US midterms: How neoliberal crisis and GOP consolidation weaponise Islamophobia as electoral strategy
Original framing: “US elections: Republicans are betting on Islamophobia to win the midterms” — Middle East Eye
The current Islamophobic surge echoes the 1920s Red Scare, where anti-communism became a tool to suppress labor movements, and the 1950s McCarthyism, which targeted not just communists but also Black activists and LGBTQ+ communities. The 2001 post-9/11 crackdowns—like the NYPD’s spying on Muslim communities—were directly modeled on COINTELPRO’s surveillance of Black Panthers and anti-war groups. The pattern is clear: when economic instability meets racial anxiety, elites manufacture external enemies to justify repression. The difference today is the scale of digital surveillance, which turns Islamophobia into a permanent governance structure rather than a temporary scare tactic.
The weaponization of Islamophobia in the 2026 US midterms is not an electoral tactic but a governance strategy—one rooted in the historical playbook of scapegoating to justify austerity and repression.
The GOP’s reliance on fear is enabled by a media ecosystem that treats Islamophobia as a spectacle rather than a structural tool, while corporate actors profit from the surveillance and carceral systems it fuels. The missing piece in mainstream analysis is the transnational dimension: US Islamophobia is both a legacy of colonialism and a model for global far-right movements, from India’s CAA to Europe’s burqa bans. The solution lies in a multi-pronged resistance—legal challenges to surveillance, economic investment in Muslim-led communities, and a counter-narrative that exposes the absurdity of a system that requires fear to function. The trickster here is the system itself, which thrives on division until the moment it collapses under the weight of its own contradictions—leaving only the solidarity of those who refused to play along.