Peter King calls for “increased surveillance” of Muslims after Boston (salon.com)
Republicans Urge Obama To Treat Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Boston Suspect, As ‘Enemy Combatant’ (Huffington Post)

Thanks to my old friend from Backwash.com, Val, I knew about the bombs that went off in Boston before television-watchers did. She retweeted some of the first tweets about the bombs at the Boston Marathon as soon as they were posted, and when I switched on cable news I found that they were still calmly running stories on other topics. As the first visuals of the bombing hit my television screen, I had an all-too-familiar feeling from when my family was living in a hotel room after our house caught fire in 2001 and we saw the twin towers on fire. Even if I hadn’t had to stay on top of the story so I could talk about in in my classes the next day, I still would have been fixated on coverage of Boston, going from my computer to my television and back again to get all the latest details, as I spent most of my week this week.

As the hours wore on, my immediate concerns about how many casualties there were and if anyone I knew was affected (one of my classmates from way back lives in Watertown now, but she’s okay), my mind naturally turned to trying to piece things together. I knew details would come out eventually, but the puzzling nature of the attack — bombs not as sophisticated as what al-Qaeda was using over a decade ago but a civilian-focused attack in their style, the symbolism of tax day pointing to a right-wing group although right-wingers typically don’t target civilians — created a puzzle that I fixated on. Puzzles always interest me, but I think in this case I was using the mental gymnastics as a way to distract myself from the pain I was feeling for Boston (and later Texas after the explosion there, to say nothing of the ricin-laced letters that evoked the days after 09.11 all the more).

I remembered the feelings I had after the 09.11 attacks, those feelings of hatred and wanting revenge on those who killed so many Americans. Maybe it was because of that experience earlier, or maybe it was because the scope of the Boston bombings wasn’t as large as the 09.11 attacks, but I never gave in to those negative emotions this time. I try not to let myself feel those emotions (admittedly, I don’t always succeed), but what really made me see the ugliness of those emotions is how they gripped so many people in this nation for so long, not just in the American populace but also in our elected officials, Republicans and Democrats alike, who should have known better than to follow the mob mentality that so perversely pervaded this country in the years following the 09.11 attacks.

More than that, though, I remember Republicans and conservatives seizing on 09.11 as an excuse to force the nation behind Bush 43 and every word he said, demanding nothing less than total fealty from all Americans and labeling those who dared disagree with even one statement of Bush’s as “un-American” or “with the terrorists.” Many Republicans kept beating that drum long after 09.11, long after they twisted the fear Americans felt after the attacks to drag us into an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq, long after that war became unpopular as evidence mounted that we were lied into that war, all the way through the 2008 election. The moment Barack Obama was first sworn in as President, “we have to support the President no matter what” pretty much flew out of the window.

I was not so foolish as to believe that Republicans would mobilize behind President Obama in the moments after the Boston bombings. However, there was a part of me that hoped that conservatives would not return to the same racist and Islamophobic rhetoric and actions they took after 09.11, fostering fear and intolerance among Americans that is even more unacceptable now than it was back then. Clearly, my naivete got the better of me again.

Racism and Islamophobia are an all-too-effective tactic for some Republicans to keep their base. In modern times this dates back to the “southern strategy” Richard Nixon and his campaign used to secure the angry white vote in the wake of the Civil Rights Act, which to this day has made many southern states all but untouchable for Democratic presidential candidates. More recently, this has been evidenced repeatedly by the birther movement — which is still pushed by the Donald Trumps of the world today — and other subtle attempts to call attention to the “otherness” of Obama. Just look at how many times Mitt Romney used the word “foreign” in describing Obama’s policies in the last presidential election; he never used it to describe Obama himself, but the word still had its effect, a sly wink to those on the far-right who still cling to the fantasy that Obama isn’t really President because he was actually born in Kenya. These are the same people who also push the idea that Obama is a “secret” something, usually a secret socialist or a secret Muslim. Ah, there’s Islam again.

This is what’s led to the nonsense of Republican-controlled cities and states passing laws stating that they will never let themselves be put under Sharia law. All the while these same people continue to block the ability of same-sex couples to marry and enjoy the benefits of opposite-sex couples for no other reason than forcing their own religious beliefs onto all of us us through law. Heck, the Republican Attorney General of Virginia (and gubernatorial candidate) is trying to reinstate anti-sodomy laws in his state. For all the Republican Party talks about putting on a “new face” after their 2012 electoral defeats, their anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-minority legislation in the past few months show that they’re doubling down on the same policies they’ve been pushing in the Tea Party era.

In the months after the 09.11 attacks it was difficult to stand up against the forces of racism and Islamophobia. Not only was I going through a lot of personal problems at the time (the house fire, being a full-time college student again for the first time in over six years, friend problems), but voices in opposition to the hatred and fear-mongering that came after 09.11 were few and far between in those first months after the attack. That is not the case this time, thankfully enough, but Republicans have proven how obstinate they can be these past four years in opposing Obama, lying and filibustering everything they can to the point where ad mauseum doesn’t even begin to describe how sickening it is. We can’t expect this time to be any different, as some Republicans and conservatives will keep doing everything in their power to attack Islam and Muslims.

That is why it is so important for us to raise our voices against the tides of racism and Islamophobia now, before they sweep up more Americans with their hatred. The brothers behind the Boston bombings are as much Muslims as the Westboro Baptist Church are Christians, and although many Americans are aware of this, there are some who are all too eager to scapegoat a religion and its people if those in power give them the opportunity. We must make our voices louder than those who would use what happened in Boston to turn people towards hatred. We can’t let ourselves be afraid this time.