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Someday, we will get through this, and the regime will have fallen. We will look over the wreckage and the bodies, and people will still be asking, “How? How did this happen?” They will want sanitized answers like “America lost its way” or “We may never really understand. Only history can judge.”
But they won’t get those sanitized answers and the absolution they bring because there will be people absolute fire-breathing assholes just like me, standing there, with receipts.
“You want to know why and how this happened? Let me fucking tell you. A whole lot of extremely stupid fucking people voted their racism instead of their common fucking sense. These extremely stupid fucking people voted for literal white Christian Nationalists despite being the exact people literal white Christian Nationalists want to murder. Why? Because they thought the, and I cannot stress this enough, literal white Christian Nationalists, hated some of the same people THEY hated, so they thought they would be safe. They fucked around and we ALL found out.”
You know the story of how American Latinos fucked around and found out. We’re watching that play out in real time. Now let me tell you the story of American Muslims and what’s almost certainly about to happen to them.
You see, American Muslims, too many of them, thought that they could align themselves with the hatemongers of the Republican Party. It was a completely nonsensical alliance. They heaped scorn on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for something something “Gaza Gaza Gaza” while holding hands with Republicans to punch the LGBTQ community in the face.
There were a few things that made this “alliance” so historically stupid:
Could Biden have done better on Gaza? Maybe. Maybe not. We do not, in fact, control Israel. Netanyahu is a monster and he was always going to do what he’s doing. Biden and Harris were the only obstacles; the only thing holding him back.
On the other hand, to even suggest Trump would not unleash absolute horror after he spent four years cozying up to Netanyahu and spewing hate at Muslims was to be willfully blind to reality. How has that worked out for Palestinians?
Gaza facing worst economic collapse ever recorded, UN trade agency warns
Malnutrition rates reach alarming levels in Gaza, WHO warns
Israeli assaults make 2025 deadliest year yet for Palestinians
Oh, and then there was this:
Clearly, Trump is so much better for Gaza than Biden. But…no. I said back in November of 2024 that American Muslims who sided with Trump had signed the death warrant of Palestinians in Gaza. And so they have. But it was never going to stop with Gaza. They were putting their own necks on the chopping block. They were just too blinded by their own hate to see it.
That brings us to the next part of why this “alliance” with the GOP was insane from the start: Republicans hate Muslims. They spent twenty years waging a literal Holy Crusade in the Middle East, trying to lay waste to Islam. Not Islamic terrorists, but Islam itself. If you don’t recall, the Bush regime was very enthusiastic about this “clash of civilizations.”
The Republican-controlled federal government persecuted Muslims in this country in ways that seem almost quaint now. Illegal domestic surveillance. Spying on houses of worship. Paying people to inform and then disappearing and torturing anyone they grabbed. Later, they would be shocked and stunned to discover the information was garbage.All while this was going on, right-wing media spread Islamophobia on a scale that would have made Jim Crow-era racists blush. Hate crimes spiked. Children were bullied. Women were assaulted. Homes were vandalized. Mosques were burned. But, hey, that was so long ago! I’m sure Republicans have gotten over all of that, right?
No, they have not. Which brings us to the backstabbing part of the article:
What?! No fucking way! The Republican Party is going after Muslims?! The same Republican Party whose center of gravity is white Christian Nationalism is targeting American Muslims and whipping up fear and anger against a religious minority?! But how? Why? What could they possibly gain from stabbing their “allies” in the back after they rushed to embrace Donald Trump in the 2024 election (or at least stay home and not vote)?
Now, let’s be clear, there are not a lot of Muslims in the United States. There are, at most, 4.5 million. Maybe. They shifted hard to the right, but at least half of them still did not vote to slit their own throats. But an awful lot of them did. Palestinians paid a steep price for their stupidity, and now they’re going to pay as well.
