The American government’s response to protest is a televised play: shift the blame, equate citizenship and obedience, and when all fails, implement the law, any law to punish deviants. Nowhere is this playbook more apparent than in the recent attempts by government officials to deport Mahmoud Khalil — the Palestinian activist and recent graduate of Columbia University — whose plight may have ignited the collective flame of New York City residents.
More and more, the movement to free Khalil seems like a moment in New York’s collective consciousness. Demonstrators and organizers are calling for people to speak for the First Amendment to avoid the possibility of their own rights drowning in the East River. Protests erupted in Times Square: hundreds of people echoed calls to free Khalil. The ferocity of the first was matched by a second, where participants marched from Washington Square Park all the way down to City Hall. Each protestor’s voice rose above Trump’s politics, and they should. We cannot, at this moment, be complicit in this government’s repressive one-two combination.
Shift the blame. Mahmoud Khalil is pro-Hamas. Mahmoud Khalil is antisemitic. Only by painting Khalil as a traitor, a terrorist, and an antisemite can the government support its decision to deport a green card holder — a permanent citizen. He is posed to be pro-Hamas even though there has been no evidence found of any links to the terrorist organization. He is posed to be antisemitic despite the fact that his most prominent role was that of a mediator between university officials and protesting students. The Trump administration can only act if they inflame their base, and that’s exactly what they’re doing with unproven facts.
In an attempt to understand these claims of antisemitism better, there are genuine concerns about antisemitic behavior from protesters. In general, preventing antisemitism on campuses should be a priority for university administrators. However, Khalil’s pro-Palestine rhetoric does not necessarily equal antisemitic speech. Palestinian self-determination, which Khalil and his fellow protesters are advocating for, is not inherently antisemitic as long as it maintains separation of the Israeli state from the Jewish people. There is no evidence that Khalil ever crossed this line. If anything, the Trump administration’s ploy relies solely on obsolete, Islamophobic tropes. Perhaps, the most telling consequence of the administration’s rhetoric betrays its intent. It has unleashed a deep chilling effect: students have become fearful to speak up on their own campuses. To speak for Palestine, after all, is to disagree with Trump’s vision for America.
Equate Citizenship with obedience. While Khalil is not a citizen, the administration would like to equate his privilege to remain in the United States with absolute obedience to Trump’s foreign policy and other agendas. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, explained that Mahmoud’s arrest has been carried out because of “adverse foreign policy consequences.” The implication is hardly clandestine. Because Trump’s administration approves of America’s support of Netanyahu and his administration, even if that equates to the ontological erasure of Palestine, every person in America must approve too. Your right to remain depends only on your ability to voice the “right” opinions. Khalil, who dissented from this claim, must be deported even if he is protesting a genocide.
The legitimacy of the Israeli state’s genocide exists only insofar as the citizens of the world continue to enable it. Many countries have moved away from their support of Israel, but not America, neither Republicans nor Democrats. Trump has already shown that he has no moral qualms about siding with authoritarian regimes (just ask Volodymyr Zelensky). Now, he has no moral qualms about arresting and deporting legal residents who clap back against oppressors.
Implement the Law. Any Law. When people refused to fall for the smoke and mirrors, when they weren’t scared off by the damage Trump threatened to deal, the burden fell to ol’ trusty. The Law. The Trump administration has shown time and again that there is no bridge too far for the law to cross. In Khalil’s case, a rare and obscure provision of immigration law is being invoked, something that has never been done in a case like this. In a choice of applying either the First Amendment or an obscure immigration law, Trump decided to use the law that fits his needs, never mind the Constitution’s supremacy clause. Though the invocation is not as notorious as his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act early last week, the fact is undeniable: Trump will use law, even bad law, even laws not intended for his purposes, to get his agenda through. And those who oppose him will bear the consequences until they drop their resistance.
The European Commission defines xenophobia as “attitudes, prejudices and behaviour that reject, exclude and often vilify persons, based on the perception that they are outsiders or foreigners to the community, society or national identity.” Trump’s elaborate cover-up — calling on conservative anger, making up lies, and finding obscure ways to support his worldview — is a cover-up of his xenophobia. People from any other part of the world cannot fit the U.S. national identity as long as they continue to defy him. His newfound care for Jewish students is not out of compassion. It exists simply because, to his base, Khalil is an immigrant, and white Jewish students are “American.”
Trump’s xenophobia is far from surprising but elucidates an insidious pattern in his politics. His brand of populism arises from the conservative backlash in the wake of growing multiculturalism in America. Xenophobia is politically beneficial to his ambitions. Haitians are “eating dogs and cats” when it suits his message, and minorities have “bad genes” when his plans need it. In fact, since the first presidential debate, his characterizations of immigrants are growing darker, more disparaging, and veer into the realms of conspiracy. And it’ll only get worse. Unless we act.
America has reached a new age in its evolution, one where freedom takes a back seat to Trump’s designs. Let’s not give up that freedom without a fight. To act requires us to speak up, to engage with our representatives, to not cow to Trump’s threats. To act requires us to look beyond the government’s playbook and to its latent xenophobia: (don’t) shift the blame, (don’t) equate citizenship with obedience, and when these measures fail, implement the (right) law.
The Zeitgeist aims to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board.
