Have you seen the ruling classes’ latest ploy for holding onto power rather than allow the public to hold them accountable through straightforward and honest elections? It’s clear as day to anyone with eyes to see. And the fact that the powerful now operate as much within the “MAGA” brand as in the Democratic establishment shouldn’t blind us. If we let it, then even some of the best of us will soon be taken in – becoming useful idiots for the same ruling classes that the MAGA movement was founded to oppose.
I’m referring to the new game of stirring up hatred against our neighbors of Middle-Eastern and Eastern heritage and labeling all dissenters against U.S.- and Israeli-led wars and war crimes as “radicals” and “communists.”
We see this new establishment ploy playing out in the latest anti-establishment electoral victory in Michigan, especially when it comes to the rhetoric surrounding Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed – an outspoken critic of Israeli-U.S. foreign policy and of the military-industrial-complex Trumpism originally presented itself as being against.
GOP Senator Ted Cruz and maniacal pro-war Trump advisor Laura Loomer say El-Sayed’s primary victory represents the beginning of a “communist takeover of the Democratic Party” and (at the same time!) an “Islamic takeover of America” at large.
GOP Rep. Nancy Mace flatly says El-Sayed is a “terrorist.” Conservative CNN commentator Scott Jennings: “This man wants Israelis, Arabs, Americans & anyone else who steps foot in Israel to die.” Mike Pompeo: El-Sayed is a “Hamas supporter” (in fact the candidate has condemned Hamas). Neocon John Podhoretz came up with a particularly telling conflation of Democratic Socialists of America and Muslims, calling El-Sayed a “DSA jihadist.”
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump says El-Sayed is both a communist and a candidate who “hates Jews” and “hates Israel.” Trump also continually draws attention to the candidate’s name – clearly making the point that a person with such an un-American name (as if there were such a thing) has no business in office.
Trump is perhaps one of the more inadvertently honest of the public figures now serving as slavish lackeys of the ruling classes. At least he names Israel as the thing on behalf of which he opposes El-Sayed – though he also engages in the old false conflation of all Jews with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s corrupt and unpopular government.
Because yes, all of this fomenting of hatred is about one thing: U.S.-Israeli violence and crimes – especially against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
But here’s where those of us with eyes to see can find the whole point and the whole nature of this new ploy: Since that violence has proved to be morally indefensible (every poll shows the public’s moral outrage against Israel’s U.S.-funded genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing operation in the West Bank), the ruling classes have directed their servants – in the media, among advocacy groups, in Congress, and even in the White House – to instead simply stir up public hate and fear against Muslims as Jihadists and against political resistance as communist and inherently un-American.
As With All True Top-Down Ops, This Ploy is ‘Bipartisan’
One of the surest signs we’re looking at a top-down, artificial propaganda effort to defend the pro-war uniparty or the Deep State is the fact that Establishment Democrats are just as vehemently onboard with the op as the so-called “MAGA” commentators are.
Corporate news anchors are suggesting El-Sayed is a threat to “the future of the state of Israel” in interviews with his defeated opponent, self-described “Zionist Democrat” Haley Stevens. The Democratic establishment strenuously opposed him in the primary. There’s even a pro-Israel astroturfed “Democrats for Mike Rogers” campaign set up to defeat him in the general.
We saw similar Democratic behavior in the recent election of anti-war Democratic New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. It may not come as a tremendous surprise that he’s been openly attacked by MAGA talking heads in ways that would be unthinkable if applied to Italians, Irishmen, or Jews. And even the open references to his “Jihadism” and baseless warnings that he harbors a genocidal hatred of Jews and poses a threat to Western civilization wouldn’t be so troubling if they weren’t so grotesquely tied to the superficial aspects of his ethnicity and religion. Photos still go viral among MAGA influencers of Mamdani wearing a traditional kurta along with comments suggesting the mere sight of something suggesting ethnic difference is inherently threatening to our nation.
But in his race against Mamdani, Democrat Andrew Cuomo showed Mamdani in an ad eating rice with his hand, Indian-fashion, with an AI-generated supporter shouting “globalize the intifada” while setting fire to an American flag – a Palestinian flag flying proudly in the background.
As their behavior in both New York and Michigan show, establishment Democrats are capable of being just as openly bigoted when it comes to defending the interests of their masters.
The Good News: Inshallah, It Won’t Work
No serious person could mistake me for a socialist. I disagree with the economics of El-Sayed and Mamdani as much as any other conservative, and as a Roman Catholic I certainly don’t share their Muslim faith. But their policies, their religion, and their criticism of Israel does not make them “un-American” – let alone “terroists.” In fact, it’s suggestions like that that come closer to an attack on the true American way of life, which is characterized by honest public engagement with fellow citizens, by forthright debate, and by love of neighbor.
When I look into the immediate political future, a phrase comes to mind that I have become familiar with in my visits to the Holy Land and surrounding regions: Inshallah – a brief prayer meaning simply “God-willing” or “if God wills it.” As my friend and Vulnerable People Project colleague Khalil Sayegh can attest as a Christian from Gaza, both Muslims and Christians – and in fact even atheists – throughout the Arab-speaking world utter this phrase regularly.
It’s not only harmless, but it’s pious – and its pervasiveness is the mark of a culture in which piety is still deeply engrained, and we hope it one day will be again in American public discourse.
But – you guessed it – saying this prayer is one of the many things that could get you labeled an enemy of your own nation if we allow ourselves to be manipulated into operating by the rules of the ruling classes’ ploy:
But for now, the future looks far from hopeless.
El-Sayed just defeated Haley Stevens in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary this week. That’s despite the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spending a record-breaking $30,000,000 to boost his Democratic establishment opponent, Haley Stevens. (A huge majority of Jewish voters, by the way, oppose AIPAC spending money raised predominantly on the right to influence Democratic primaries – so this top-down effort to tip a free election is a scandal in itself.)
Why did El-Sayed succeed? Because his supporters backed him in large part for his unbending opposition to the violent elite that we all, whatever our political background, increasingly want to throw off. And they saw through the ploy that calls all dissenters either “Jihadists” or “communists.” And I mean all dissenters – even those whose main complaints are just the domestic outcomes of those military blunders. Do you have a problem with gas and grocery prices spiking due to the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran? Then the propagandists for the ruling classes will likely label you an Islamist or a communist (they use the two, nonsensically, almost interchangeably).
So if we take seriously our moral duty to oppose the bloodshed our ruling classes have forced us into complicity with by our taxpayer dollars, then we will not be taken in. We will stand in solidarity with the vulnerable – the victims of our past failures to hold warmongers accountable at the ballot box and in the court of public opinion. And the ruling classes’ ploy won’t work on us this time. Inshallah!
Sadly Thomas Massie succumbed to AIPAC’s influence…