Moustafa Bayoumi is a Brooklyn-based author, journalist and professor. He writes on politics and culture, teaches literature at Brooklyn College (CUNY) and is a columnist for The Guardian. X: @BayoumiMoustafa | @moustafabayoumi.bsky.social
France is in revolt. Hundreds of thousands of people are on the streets across the country demanding to live with human dignity and economic possibility. Atrocious school conditions, with reports of severely overcrowded classrooms and rodent-infested buildings, sparked the protests in a nation that is projected to spend more servicing its national debt in 2027 than on education. Meanwhile, a realization that elites are stealing the futures of the working class is quickly spreading across Europe, with large demonstrations erupting across Germany, Italy and beyond.
The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, which has spiraled energy costs and surged interest rates globally, is certainly not the only reason for the economic precarity that people across the Western world feel in their bones, but it clearly is a contributing factor. The United States then bears some responsibility for this groundswell of international political unrest. But rather than addressing the situation directly and charting any path forward, U.S. President Donald Trump has another idea: Blame the Muslims.
Leading demagogues of the MAGA faithful in the United States, having received yet another green light to espouse their bigoted, exclusionary ideology, were predictably prepared to foment just as much racism to divert from the real issues confronting the people of France and beyond.
- Moustafa Bayoumi
That approach, increasingly the norm for far-right political actors across the West, in fact represents their own failing and bigoted politics, and not any rational fear of Muslims.
"What's happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Oct. 6. "This isn't about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!" On Oct. 19, Trump posted "If you want to see what is at stake in this Election, just look at what is happening in France — A once-great nation that is being conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and Communists who hate Christianity, and Western Civilization, itself."
Vice-President JD Vance joined the blame game, posting on X that "Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion… I pray that France will stop this madness… And I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country." Not to be outdone, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told French television that the unrest was due to France's leaders having "succumbed to the invasion of extremist Islam."
The leading demagogues of the MAGA faithful in the United States, having received yet another green light to espouse their bigoted, exclusionary ideology, were predictably prepared to foment just as much racism to divert from the real issues confronting the people of France and beyond. Trump confidante Laura Loomer, for example, published a screed on her blog titled, "The same Muslim invaders currently burning Paris will burn American cities next if Democrats win this November."
Well-known conspiracy theorist Alex Jones growled on X that "Islamic Uprising Torches Hundreds Of Catholic Institutions, Schools, & MORE!," though the footage he cited was, according to France24, "a video of a school bus that caught fire in the southern French city of Nîmes in 2022, with no casualties reported." Possibly the most infamous English racist alive today, Tommy Robinson, likewise posted an old and misleading video on X while writing, "The green/Islamic [sic] unholy alliance is spreading through Western Europe and America, and what you're seeing in France, is coming to all nations, unless it's stopped. And stopped it must be."
These statements, merely a few amongst many, should make abundantly clear just what is happening in Western politics today.
What really frightens the global far-right is not that Omar, El-Sayed and Mamdani identify as Muslim. Rather, the global far-right fears the organic following behind these figures.
- Moustafa Bayoumi
The global far-right is under mounting pressure to address the problems they created and promoted, such as the war on Iran. Their fundamental response is to duck, cover and point at Muslim immigrants, who have not played a role in causing these problems. To his credit, centrist French president Emmanuel Macron labeled such comments "as unacceptable as they are stupid." Yet that credit misses the point.
The more cerebral side of the far-right goes one step further, pushing the idea that a revived doctrine, so-called "Third-Worldism," represents the latest hidden threat to "Western Civilization."
Third-Worldism (tier-mondisme in its original French) appeared as a movement in the latter half of the 20th century, a response to global decolonization and the Cold War. In Third-Worldist thinking, the First World referred to the capitalist West, the Second World to the socialist bloc, such as the former Soviet Union and People's Republic of China, and the Third World to the largely decolonizing nations beyond the first two realms. Originally, the term was more descriptive, gradually assuming a more anticolonial focus as it grew to include historical figures like Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre.
But when individuals like the conservative Manhattan Institute's Christopher Rufo and the similarly conservative Hudson Institute's Zineb Riboua revived the term today, they only saw political conspiracies and ideological brainwashing everywhere. "[D]ecolonization has shifted from academic theory to political instinct, giving young activists an ethical framework for interpreting conflict," writes Riboua, as if considering the moral implications surrounding global strife is a negative development.
Third-Worldism, in Riboua's take, leads to Islamist thinking among Western youth, fostering "Green activists find[ing] so much common ground with Hezbollah," as she wrote in a piece providing no explanation about what Green activists stand for or what Hezbollah thinks. In this context, what makes Third-Worldism so threatening is that it produces a dangerous alliance between today's naïve leftists and wily Muslims.
That argument serves a clear purpose: The mere association of these two groups as allies is meant to terrify the average reader.
The real aim of the "intellectual right" (and I use the term loosely) is to frighten people from critical thinking itself. In that regard, such newfound interest in Third-Worldism looks less like inquiry and more like a 21st century version of what was once called Judeo-Bolshevism, when Jewish people were widely reviled as dangerous immigrants for their putative attempts to secretly usher in Communism by exploiting the liberal bias toward an open society. In this sense, it should be unsurprising that Loomer obsessively warns her followers against the rise of "Islamic communists." I call this obsession "Islamo-Judeo-Bolshevism."
Loomer and her ilk appear so unsettled by the unavoidable fact that a growing number of highly successful politicians in the United States are Muslim Democrats that the personal attacks from the right against these politicians are mounting. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is a fraudster, Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed is a secret member of the Muslim Brotherhood and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had a role in the 9/11 Al-Qaeda attacks at a mere nine years old, all accusations made by leading Republicans.
But what really frightens the global far-right is not that Omar, El-Sayed and Mamdani identify as Muslim. Rather, the global far-right fears the organic following behind these figures. Omar is a regular critic of Trump's policies, just as El-Sayed's platform mainstreams the economic hardships brought on by Trump's right-wing fantasy politics. Almost a year into his first term, Mamdani's approval sits at 69%.
What makes these politicians noteworthy, from the United States to Europe, is not who they are or what faith they practice but the political operations and movements they lead. That simple fact scares the living daylights out of their opponents far and wide, leading to an Islamophobia that reflects fear as much as hate.
Yet in this case, as when Muslim immigrants are blamed for the French state's failures, the fear is not about Islam. The fear is that the right may have to take responsibility for its own actions.
The views and positions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of DAWN.
