Donald Trump, Twitter, and Islamophobia: The End of Dignity in Presidential Rhetoric About Terrorism

Rubin, Gabriel

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-30167-5_4

Donald Trump, Twitter, and Islamophobia: The End of Dignity in Presidential Rhetoric About Terrorism

Gabriel Rubin²

Chapter
First Online: 22 March 2020

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4 Citations

Abstract

Donald Trump’s rhetoric is markedly different than that of just about every other American president. Trump’s speeches on terrorism and his related Islamophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric are examined in this chapter. Trump’s use of Twitter and view of the presidency as a “permanent campaign” keep his followers in a state of near-permanent mobilization. Trump uses the rhetoric of fear to push his followers against Muslims and immigrants by linking terrorism to both groups. As Jeffrey Tulis opines, Trump is America’s first demagogue. This chapter highlights how Trump’s demagoguery and novel method for communicating with his followers has framed the terror threat and, in turn, eroded American society. Trump’s view of the terrorist as “Other” has also created a large blind spot where domestic terrorism is concerned.

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Notes

1.
Rubin, Gabriel, Freedom and Order: How Democratic Governments Restrict Civil Liberties After Terrorist Attacks—and Why Sometimes They Don’t (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011).
2.
Rubin, Jennifer, “Demonizing Muslims and immigrants leads to predictable results,” The Washington Post, 15 March 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/15/demonizing-muslims-immigrants-leads-predictable-results/?utm_term=.057484695382.
3.
Johnson, Jenna and Abigail Hauslohner, “‘I think Islam hates us’: A timeline of Trump’s comments about Islam and Muslims,” The Washington Post, 20 May 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/20/i-think-islam-hates-us-a-timeline-of-trumps-comments-about-islam-and-muslims/?utm_term=.f86c54c048f9.
4.
@realdonaldtrump, Twitter, 18 January 2019.
5.
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6.
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7.
Pogge, Thomas, “Dignity and Global Justice” in Duwell, Marcus, Jens Braarvig, Roger Brownsword, and Dietmar Mieth eds., The Cambridge Handbook of Dignity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 477–483.
8.
To wit, Jeremy Bentham calls them “nonsense on stilts” (see Bentham, Jeremy, Rights, Representation, and Reform: Nonsense upon Stilts and Other Writings on the French Revolution, Schofield, Philip, Catherine Pease-Watkin, and Cyprian Blamires eds. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 330.
9.
Tulis, Jeffrey K., The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), p. 224.
10.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 88.
11.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 89.
12.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 91.
13.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 93.
14.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 226.
15.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, pp. 229–230.
16.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 231.
17.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 232.
18.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 233.
19.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 234.
20.
Osnos, Evan, “Trump vs. ‘The Deep State,’” The New Yorker, 14 May 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/21/trump-vs-the-deep-state.
21.
This comment was made by Jesse Norris at the Law and Society Association’s 2018 Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada.
22.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, pp. 225, 228.
23.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 224.
24.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 234.
25.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 229.
26.
Kernell, Samuel, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007), p. 228.
27.
Kernell, Going Public, p. 229.
28.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 230.
29.
Kernell, Going Public, p. 56.
30.
Kernell, Going Public, p. 14.
31.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 226.
32.
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, p. 229; Signer, Michael, Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy from Its Worst Enemies (New York: St. Martin’s, 2009).
33.
@realdonaldtrump, Twitter, 22 October 2018a.
34.
@realdonaldtrump, Twitter, 22 October 2018b.
35.
Rosenberg, Eli and Kayla Epstein, “President Trump targets Rep. Ilhan Omar with a video of twin towers burning,” The Washington Post, 13 April 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/13/president-trump-targets-rep-ilhan-omar-with-video-twin-towers-burning/?utm_term=.6157a00af16b.
36.
Qiu, Linda, “Study Pershing, Trump Said. But the Story Doesn’t Add Up,” The New York Times, 17 August 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/us/politics/trump-tweet-pershing-fact-check.html.
37.