Did you know the Opinionated Ogre has a weekly podcast? It’s true! New episodes every Thursday! Catch the latest episode here:
Here’s the thing: The shift in Texas is being portrayed as a response to the border “calming down.” That’s not entirely true. There are still hundreds of thousands of people crossing the border. Not nearly as many as two years ago, yes, but it’s hard to trust any numbers coming from the regime at this point. It’s definitely down, but how much for real? We can’t tell for certain. But that’s not the point. It could be double and Republicans would still be targeting Muslims.
These are the actual reasons for the shift in rhetoric:
The regime has been in power for over a year. It’s important to understand that the overwhelming majority of the hysteria over the border was manufactured by right-wing media and the GOP itself. It was designed to terrify racist white Americans with stories of hordes of dangerous, diseased, drug-dealing immigrants coming to rape their white women and steal both their jobs and all of their government welfare at the same time!
But with the regime in power, it won’t do to keep fearmongering over immigrants swarming the border. If that were still happening, it would mean the regime is a failure. None may dare say such a thing! So, no more hysteria over the border allowed.
Texas is a border state, but I promise you, the message will go out all across the country: Islamophobia is in for 2026. Bashing Latino immigrants is wildly unpopular now because of Stephen Miller’s Gestapo. With the midterms barreling toward the doomed GOP at 90 MPH, they are desperate to talk about anything else. But! As I’ve mentioned and as we all know, the GOP is a white Christian Nationalist party. They are filthy fucking fascists. Racism and bigotry are all they know.
They could lean into the trans thing again, but the 2025 off-year elections showed that attacking trans kids has lost its magic as a campaign issue. Just ask the Republican gubernatorial candidate for Virginia. I live here, and I don’t even remember her name. Chances are you don’t, either. She didn’t just lose after running a rabidly transphobic campaign; she was demolished in one of the worst routs Virginia has seen in over 30 years.1
So…can’t talk about trans kids. Can’t talk about immigrants.Maybe talk about Black people?DO NOT TALK ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE. What about Muslims? We can always bash them, right? People are still afraid of terroism and we kind of want to go to war with Iran, don’t we?
Yeah…that’s it! That’s the ticket! Roll out the Muslim-bashing!
It’s Fascism 101. There must always be a new threat (even if it’s an old one). There must always be a new out-group. There must always be someone to fear and hate. For over a decade, that out-group was Muslims. The hate never really stopped. It was just put on the back burner to simmer while trans kids and Latino immigrants got their turn in the frying pan of white Christian Nationalism rage. But now Muslims are getting their turn again.
They thought if they voted their hate, they would be welcomed into the coalition of bigots. After all, they hate the LGBTQ community, too! And even though the GOP professes to love Israel, we can all see the raging antisemitism roiling just under the surface. Aren’t we all brothers-in-arms against the insidious Jew menace?
Just like millions of Latinos voting Republican in hopes of earning their way into the good graces of the American right wing, millions of Muslims are about learn that same harsh lesson: You cannot join the Nazis if you are not a white Christian. They will not accept you. They will NEVER accept you. You will always be used for your vote and then weaponized to scare white people into voting against you when it’s more convenient for you to be the villain. And when they have the power to dispose of you, you will be scooped up and put into a concentration camp as an “Enemy of the State.”
I can’t imagine for a second why American Muslims thought it wouldn’t go this way. Why they thought Republicans would ever, in a million years, bring them into the fold. Why the rabidly xenophobic monsters of the right wouldn’t turn on them at the first opportunity.
But here we are, at the opening stages of the next phase of Republican fearmongering. By November, jihadists will be behind every corner. The border will be overrun with secret Islamic terrorists. Every mosque will be an undercover meeting place for ISIS.
I sure hope voting your bigotry was worth setting your communities on fire. Looks like 2026 is gonna be a rough year for you.
I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year (a 17% discount!). Thank you for everything!
There are only 262 days until the midterms, and the regime is panicking. They’re afraid of us. Keep making them afraid every single day. Remember, you are never alone. We beat the fascists once. We will fucking do it again.
Only 2009 inches 2025 out. Hmmmm…now why would Republicans have a wave election the year after America’s first Black president was elected? I’m sure racism had nothing to do with it.
