The securitisation of Islam: Covert racism and affect in the United States post-9/11

The securitisation of Islam

New Approaches to Conflict Analysis

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The securitisation of Islam

Covert racism and affect in the United States post-9/11

Clara Eroukhmanoff

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Clara Eroukhmanoff 2020

The right of Clara Eroukhmanoff to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

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ISBN 978 1 5261 2894 2 hardback

First published 2020

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Contents

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Introduction

1 Language and securitisation

2 Framing Islam as a non-security issue

3 Securitising Islam covertly

4 Counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in the United States

5 Classical versus quantum radicalisation

6 Affect, white victimhood and the denial of racism

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

It is difficult to describe the enormous generosity, support and guidance I have received along the way while writing this book. This book is a long time in the making; four years to be precise. I have enjoyed writing it more than I thought I would, perhaps because what comes with writing a book is assertiveness and confidence. This confidence, though, is in large part driven by my dismay at counterterrorism policy and the nefarious effects it has on certain communities. It also stems from conversations that I have had within and outside of academia about a pernicious logic that aims to prevent and pre-empt political violence in a society that, in my view, does not reflect enough on our own violent practices and fails to adequately address the underlying political and economic issues that allow violence to emerge. I have of course been influenced by the events taking place in the United States and the unleashing of a concerning rhetoric since Donald Trump took office. Writing about Trump and counterterrorism can be demoralising. I have watched, alongside millions of others, the explosion of an open chauvinism, racism and misogyny. Yet, when taking a step back, the racialised assumptions behind Trump's rhetoric are not new to this particular administration and I hope to have conveyed this in the book. What has helped me to navigate my way through the irritation caused by researching what some refer to as a ‘hot topic’ during a US administration like Trump's, was going back to my home, friends and colleagues who gave me a lot of hope about humans generally. For that, I owe them a considerable amount.

This book has brought me a lot of fulfilment and fun as a researcher. Having said that, it has also been one of the hardest tasks as an early career researcher, in particular when juggling with non-permanent teaching/research contracts and having to invest time and energy elsewhere, for example teaching many different courses at multiple universities at the same time. It is only when I obtained my first permanent contract at London South Bank University that the work for this book fully started. I want to start where it all began, at the University of St Andrews, by thanking the incredibly talented Karin Fierke. She is not only excellent on an academic level but she was a great support personally and emotionally throughout my time at St Andrews. I feel very lucky and privileged to have had the opportunity to work with her and holding her as my role model; getting to talk to her regularly brings me much pleasure. I remember the barbecues she would organise at her house in Kingsbarns with her dog Trixie, students and colleagues from St Andrews in an effort to develop friendships and collegiality, and it worked. This allowed all of us, ‘Fierke's students’, to get to know each other and to meet other scholars from the school as well as other universities, to understand the importance of connecting academically and to respect each other. I realised early on that I could speak to Karin about non-academic matters, which was a huge relief; I think it is fair to say that Karin practises an ethics of care with her students. I am also grateful to Karin for giving me the opportunity to work as her research assistant, doing research on the second edition of Critical Approaches to International Security. Lastly, I cannot overstate her devotion to being a committed colleague. Karin gave me a great amount of her time and has been a great mentor and teacher since I have known her, even when she was on research leave or when she was trying to ‘say no more often’.

At the University of St Andrews I also wish to thank Faye Donnelly, who gave me ample advice on chapters, job applications and other important life lessons. Her generous, rigorous and thoughtful feedback, as well as her moral support, are testament to her dedication to collegiality and the interests of peers. She has always been the first one to congratulate me on new posts and research published and has been a source of motivation to do well. I really enjoy our postcard communications, even if they are only twice a year! The School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews occupies a big place in my heart, for providing a truly engaging academic platform where students are treated as equal peers and are given the academic support needed for critical thinking. My first experience in teaching international relations at St Andrews was challenging and rewarding, and I hugely benefited from the brilliant conversations I had with students there, both within and outside the classroom. I had the privilege of knowing Nick Rengger. I will never forget his brilliance and his level of engagement with students from undergraduates to PhD level, and the strong community that he was able to nurture. I have incredible memories of his seminars on ‘Being a social scientist’ where the class would sit silently in awe at his infinite intellectual knowledge. I will remember him as the heart and soul of the School of International Relations at St Andrews. I also have to thank Thierry Balzacq, who encouraged me to carry on with this research and opened up possibilities to work together. As a ‘second generation securitisation theorist’ (if I may put Thierry in this category), this meant a lot!