@realdonaldtrump, Twitter, 14 July 2019.
38.
Klaas, Brian, “A short history of President Trump’s anti-Muslim bigotry,” The Washington Post, 15 March 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/15/short-history-president-trumps-anti-muslim-bigotry/?utm_term=.75dc4467b0c7.
39.
Needless to say, developed countries such as America, Canada, and those in the European Union do not list “religion” on birth certificates.
40.
Johnson and Hauslohner, “‘I think Islam hates us.’”
41.
Johnson and Hauslohner, “‘I think Islam hates us.’”
42.
Johnson and Hauslohner, “‘I think Islam hates us.’”
43.
Johnson and Hauslohner, “‘I think Islam hates us.’”
44.
Waikar, Prashant, “Reading Islamophobia in Hegemonic Neoliberalism Through a Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s Narratives,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 38: 2, p. 165.
45.
As Juan Cole writes, “In reality, Muslim-Americans are remarkably well integrated into this country and have committed little terrorism here” (Cole, “Hating Muslims in the Age of Trump”). Marc Sageman finds the same in his review of jihadist terrorism (Sageman, Marc, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), chapter 5).
46.
Waikar, “Reading Islamophobia in Hegemonic Neoliberalism Through a Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s Narratives,” p. 164.
47.
Khan, Mohsin Hassan, Hamedia Mohd Adnan, Surinderpal Kaur, Rashid Ali Khuhro, Rohail Asghar, and Sahira Jabeen, “Muslims’ Representation in Donald Trump’s Anti-Muslim-Islam Statement: A Critical Discourse Analysis,” Religions 10: 2 (February 2019), p. 7.
48.
DiMaggio, Anthony R., Selling War, Selling Hope: Presidential Rhetoric, the News Media, and U.S. Foreign Policy Since 9/11 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015), pp. 196–197.
49.
Khan et al., “Muslims’ Representation in Donald Trump’s Anti-Muslim-Islam Statement,” p. 20.
50.
Khan et al., “Muslims’ Representation in Donald Trump’s Anti-Muslim-Islam Statement,” p. 17.
51.
Southern Poverty Law Center, “Center for Security Policy,” https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/center-security-policy.
52.
Waikar, “Reading Islamophobia in Hegemonic Neoliberalism Through a Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s Narratives,” p. 163.
53.
Waikar, “Reading Islamophobia in Hegemonic Neoliberalism Through a Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s Narratives,” p. 163.
54.
The database consists of all presidential speeches about terrorism since 9/11. It looks to see which themes are present in each speech. The database was compiled by the author and his research assistants. A speech is counted as being about terrorism if it includes some variation on the word “terror” three times. The database does not include all statements by these presidents—only formal speeches delivered while the person was in power. That said, other speeches are examined here as case studies.
55.
Hassan, Oz, “Trump, Islamophobia and US-Middle East relations,” Critical Studies on Security 5: 2 (July 2017), p. 189.
56.
Bayoumi, Moustafa, “The Drowning Years: To be Muslim and American in the Age of Trump is to live in a state of constant dread,” The Nation, January 2018, p. 15.
57.
Johnson and Hauslohner, “‘I think Islam hates us.’”
58.
Klaas, “A short history of President Trump’s anti-Muslim bigotry”; Bayoumi, “The Drowning Years”; Johnson and Hauslohner, “‘I think Islam hates us.’”
59.
Timmons, Heather, “Trump’s New Zealand Shooting Response Doesn’t Use the Word Muslim,” Quartz, 15 March 2019, https://qz.com/1574282/trumps-new-zealand-shooting-response-doesnt-use-the-word-muslim/.
60.
Hassan, “Trump, Islamophobia and US-Middle East relations,” p. 188.
61.
Waikar, “Reading Islamophobia in Hegemonic Neoliberalism Through a Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s Narratives,” p. 167.
62.
Waikar, “Reading Islamophobia in Hegemonic Neoliberalism Through a Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s Narratives,” p. 167.
63.
Waikar, “Reading Islamophobia in Hegemonic Neoliberalism Through a Discourse Analysis of Donald Trump’s Narratives,” p. 154.
64.
Hilal, Maha, “Trump’s Year in Islamophobia: Five ways the administration has waged war on Muslims at home and abroad in its first year,” Institute for Policy Studies, 21 December 2017, https://ips-dc.org/trumps-year-islamophobia/.
65.
Hilal, “Trump’s Year in Islamophobia.”
66.
Cole, Juan, “Hating Muslims in the Age of Trump,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 37: 2 (November/December 2018), pp. 53–70.
67.
Muaddi, Nadeem, “The Bush-era Muslim registry failed. Yet the US could be trying it again,” CNN.com, 22 December 2016, https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/18/politics/nseers-muslim-database-qa-trnd/index.html.
68.
Cole, “Hating Muslims in the Age of Trump”; Rush, Nayla, “Refugee Resettlement Admissions in FY 2018,” Center for Immigration Studies, 1 October 2018, https://cis.org/Rush/Refugee-Resettlement-Admissions-FY-2018.
69.
Hilal, “Trump’s Year in Islamophobia.”
70.
