Fear and Loathing in America after 9/11: Terrorism, Racism, and the Need for New Beginnings

Abstract

No single event has dominated an American decade the way the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 have for the 2000s, at least not for a very long time. Completely surprising most Americans, the attacks seemed to signal a rupture from the easy living and prosperity of the past decade and an entry into darker and more difficult times. The attacks became occasions for grief and mourning, self-reflection and self-absorption, paranoia, jingoism, dissent, and new kinds of racisms along with elaborate clampdowns on civil liberties. By 2010, fear of Muslim Americans had escalated to the point where a proposed Islamic cultural center to be built in lower Manhattan became a divisive public issue across the nation. This essay charts some of the contemporary opposition to Muslim Americans and Muslim immigration to the United States and suggests that American traditions of nativism and paranoia have played a role in the conservative rhetoric often heard in the United States today. The essay concludes by examining the possibilities and limitations of cultural production to forge greater understanding in times of political conflict.