I have to mention other key people at St Andrews who have impacted on me as a writer and who enabled me to write this book in the long run: Caron Gentry, Richard English, Holger Stritzel, Taryn Sheppherd, Tony Lang, Peter Lehr and Jasmine Gani. I want to give an immense thank you to the postgraduate community and some of the staff at St Andrews, most notably Elsa Poissonnet, Gillian Brunton, Gillian Fleming and Matthew Funaoile, and Catherine Foley, Simon Taylor, Yoav Galai, Antonio di Badgio, Andreas Papamichail, Natasha Saunders, Kieran McConaghy, Philippe Beaulieu-Brossard and (importantly) Bernardo Teles Fazendeiro, with whom I shared an office and engaged in stimulating debates. Bernardo, we do not always share the same ideas, but I truly respect and appreciate our friendship. A special thank you to Hannah Partis-Jennings, who I met in Scotland and really got to know at a conference in Bristol when we both tried to escape our cheap accommodations (one for cleanliness, the other for having jungle playing all night) and thanks to her dad's generosity ended up staying at a decent hotel instead. Hannah has been one of my dearest friends since. I did not know I was going to form such a strong friendship in academia, and I am so grateful to Hannah for making me grow, eat mindfully, practise yoga and do breathing exercises before stressful moments. Having her as part of my life, as a friend and colleague, is truly a gift.

This research would also not have been possible without the help of the British International Studies Association and my co-convenors of the Working Group on Emotions in Politics and IR, Naomi Head and Amanda Russell Beattie. Setting up this group opened up a space for talking more freely about the role of emotions and affect in an insecure discipline that often rejects subversion and transgression. Naomi and Amanda are such a pleasure to work with and I am very grateful that I got to meet them; getting to shape an exciting research agenda together is wonderful.

At the University of Edinburgh I must not forget the help, advice and support I received from John Peterson and Alan Convery, the team behind the British Journal of Politics and International Relations. I gained a lot of publishing, editing and managing skills working there and keep fond memories of our Monday meetings. This training has so far been fruitful and hope it continues! I am also appreciative to John for giving me the opportunity to teach my first US foreign policy course at the University of Edinburgh and for developing a love–hate relationship with this subject. Teaching this course has shaped my own research in ways that John is probably not aware of.

Although I was at Royal Holloway for less than a year as a teaching fellow, I was incredibly lucky to work with Michelle Bentley, who was and is still a great mentor to me. She taught me valuable lessons as a female scholar in a male-dominated discipline and profession, and her strength (a source of inspiration) and support during my time at Royal Holloway had a huge influence on me. This book would probably not exist if not for her help with the proposal; she read many chapters and encouraged me along the way.

Last but not least, I wish to thank the School of Law and Social Sciences of London South Bank University (LSBU), for encouraging me to publish research that was valuable to me and not to be scared to investigate and explore objects of study that might not be considered international relations. LSBU is a small family composed of an interdisciplinary team of incredible scholars and teachers like Federica Rossi, for whom I uphold an immense respect and admiration for her political commitment and activism in everyday life; Shaminder Takhar, my co-lead of the Race, Gender and Sexualities research group; Rahid Aziz, who is a good laugh on a Friday (and other days!); Esmorie Miller, who motivated me to finish this book in the latter stages; Head of Division Adrian Budd, whose Marxist spirit and humour in meetings lightens the mood; Daniela Lai for making a huge difference to the division when she joined LSBU in 2018 and who goes beyond her role in the division every day; Charlotte Clements, who joined LSBU and tried to make sense of the course directorship with me; the geographers of LSBU who show up to my talks and always offer feedback that is on point; Kate Donington, Jaya Gajparia, Lisa Pine, Chris Magill, and also Hitendra Solanki for enlightening me about mindful teaching. I thank Caitriona Beaumont, the Head of Research, who always offers sound advice about publishing and who rightly makes a point about staff not working outside of working hours. I must of course pay tribute to her wonderful, colourful and extremely organised emails! I could not ask for more wonderful colleagues, really. I also want to mention the students of LSBU, who have kept me busy but who remind me every day why I do this job and what teaching is all about.

