Dima Khalidi's Jacobin Op-Ed
/
The following piece was published in Jacobin Magazine on December 26, 2016. Click here to view the full article.
Op-Ed: With Friends Like Bannon
By Dima Khalidi
There is much uncertainty about what a Trump presidency will mean. On one point, however, the signs are clear: the next four years will see increased attacks on Muslim and other minority communities at home, hawkish support for Israel abroad, and a disdain for our right to criticize any of it.
Consider his appointments: white nationalist Steve Bannon has risen to chief strategist; Frank Gaffney, an Islamophobic conspiracy theorist who peddled the Obama-as-secret-Muslim story and claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood is infiltrating the United States, will help pick Trump’s national security advisers; and an uninhibited Islamophobe who called the religion a “cancer” — retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn — will become national security adviser, a position “so influential that some have called it the White House’s second chief of staff.”