Pillar, Paul R., “Drone Damage: Why Trump’s Terror Tactics Could Be Costly,” The National Interest blog, 14 March 2019, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/drone-damage-why-trumps-terror-tactics-could-be-costly-47522. Note: Maha Hilal cites a “fivefold” increase in drone strikes under Trump which available data could not verify.
71.
Cupp, S.E., “Turns out, Trump loves drones: And too few Americans are focused in the least on his administration’s escalation of Obama’s shadow war,” Tribune News Agency, 8 May 2019, https://tribunecontentagency.com/article/turns-out-trump-loves-drones-and-too-few-americans-are-focused-in-the-least-on-his-administrations-escalation-of-obamas-shadow-war/.
72.
Hilal, “Trump’s Year in Islamophobia.”
73.
Hilal, “Trump’s Year in Islamophobia.”
74.
Hilal, “Trump’s Year in Islamophobia.”
75.
This statement is largely true. Though Trump has, on very rare occasions, including on May 21, 2017, noted the plight of Muslim victims of terrorism.
76.
Bayoumi, “The Drowning Years,” p. 14.
77.
Muller, Karsten and Carlo Schwarz, “Making America Hate Again? Twitter and Hate Crime Under Trump,” March 30, 2018, available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3149103 or https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3149103, p. 2.
78.
Rosenberg and Epstein, “President Trump targets Rep. Ilhan Omar with a video of twin towers burning.”
79.
Hussain, Murtaza and Maryam Saleh, “Bigoted Election Campaigns, Not Terror Attacks, Drive Anti-Muslim Activities,” The Intercept, 11 March 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/03/11/anti-muslim-activities-politics-terrorism-islamophobia/.
80.
Orr, Gabby and Burgess Everett, “Trump’s Field-Tested Strategy: Whip Up a Frenzy, Then Disavow,” Politico, 18 July 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/18/trumps-rally-send-her-back-1422348.
81.
Cole, “Hating Muslims in the Age of Trump.”
82.
Bayoumi, “The Drowning Years,” p. 15.
83.
Kelley, Colleen Elizabeth, Post-9/11 American Presidential Rhetoric: A Study of Protofascist Discourse (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 160.
84.
Hodges, The “War on Terror” Narrative, pp. 77, 79.
85.
Tirman, John, “In the Bush Presidency: How Many Died?,” https://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/HOW%20MANY%20DIED,%20BUSH.html (a version of this article appeared in The Nation on February 16, 2009).
86.
Klaidman, Daniel, Kill or Capture: The War on Terrorism and the Soul of the Obama Presidency (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2012), pp. 74–75.
87.
Obama, Barack, “Remarks by the President at the 2015 Iftar Dinner,” 22 June 2015, and Obama, Barack, “Remarks by the President at Cairo University, 06-04-09,” 4 June 2009, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-cairo-university-6-04-09.
88.
See DiMaggio, Selling War, Selling Hope, Chap. 3.
89.
LoBianco, Tom, “Donald Trump on Terrorists: Take out their families,” CNN.com, 3 December 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-terrorists-families/index.html, and Danner, Chas, “Trump makes needless threat to ‘end’ Iran,” NYmag.com, 19 May 2019, http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/trump-makes-needless-threat-to-end-iran.html.
90.
see Baker, Peter and Eric Schmitt, “The Whimpering Terrorist only Trump Seems to Have Heard,” The New York Times, 1 November 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/us/politics/trump-isis-leader-baghdadi.html.
91.
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92.
Ahmed, Akbar, The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013), p. 1.
93.
Segarra, Lisa Marie, “Watch John McCain Strongly Defend Barack Obama During the 2008 Campaign,” Time.com, 25 August 2018, http://time.com/4866404/john-mccain-barack-obama-arab-cancer/.
94.
Rubin, “Demonizing Muslims and immigrants leads to predictable results.”
95.
Rubin, Freedom and Order.
96.
Muller and Schwarz, “Making America Hate Again?,” p. 2.
97.
The Economist, “Learning to Live with It,” The Economist, 3 September 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/international/21706250-people-are-surprisingly-good-coping-repeated-terrorist-attacks-america-and.
98.
Rucker, Philip, “‘How do you stop these people?’: Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric looms over El Paso massacre,” Washington Post, 4 August 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-do-you-stop-these-people-trumps-anti-immigrant-rhetoric-looms-over-el-paso-massacre/2019/08/04/62d0435a-b6ce-11e9-a091-6a96e67d9cce_story.html?utm_term=.463373803145&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1.

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Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, USA
Gabriel Rubin

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Rubin, G. (2020). Donald Trump, Twitter, and Islamophobia: The End of Dignity in Presidential Rhetoric About Terrorism. In: Presidential Rhetoric on Terrorism under Bush, Obama and Trump. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30167-5_4

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30167-5_4
Published: 22 March 2020
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-030-30167-5
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