Impolite Society | Josef Burton
▻https://thebaffler.com/latest/impolite-society-burton
Syring and Seldowitz are aberrations. What I hope to make clear, though, is that even if the institution didn’t drive these men mad, even if it didn’t directly instigate their racist obsessions, I don’t believe they would have done what they did were it not for their time within the State Department. Syring and Seldowitz are products of the state, and so is the obsessive quality, the diligent specificity of their hatred. It is a fixation that permeates the American foreign policy establishment, its immigration system, its economic sanctions, and its military assistance: the idea that Arabs and Muslims are uniquely threatening and vexing subjects that must be fixed, or failing that, destroyed.