly, the ADL faced backlash for its response to Elon's Nazi salute. More recently, a Maine Democrat came under fire for an alleged Nazi tattoo, which elicited no response from the ADL. If the ADL’s mission is to target antisemitism, why are its efforts the loudest against the Muslim Mayor-elect (who has consistently expressed support for Jewish people)? Quite frankly, I believe that Jewish people are done a disservice when efforts to combat antisemitism are reduced to 1) ensuring complete obedience with the Israeli government and 2) being used to facilitate heightened surveillance of Muslims and other non-Jewish people. 

Despite all of this, I remain very excited for the people of New York. I maintain a healthy skepticism of all politicians; still, I hope that Mamdani can translate his incredible campaign into meaningful change for New Yorkers. 

I wrote this piece because I don’t think enough non-Muslims are speaking up for Muslims. As a Christian (and simply as a person who cares about other people), I see it as my duty to speak up for Muslims in the face of so much rampant, disgusting Islamophobia. I follow plenty of Muslim and Jewish writers who have spoken out against the Islamophobia that’s surfaced over the last year, and I wanted to be another voice speaking out against it as well. 

In a world that’s moved so far away from political correctness, Islamophobia feels like the elephant in the room. Everyone knows it’s there, but nobody acknowledges its presence. The legacy of the War on Terror continues to loom heavily over this country, but that shadow unfairly hovers prominently over all Muslims. There is no doubt in my mind that there will continue to be Islamophobic attacks against Mamdani and every other Muslim, and I think that we need to be loudly pushing back on them at every instance. 

everything is that deep

In the early days of the COVID pandemic, I was cautiously optimistic that we were on the cusp of freeing ourselves from the shackles of celebrity worship. I had assumed that something about seeing those with the most privilege bemoan isolating themselves in their mansions would shake something up within the rest of us, their viewership. Regrettably, I see now how I was unfortunately far too optimistic with that take. Stan culture is so deeply embedded in our society, and it informs how much resistance there is online to any reasonable critique of our faves - whether that be politicians, influencers, musicians, movie stars, etc. 

There’s something to be said about who working-class people identify themselves with, and how often that alignment is not a reflection of their lived reality or experiences, but of their aspirations. That also explains why you will regularly see everyday people online, dying on the hill to defend people who share no material reality or class solidarity with them. Instead, they may find a false sense of kinship or representation if they share the same gender identity or cultural background with said celebrity. With that in mind, I think it’s really important for us to unpack our allegiance to people who have shown us plainly they do not care about us; they only want to extract the most capital from us. 

Pair that celebrity worship with the surge in anti-intellectualism, and we often end up hearing from the “it’s not that deep” crowd when there’s any pushback towards their fave. While anti-intellectualism may seem innocuous, I think about how the fascist country we are in counts on your resistance to critical thinking to ensure your obedience. These elements may seem disconnected at first… but when you start to consider each issue as being interconnected, you can better see how they have concocted the perfect storm.

Celebrity worship survives through regular people subscribing to anti-intellectualism. Stan culture requires a lot of cognitive dissonance to thrive. I believe that no one is above critique. But many people online are unwilling to acknowledge their blind spots with their faves. You cannot have both firm principles and show unwavering loyalty to a celebrity who acts or behaves in a manner that contradicts your principles - hence, the cognitive dissonance. And I think that people internalize critiques of the celebrities they defend because they see any critique of them as an indictment of themselves. That discomfort you feel when forced to face the reality of a celebrity you have idolized is the feeling of cognitive dissonance. 

When grappling with criticism of their faves, people tend to immediately deploy the “it’s not that deep” argument, waving the flag of anti-intellectualism. In turn, this spread of stan culture has effectively created the conditions for obedience. Obedience to capitalism, obedience to politicians, obedience to new, harmful systems. In the absence of critical thinking, we all become a bunch of mindless, endlessly loyal worker bees under capitalism, conditioned to fall in line behind anything or anyone. (No matter how harmful they may be towards us.) 

Hubris has a lot of people convinced that they are simply “too smart” or too aware to fall victim to manipulation, propaganda, misinformation, dog whistles, etc. I think what people miss with this presumption is the false promise that your intellect can insulate you and your emotions.

Fear and anger serve as such powerful engines of society. Both drive the populace towards visceral reactions to everything from pop culture moments to human rights issues. Fear drives so much of the messaging that the news media anchors their output in, such as the politicization of “crime waves” or the talk of “war-ravaged Portland”. Anger drives viewers to engage with contentious shows and topics (ragebaiting). To their credit, both strategies work. Fear-mongering and rage-baiting are effective ways to get people to engage with content and to serve as de facto advertisers for them by posting their 30-part opinions online.

There is no shortage of cultural and political moments to point to when thinking about how the media and/or companies have engineered our fear or anger against us to drive engagement with their content and/or their politics. A few months ago, Sydney Sweeney and American Eagle partnered up for an odd ad for denim, which was immediately met with outrage online. Anti-intellectualism reared its head with the plentiful responses of “it’s not that deep”, when people started to unpack the clear language of eugenics in the video. Sweeney said:

"Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue."