Finally, thank you to my family – to my mum and dad, and my sisters – without whom this book would not have seen the light of day. Although I am part of a family that leans towards ‘hard sciences’ and has (unrecognised) positivist assumptions – this creates lively debates at Christmas – their love for research and education, and not to mention their financial support, was the reason why I decided to pursue academia. I must also thank my partner, Patrick, who has been with me from the beginning, who is patient and supports me when I have to work late and who grounds me by reminding me that living outside of academia and work is important. And of course, thank you to all my friends in different parts of the world who have supported and heard me talk about language, emotions and securitisation for about seven or eight years, and who have proofread my work. Especial thanks to Sarah D. Jones for being always my best friend; to my best ones in Paris – Marine Pauly, Elsa Bourdier, Agathe Culot and Clara Piaton de Turkheim; to Lauren Terrell; to the Scottish crew – Minna Harshbarger, Phil Long, Isla and Emma, Graham Prentice and Nina Maley, Julie and Scott Thompson; Ianthe Hylton, Alex Hale, Jeremy Gatz-Miller, Claire Soustiel and Ben Harris for sending me music when I was uninspired and who taught me what an Epicurean lifestyle was about, to Rosie Lowe for talking therapy with me and getting to know myself better, and finally to the women of my sister circle.

Abbreviations

Introduction

This book is about the securitisation of Islam in the United States from the Bush to the Trump administration. It explores the ways in which the securitisation is legitimised and felt when President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama and even President Donald J. Trump securitise through deception and covert language rather than by mobilising a security grammar of existential threats. This book is also about the consequences of using covert forms of hate speech to securitise minority groups and the ways in which everyday racism is linked to security, as well as the emotions and affect imparted when covert racism like the indirect securitisation of minority groups circulates.

It is perhaps surprising to argue that Islam has been securitised somewhat indirectly when someone like Donald Trump is President of the United States and when the expression ‘Islamic terrorism’, rejected by Barack Obama but reintroduced by Donald Trump, associates Islam and terrorism as if there was a natural connection between the two, or to put it differently, when Islam has become synonymous with violence in the minds of most Americans (Gottschalk and Greenberg 2008, 4). However, this book demonstrates that apart from a few unintended faux pas such as George W. Bush's misguided use of ‘crusade’ in 2001, the official administration discourse has relied on indirect language and deception to convey the idea that Islam is enemy number one. Obama (in Diaz 2016) had renounced the use of the term ‘Islamic terrorism’ for fear of lumping terrorists and fellow citizens together. For President Trump, who digresses from most linguistic rules of the office of president and who was vocal about Muslims during his election campaign, is also not immune to indirect language. By exploring the notion of ‘indirect securitisation’ this book simultaneously addresses some of the conceptual weaknesses in Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde's (who I collectively refer to as ‘the Copenhagen School [CS]) securitisation theory that emerge from ‘direct securitisations’.

I sketch the beginning of a theory of indirect securitisation by accounting for the covert ways in which Islam has been securitised linguistically and emotionally by securitising actors with symbolic power in the US, such as the political elite and the security-intelligence community. Indirect securitisations occur when securitising actors rely on indirect speech acts to convey a securitising message, which enables them to ‘save face’ if the securitisation fails. Indirectness not only provides an interesting twist to securitisation theory, but it is also fundamental to how democratic political leaders legitimise to the public the security measures placed on minority groups. Securitising minorities with a direct and explicit language may result in a societal backlash and ultimately in a loss of legitimacy and credibility for security speakers. Actors will therefore often be incentivised to use covert utterances, relying on a language of amity rather than enmity, and thus coating their speech in indirectness. The argument of this book speaks to studies on hate speech and in particular to Mendelberg's (2001) norm of racial equality, a norm guiding political leaders since the civil rights movement that to some extent hinder slanting minorities overtly in public. Because of the norm of racial equality, the political elite resort to codewords, and covert forms of hate speech are displaced to avoid a civil rights outcry. Indirect securitisations respond to this norm in a context where Muslim communities are increasingly perceived as a security problem.

