Portside

After the January 6 attack, federal surveillance programs expanded to counter white supremacist violence have made Black and brown communities their main target.

"Without meaningful accountability for that member's actions, we risk normalizing this behavior and endangering the lives of our Muslim colleagues, Muslim staffers, and every Muslim who calls America home," said Rep. Ayanna Pressley.

Trump’s new Muslim Ban order attempts to “provide some evidence” by giving reasons for why each of the countries were targeted for the ban, as well as why he is suspending the refugee program. He proffers two incidents in which refugees were convicted on terrorism related charges. What Trump fails to disclose is that in each case the “terrorism” in question was concocted by the FBI, as part of a sting operation.

Already Trump is super-charging U.S. militarism, gutting diplomacy, and punishing the victims of wars Washington started. Donald Trump signed an executive order regarding refugees and entry to the U.S. for a whole swathe of people. In effect, the edict would be aimed at banning Muslims from the United States, demonizing people from Muslim-majority countries across the Middle East and North Africa.

We must include migrants and refugees in the people, politically and institutionally in the sense of full social and political rights but also ideologically in the terms of how we define the “us vs. them” in our societies. We need to redefine the people –or even the “nation”– as the unity in struggle of all the subaltern classes. This is an answer to “identity politics” than chauvinism in the name of “secularism," and an answer to neo-liberal cosmopolitanism.