James Zogby: Arab Americans face online abuse after Trump’s win

There is an insidious blame game occurring on social media. Whenever US President Donald Trump takes one of his outrageous actions, Arab Americans are subjected to a flood of abusive messages.

The “nicer” comments simply blame the community for Mr Trump’s victory, but others are punctuated by obscenities, vulgarities and threats. There appears to be a concerted effort to absolve the previous administration under Joe Biden for its failed policies and the Kamala Harris presidential campaign for its bad political decisions, and instead blame Arab Americans for Mr Trump’s victory.

“To even suggest that Arab Americans are responsible for this election’s outcome is false, foolish and irresponsible.”

Being threatened or targeted for blame is nothing new for Arab Americans. For decades now, the community has had to fend off abusive comments holding it responsible for everything from the 1973 oil embargo to terrorist attacks, whether in the US or in the Middle East.

I have experienced this personally. In the past two decades, there have been four convictions for these kinds of threats directed against me, my family, or my staff. During one two-year stretch, between 2015 and 2017, we received 772 email threats accusing me of planning, training and funding dozens of acts of violence.

What’s happening today is different in two ways.

To even suggest that Arab Americans are responsible for this election’s outcome is false, foolish and irresponsible. In the first place, the Harris campaign didn’t need any help, it lost on its own. It may continue to maintain that its campaign was “flawless”, but if that’s the case, why did Democrats lose 45 per cent of the Latino vote, or a significant share of black males, or get wiped out among the white working class?

These failures can’t be pinned on Arab Americans. They were the result of a failed campaign strategy designed and executed by consultants, many of whom are unprincipled, out of touch with the changing electorate, risk-averse and unimaginative. Instead of understanding the changing contours and growing diversity of the Hispanic, Asian and black communities, they either took them for granted or approached them with decades-old “one-size-fits-all” messaging.

Added to this was their failure to address the economic insecurity of the working class of all races, and the misguided attempt to replace voters they were losing by winning moderate Republican-leaning, white suburban women by campaigning with former Congresswoman Liz Cheney (whose policies are neither moderate nor appealing to suburban women).

When tallying the “strategists’” failures, it is important to add Ms Harris’s failure to meet with Arab-American leaders, demonstrate any distance from Mr Biden’s disastrous blank-check support for Israel and the campaign’s refusal to allow a Palestinian woman, who had lost family in Gaza, to speak at the Democratic Party convention. All of these failures took a toll on Arab-American support for the Democratic ticket.

“When Mr Trump started mass deportations, Latino voters were neither blamed nor targeted with hate just because 45 per cent of them didn’t vote for Ms Harris. […] The same courtesy should have been extended to the Arab-American community

Having witnessed the traumatizing war in Gaza and the enabling role played by the Biden administration, Arab Americans were in a bind. Although for the past two decades they had voted for Democrats by a two-to-one margin, many found it difficult to support campaigns that ignored them and their pain.

They asked for gestures of support and got none. And so, in the end, instead of the 60-30 margin that Mr Biden won in 2020, Mr Trump and Ms Harris split the Arab-American vote, with a small percentage supporting a third-party candidate, and a larger-than-average number not voting at all.

Given the fact that Arab Americans and their concerns were given such short shrift by the Harris campaign, it is wrong to hold them responsible for the loss in November. There is a bit of racism at work here. If the concerns of any other group (ethnic, religious, or racial) had been so ignored, would they be scorned for abandoning the party that offended them?

When Mr Trump started mass deportations, Latino voters were neither blamed nor targeted with hate just because 45 per cent of them didn’t vote for Ms Harris. And of course, they should not be because instead of blaming the people they let down, the campaign needs to look in the mirror and find fault with itself. The same courtesy should have been extended to the Arab-American community.

Early on, I warned the Harris campaign that it was at risk of losing Arab Americans. My concerns were shrugged off with the following logic: “When it comes down to a binary choice – us versus Trump – they’ll support us.” I told them that was insensitive to the community’s pain and politically short-sighted. In the end, they were proved wrong.

Despite all of this, it was disturbing when some in the community endorsed Mr Trump, or when others began beating the drums for an unserious third-party candidate.

I went to Michigan and joined several Arab-American leaders for a Harris endorsement event. While I, too, was angry at Mr Biden and deeply disappointed by the Harris campaign, I felt strongly that the dangers to the community, its allies and American democracy were too great to let Mr Trump back into the White House.

I understood the pain and anger that Arab Americans were experiencing, but I felt that it was important for them to rise above their hurt and consider how much worse it would be if Mr Trump won – worse not only for them, but also for many other vulnerable communities at home and abroad. As can be seen from the new outrages being enacted daily, these fears were justified.

READ: Is Trump about to shake up the MENA region?

But despite this debate within the community, when all is said and done, I insist: don’t blame Arab Americans. Blame the Biden administration and the Harris campaign.

Don’t make the community members scapegoats, because even if Ms Harris had carried the Arab-American vote in Michigan and won that state, she still would have lost the other six battleground states and the election. And even if every Arab-American voter had turned the other cheek and cast a ballot for Ms Harris, she still would have lost the popular vote.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Maghrebi.org. After receiving his PhD in Comparative Religions and Middle East Studies and then teaching for a number of years, Dr James Zogby began a career in politics. During the past five decades, he founded a number of Arab-American civil rights organisations, served in a leadership role in the Democratic Party and in five Democratic presidential campaigns, and received appointments from both presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. He also founded Zogby Research Services, which has conducted groundbreaking public opinion polling across the Middle East. You can follow him on X: @jjz1600

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