Donald Trump, who during his 2016 presidential election campaign called for ‘extreme vetting’, ‘ideological screening tests’ and a ‘complete shutdown of Muslims entering the country’, and who gained recognition for ‘telling it like it is’, continued to use covert forms of securitisation once in the Oval Office. Indirect speech acts allow Donald Trump to claim that Islamophobia is a ‘shame’ (Pramuk 2016) and that he is ‘the least racist person’ (Scott 2016). The work by Jennifer Saul on deniability and what she terms ‘fig leaves’ is evidence that we should not simply reject Trump's interjections as careless accidents or simple bluntness. Trump's utterances, as Saul (2016, 16) argues, may be horrifying but they are also carefully constructed manoeuvres to enable a measure of deniability, which function as fig leaves – that is, utterances ‘covering (slightly) for an otherwise socially unacceptable attitude’. An example of a fig leaf is Trump's assertion that Mexicans are rapists but that ‘some, I assume, are good people’, which is meant to reassure that he is not racist since he has not condemned all members of the group concerned (Saul 2016). Fig leaves and indirect language are powerful insofar as they shift our societal norms about what is permissible to say in public (Saul 2016, 16). In the end, utterances like ‘Mexicans are rapists’ or those that assign blame for the violence perpetrated by Islamic terrorism on ‘an extreme part of Muslims’ become the sort of things that a non-racist might say.¹

The first goal of this book is to unpack how political actors can both securitise Islam and simultaneously declare that ‘Islam is not a threat’ or that ‘Islamophobia is a shame’. While some may argue that politicians just lie and that what they say should simply not be trusted, this book takes the view that language matters in world politics and that there are nuances in language, between lying and misleading for instance, that have a real impact on the perception of minority groups in a post-9/11 world. To a certain extent, indirect speech acts are a way for actors to have their cake and eat it too by securitising an issue without being considered to be securitising actors. To put it differently, indirectly securitising minority groups in a context where there is a norm of racial equality – albeit perhaps one that is eroding with a president like Trump in power – enables speakers and audiences to think and maintain that they are ‘not racist’.

Indirect securitisations thus yield significant results for elite speakers and constitute important strategic devices in the elites’ playbook. This form of doublespeak raises important questions of accountability and ethics for actors who decide to make political issues security emergencies and should therefore be explored seriously. It is even more important at a time when the president of the United States unleashes horrors about the danger of Muslim people and diffuses racism in a way that can avoid accusations of racism. Now that President Trump has reinforced anti-Muslim sentiments, the President and his administration can reassure the world that Islamophobic policies such as the ‘Muslim ban’ are not actually against Muslims, thus alleviating people's fear of being charged with cultural racism.

The second goal of this book is to unpack the affective processes implicated in the indirect securitisation of Islam, and by extension in covert forms of hate speech. The argument here is that indirect securitisations impede securitising actors and audiences from feeling the securitisation or feeling that they partake in everyday racism, thereby removing individuals from the effect of counterterrorism (CT) practices. I hope to offer new avenues of research about how indirect securitisations transform the ways in which we are affectively embedded in the everyday practices of CT. What type of emotional knowledge do indirect securitisations create and leave in the world? How are we, as audiences, emotionally connected to the securitised threat? And how, in turn, are securitising actors emotionally embedded in their securitising practice? Lastly, what kind of affective practices do indirect securitisations mediate and how do we negotiate them? These are some of the questions Chapter 6 attempts to grapple with.

The focus on the affective process of indirect securitisations is an effort to reconcile two traditions that are usually separated in international relations (IR): a postmodern emphasis on epistemology through the analysis of language and how regimes of truth are created, sustained, reproduced or deconstructed, and a corporeal emphasis on the ontology of emotions, movement, the body and affect, which can illuminate how human beings interact with the world in which they live. Since the 2000s, a shift to the ‘corporeal turn’, or ‘emotional turn’, has been underway and successfully shone light on postmodern approaches which have been remarkably disembodied (Solomon 2015). Yet, separating the realm of the mind, autonomy and consciousness from the affective flow of movement and bodies reifies the Cartesian split between mind and body and reproduces a property dualism between mental and physical phenomena.

Hence, what this book attempts to do is to corporealise language and re-entangle linguistic practices and their effects with how they are experienced through the body. Instead of taking a view that reinforces a separation between language and the body or the mind and emotions, I show how indirect securitisations are produced and lived, and how they emotionally guide us towards certain practices. The conclusion I reach about the current situation is somewhat pessimistic. Indirect securitisations remove and distance individuals from feeling the work of securitisation, for instance the suffering created from discriminating against a minority group. The last part of the book aims to recapture the affective registers of indirect speech acts and the ways in which they are emotionally lived by securitising actors and audiences. To offset some of the emotional detachments of indirect securitisations, I advance a quantum view of (counter-)radicalisation, based on the work of Alexander Wendt and efforts by Fierke (2017) and others to translate what a quantum social science might mean concretely for the experience of