scholarly journals Challenging the Dominant Discourse: Khan’s My Guantanamo Diaries and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (23) ◽  
pp. 36-58
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Carr
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Vice President ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Muslim American ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Twenty First Century

This study juxtaposes Mahvish Rukhsana Khan’s powerful memoir My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me (2008) with the post-9/11 rhetoric of political leaders and the mainstream media in the United States during the first decade of the twenty-first century. In her work, Khan exposes the extreme, dehumanizing conditions endured by military prison detainees – many of whom Khan argues were falsely arrested – and advocates for their right to receive fair hearings. The several examples of evident torture revealed by the interviewed detainees throughout the text contrast sharply with the rhetoric from speeches and interviews of early twenty-first century American political leaders, such as President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and the news coverage from neoliberal media outlets like CNN and Fox News. Similarly, the brutal representations in Khan’s memoir contrast with the largely positive depictions of torture in popular films and television programs. To support the validity of Khan’s claims, the article will also consider the available War on Terror-era interrogation logs from the Guantanamo Bay military prison camp. This study seeks to illustrate the ability of prevailing power structures to interpellate consumers of mass media while simultaneously suggesting that literature possesses a unique potential to challenge dominant discourses, as it has done throughout history. Finally, this paper argues that works by Khan and other Muslim American authors have the power to disrupt the current racist and xenophobic episteme and challenge the ideological consensus fostered by mainstream media.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shawn J. Parry-Giles
Keyword(s):  
News Coverage ◽  
First Century ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
News Framing ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Twenty First Century

This concluding chapter assesses what the verbal and visual news coverage of Hillary Clinton tells us about the gendered nation, political authenticity and character, and news framing of U.S. political women at the turn of the twenty-first century. Those who become routine fixtures in news stories can function as didactic character models to be admired and emulated, as well as chastised and even despised. Journalists (along with the aid of news writers and news producers) serve as some of the nation's most powerful biographers, contributing stories and pictures that make up the chapters of a political leader's life. Moreover, conceptions of authentic womanhood and authentic manhood in particular bring together ideological forces that can empower yet also bind the nation's political leaders, offering a gender baseline that fuses with other markers of political authenticity to define an individual leader.

The Political Assimilation of Muslim Americans

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-33
Author(s):  
Edward E. Curtis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Muslim Americans ◽  
Muslim American ◽  
Political Career ◽  
Twenty First Century

An examination of the anti-Muslim reactions to the political career of US Rep. André Carson (D-Indiana) indicates the challenges facing Muslim Americans who desire political assimilation into the United States. This chapter analyzes formal Muslim American political participation in the twenty-first century and the anti-Muslim discrimination, originating at both popular and governmental levels, that in design or effect rejects Muslim American assimilation.

Biosurveillance: A Modern Look

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Lee Brooks
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Homeland Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Current State ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Security Operations

AbstractThe early part of the twenty-first century saw a revolution in the field of Homeland Security. The 9/11 attacks, shortly followed thereafter by the Anthrax Attacks, served as a wakeup call to the United States and showed the inadequacy of the current state of the nation’s Homeland Security operations. Biodefense, and as a direct result Biosurveillance, changed dramatically after these tragedies, planting the seeds of fear in the minds of Americans. They were shown that not only could the United States be attacked at any time, but the weapon could be an invisible disease-causing agent.

Conclusion: Sincerity Dreams

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Rutten
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Cultural Paradigms ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Inclusive Analysis

This conclusion reflects on today's dreams of renewing or revitalizing sincerity and rejects the notion that they are outdated or do not deserve any of our attention. It cites the work of several scholars to show that sincerity is anything but obsolete in twenty-first-century popular culture. Indeed, today's strivings to renew sincerity have not been neglected by scholars such as R. Jay Magill Jr., Epstein, and Yurchak. The rhetoric on new sincerity has been addressed in thoughtful analyses of contemporary culture that have helped the author in crafting a comprehensive and geographically inclusive analysis of present-day sincerity rhetoric. In post-Communist Russia, debates on a shift to late or post-postmodern cultural paradigms are thriving with at least as much fervor as—and possibly more than—in Western Europe or the United States. This conclusion discusses the newly gained insights which the author's sincerity study offers.

The United States and the Americas: A Twenty-First-Century View

1999 ◽  
Vol 78 (5) ◽  
pp. 178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Maxwell ◽  
Albert Fishlow ◽  
James Jones
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Twenty First Century

Burzum shirts, paramilitarism and National Socialist Black Metal in the twenty-first century

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Hedge Olson
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Far Right ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Black Metal ◽  
The North ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Underground Music

Over the last ten years, the radical right has proliferated at an alarming rate in the United States. National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) has become an important feature of neo-Nazi, White supremacist and militant racist groups as the radical right as a whole has gained traction in American political life. Although rooted in underground music-based subculture, NSBM has become an important crypto-signifier for the radical right in the twenty-first century providing both symbolic value and ideological inspiration. The anti-racist and apolitical elements of the North American metal scene have responded in a variety of different ways, sometimes challenging racist elements directly, at other times providing ambivalent acceptance of the far right within the scene. While fans, musicians, journalists and record labels struggle to come to terms with the meaning of NSBM and how it should be addressed, NSBM-affiliated political and paramilitary groups have formed and started making their violent fantasies a reality. As many elements within the American metal scene continue to perceive NSBM as a purely artistic movement of no concern to the world outside of the metal scene, proponents of NSBM are marching in the streets of Charlottesville, burning African American churches, murdering LGBTQ people and plotting acts of domestic terrorism.

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