When billionaire
eccentric and Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump
called for banning all Muslims from entering the United States of
America, he used what appeared to be data backing up the fears his
policy was designed to alleviate.
In his announcement,
Trump pointed to a Center for Security Policy poll finding that 25
percent of Muslims “agreed that violence against Americans here in
the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad” and
51 percent “agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice
of being governed according to Sharia.” The findings of this opt-in
online poll, however, had already been widely discredited.
The Center for
Security Policy, headed by the neoconservative Reagan-era Department
of Defense official Frank Gaffney, is a node in a broad network of
groups ginning up Islamophobia with conspiracy theories of a takeover
of the federal government by the Muslim Brotherhood and the
imposition of Sharia law across the United States. Gaffney had also
called for a total ban on Muslim entry into the United States prior
to Trump’s endorsement of the policy.
By citing the bogus
data from Gaffney’s group, Trump helped shine a light on how the
broader Islamophobic network works. Bogus statistics and trumped-up
conspiracy theories are touted by mainstream figures to increase
alarm and fear about Muslims.
Polls show
Islamophobia to be a widely held position among Trump’s voters, and
an examination of the funding behind groups stoking the fear shows
that a portion of the Republican Party donor class agrees. Donors to
the network include mainstream Republican Party donors, major
conservative nonprofit trusts and nonprofit donor-advised funds that
help conservative donors obscure their contributions to other groups.
Two reports from the
liberal Center for American Progress, one released in 2011 and an
update in 2015, titled "Fear, Inc.," explained how these
groups have operated and exposed their largest donors. The network of
groups the report said were involved in the Islamophobia industry
included the Center for Security Policy, the Clarion Fund, Middle
East Forum, Jihad Watch, the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a
handful of others.
Before his death in
2014, Republican mega-donor Richard Mellon Scaife was one of the
biggest donors to the network through donations from his charitable
foundations. According to CAP’s reports, the Sarah Scaife
Foundation, Carthage Foundation and Allegheny Foundation combined to
donate nearly $10.5 million to Islamophobic groups from 2001 to 2012,
including $3.4 million to the Center for Security Policy. Scaife, the
founding funder of the modern American right, also contributed
$500,000 to 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s
super PAC in 2012.
The Lynde &
Harry Bradley Foundation is another huge source of money for the
Islamophobia network, with $6.5 million in donations from 2001-2012.
The foundation, like the Scaife foundations, is a bedrock funder of
right-wing causes and the conservative movement. The group’s board
includes Washington Post columnist George Will and North Carolina
mega-donor Art Pope. It has supplied more than $1 million to the
Center for Security Policy.
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