Thread by @monaeltahawy

Judy Woodruff on surveillance of #NYC Muslims while he was mayor: But it wasn’t a religion that killed them.

Mike Bloomberg: No, but all of the people came from the same place. And all that came were from a place that happened to be the same religion.

At #DemDebates, Bloomberg has yet to be asked about surveillance of Muslims in NYC.

It’s a reminder of:
- shitty moderation

AND

- anti-Muslim sentiment & disregard for Muslim-American votes is bioartisan.

I understood long ago that I was way to the left of the Democratic Party so when I became a US citizen and was eligible to vote, I registered as an Independent.

I also understood that if the GOP are overtly Islamophobic, the Dems are not guiltless.

As recently as 2016 election, at DNC, the Muslims on stage were the parents of an American Muslim who died fighting for the US in Iraq. Dems pretend not to be Islamophobic by playing the “Muslims serve in our armed forces and the police” card. Fuck that.

To be clear: fuck Trump and the Islamophobia he peddles in BUT he did not create it. He is an inheritor of:
- GOP outright hatred & incitement vs Muslims
- Democrats’ cowardly use of the “good Muslim” card: “Muslims are in our armed forces & police”

In 2016 elections:
- Donald Trump was vowing to ban Muslims (which he did via Muslim Ban bs 6 countries)
- Clinton had Kizr Khan and his wife Ghazala Irshad at DNC - parents of a Muslim soldier who was killed in the US war in Iraq. ie Muslims are “good” and fight “our” wars.

Russ Feingold was the ONLY senator - Democrat or GOP - who in 2001 voted against the Patriot Act. Who cared about surveillance and all that shit when it was portrayed as targeting a bunch of brown Muslims, hey?

Bush - recently rehabilitated as a cuddly grandpa artist - launched wars against 2 Muslim majority countries as revenge for 9/11.
Obama left office with the US militarily involved in at least five Muslim countries.
Anyone looks “good” compared to Trump but look closer.

And now Bloomberg - who was a Republican until about 5 minutes ago - is running as a Democrat and the powers that be made an exception for him so that he could be on a debate stage as a Democrat WHERE NO ONE HAS ASKED HIM ABOUT HIS ANTi-MUSLIM BIGOTRY.