In the fascist world we are living in, context matters. It’s not lost on me how strange it was for the focus of a denim ad to feature a white woman, with blue eyes and blonde hair, opining on how “great” her genes/jeans are. But, I guess it’s not that deep, right? 

Taylor Swift recently put out an album, The Life of a Showgirl, that has received a considerable amount of backlash. Swifties and non-Swifties alike have gone back and forth on some alleged allusions to Black women on the album (“I’m not a bad bitch, and this isn’t savage”), critiques of songs like Opalite, which introduce contrasts between darkness and light (which is odd, considering Travis’s relationships with Black women), etc. As far as the lyrics go, it has been quite telling to see people who have defended her artistry through her lyricism for years now find issue with people problematizing the depth in her lyrics. 

In one of the more bizarre developments since, Swift also came under fire for a promotional necklace she released (and has since taken down), allegedly laden with Nazi iconography. And yet, plenty of her stans have rushed to her defense online to either a) feign ignorance or b) claim that “it’s not that deep”.

Whether or not the criticisms hold credence, I think the rush to defend Swift is a reflection of the impulse I mentioned earlier - a knee-jerk reaction from stans to protect their fave, given their shared identity. Swift represents the epitome of white girlhood (despite her age), and she’s built a following of girls who see themselves in the awkward teenager/scorned lover she presents to the world. Perhaps critiquing her would force her stans to reckon with themselves, their own identities, and how closely aligned they actually are with their billionaire fave.

Since being on Bluesky, I have seen quite vividly how stan culture presents itself in everyday conversations about politicians. If you live under a rock, you may have heard that a certain former VPOTUS is on a book tour right now. While on that book tour, she has been on the receiving end of vocal heckling from attendees in response to her involvement in aiding the genocide in Palestine. 

Given the fact that she is now actively rewriting her role in the genocide on this book tour, and that no American politician has dealt with the repercussions of their war crimes in the Hague, I think it’s safe to assume that the heckling is likely to be the worst thing that she will have to deal with. Frankly, I think that any politician who has facilitated war crimes should be booed for the rest of their days. But seeing how quickly regular people have rushed to her defense online, the impact of stan culture on how we make room for criticism of our elected officials becomes even more visible.

Many of the defenses of Harris have been born out of a loyalty to shared identity. People have rushed to defend her, providing cover for any reasonable critiques of her actions by flattening the protests as a dual attack on her womanhood and Blackness. In that regard, I do not believe that it is inherently misogynistic to hold a Black woman accountable for the things that she did in office - I see it as being honest. Harris continues to benefit from the mantra ‘protect Black women,’ and the genocide against Palestinians continues. While I find comfort in people embracing the directive to protect Black women, that protection should not render us incapable of perpetuating harm. I think that we lose our integrity and our principles when we continue to lead with that mantra, uncritically.  

All things considered, everything actually is that deep to me. I think that we collectively need to be more critical about the news we consume, the music we listen to, and the people we choose to represent us. Instead of blindly accepting all of the messaging we receive, it’s important to think critically about what celebrities are saying and selling. What and who we choose to defend is often a deep reflection of our politics. While some of us may not be willing to leave celebrities behind, at the very least, I think it is imperative to resist the impulse to accept anti-intellectualism. The powers that be need your uncritical obedience to sustain themselves, and we make it far too easy for them to do so. Reserve your unwavering loyalty for your principles, not to a party, a politician, or any celebrity. 

the making of a martyr

I spent the better part of my Sunday afternoon listening to and reading the transcript from the conversation between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein. Coates is one of my favorite contemporary writers, and given his response to Klein’s NYT op-ed in Vanity Fair on Charlie Kirk, I was surprised to see the news of their conversation. As I started listening, I was even more surprised to find out that they are friends (or at least, acquainted enough to text pretty frequently).

As I listened to their conversation, I was reminded of many conversations I’ve had with so many “well-meaning” white liberals over the years. Klein spends the bulk of the interview trying to persuade Coates into the idea that we must engage with the Charlie Kirks of the world as a matter of political strategy. He effectively reduces so much of the failure of the Democratic party to an abandonment of people we “disagree with”. 

It has been very interesting (derogatory) to see so many people come out in droves to whitewash Kirk’s very documented legacy of hatred. And it has been extremely revelatory whether or not they understand who they are actually abandoning when they ask us to make concessions for bigotry and bigots; they are willing to make that choice. Personally, I believe that we do not need to throw the most vulnerable groups of people under the bus to move our people forward. And by engaging with the Charlie Kirks of the world, and contributing to sanitizing his legacy, that is exactly what we do.

To his credit, Coates resists that pressure from Klein throughout their conversation. He acknowledges Kirk’s murder as a “horror”, while still holding his line on people and values over political strategy. He thankfully also problematizes the deep desire we have seen from people to detach his legacy from his life:

And I don’t take any joy in saying this, but we sometimes soothe ourselves by pointing out that love, acceptance, and warmth are powerful forces. I believe they are. I also believe hate is a powerful force. I believe it’s a powerful, unifying force. And I think Charlie Kirk was a hatemonger. 

It quickly became clear to me how much people like Ezra Klein see politics as an ideological thought experiment. Klein’s ability to separate Kirk’s life (all of the vitriol in his own words and actions) from his death (what happened to him) is the clearest reflection of his privilege. He sees engaging with Kirk as a necessary evil to widening the net, an exercise in the Jubilee-style of seeing “both sides” with people committed to others’ dehumanization. By treating politics as a thought exercise, he sees engaging with someone like Kirk, who is diametrically opposed to his values on paper, as an innocuous effort. Perhaps, even as an intellectual endeavor in pursuit of objectivity. With that understanding, it’s easy to see how much he simply fails to understand Coates throughout their conversation.

Coates recognizes that many of his readers have never shared Klein’s same privilege to see politics in that way. He goes on to explain why, as a result, many of us would naturally find it a lot harder to muster up any sort of empathy for a man who explicitly and loudly wished a similar fate for many of us.

I think Klein was also clearly looking for Coates to indulge his desire to admire Kirk. He comes across in the conversation (a few times) arguably as deeply enamored with Kirk. Even in his original op-ed in the NYT, he infamously argued that Kirk was doing politics “the right way”. In his decision to separate the man from his words,  I think he allowed himself to indulge the martyrization that the media propped up around him in light of his death. And given the blowback online, I think he wanted to use this conversation to get Coates to appease his desire to like Kirk. He wanted him to tell him that it was okay to admire the white nationalist propagandist, to want to include him in our tent.

At one point in their conversation, Ta-Nehisi spends some time talking about how he sees himself as a writer as part of his ancestry, and how that tradition is inseparable from his understanding of political violence in this country:

The fact of the matter is, as horrifying as the killing of Charlie Kirk was, and as horrifying as the feeling is in this moment, that we are in an era of political violence — and I don’t want to sound flip here. Political violence is the norm for the Black experience in this country. It just is. I don’t even mean like the Malcolm X, Martin Luther King variety of it — which is the norm, too.

You would be hard-pressed to have a conversation with a Black person in this country who is a descendant of slavery and not have them be able to tell you themselves: Look, my uncle, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, they lived in a small town in Mississippi, in Tennessee, in Alabama, and they got into some sort of dispute with a white man. Either they were lynched or we had to run.

Political violence runs through us. It is our heritage. Is that good? No. Do we valorize it? Absolutely not. Do we minimize it? Absolutely not.

But a life free of it is not a thing that’s really in reach in my time.

Klein responded:
Sometimes I think that having a historical scope that wide can make the present too deterministic.

And in that moment, I saw the play. I saw most visibly where our paths diverge, from journalists, intellectuals, pundits, and regular people trying to understand the world. The line between actively engaging with the history of this country and the desire to turn away from it, and to sanitize it. This is a play I am all too familiar with. 

When faced with the ugly truth of this country’s sins against communities of color, plenty of “well-meaning” liberals would rather avert their gaze and narrow the aperture of history. Using specific moments of violence (like Kirk’s murder) to further narratives on the perpetrators of said violence is a deliberate (and dangerous) choice. It constrains violence to specific moments against one specific group, in stark contrast to the long scope of political violence against multiple groups of color throughout our history. This twisting of history encourages an erasure of the very real lived experiences Black people have had (and continue to have) with racial terror.

Oddly enough, Coates’s acknowledgment of history (where we have been and what we have already endured) is precisely what allows him in the conversation to operate in a much more optimistic ideological positioning than Klein. Klein swan dives into the pessimism that many have attributed to Coates’s early work. It’s interesting to see them oscillate between fatalism, doomerism, and pessimism to land in a more realistic place at the end.

I finished the conversation thinking a lot about the backlash period that Klein touched on, and that I have seen many people talk about online. For many people of privilege, I think that they see cancel culture as the worst thing that can happen to them. Klein discusses some of the backlash over the last few years as the “politics of content moderation”, and laments about an unwillingness to engage “even opportunistically”. 

I actually do think we’re living in a backlash period of multiple movements, but I don’t see it in the same way that Klein does. I think the pendulum always swings back and forth.

Politically, I think that we’re in the backlash period of the Obama years and the Black Lives Matter movement. I think that becomes clear in the ways we’ve seen white nationalism normalized and platformed, and with people like Kirk becoming global martyrs. Quite often, I think that we are also dealing with the backlash from the #MeToo movement, when I reflect on how incel culture has been normalized and how so much discourse has shifted to prioritize the “male loneliness epidemic”. With all of the attacks on trans people and other members of the LGBT community, I think we’re dealing with backlash born purely out of hatred (of trans people wanting to live normal lives) and of the marriage equality wins. 

With all of that in mind, I land where Coates lands by the end of their conversation. I think we can actively choose to resist doomerism. I don’t think an unwillingness to engage with both sides is problematic because I firmly believe that we can get through this without sacrificing anyone in the process. I do not think we need to fight fascism with fascism.

And in light of the last few weeks, I do think we need to be a lot more honest and judicious about the people we choose to venerate. As Coates said, “I always think it’s important to differentiate how people die versus how they live.”