Laura said:
I've been trying to figure it out. I think there are several things going on that made it this way. First, on a basic level, I think the propaganda did work on the Lefties, just not in the same way and to the same extent. And I think part of this comes down to temperament, and part to circumstance.
First, on the Islamophobia. I don't know what percentage of the "Never Trumpers" are "truthers", but I'd guess it's not a majority. And if we ignore for now the "neither Trump nor Clinton" camp, that leaves the hardcore Democrat supporters and the Lefties that buy into mainstream Leftist ideas. These aren't people who would be willing to believe that Clinton et al. were aiding terrorists, that 9/11 was a black op, etc. They were fine with Obama continuing Bush's wars, "killing Bin Laden", and continuing the War on Terror for the foreseeable future. There were no viable anti-war Democratic candidates. If Clinton would have won, it would have been more of the same. The Lefties would've been fine with Clinton's War on (Muslim) Terror, but they wouldn't call it that, as Trump likes to point out.
This is where temperament comes in. Liberals tend to be more open and agreeable (Big 5 traits). So, while they may be susceptible to believing the propaganda, they also manifest a sort of "compassion" towards the victims, but only the victims they're willing to acknowledge exist, e.g. refugees. (They block the deaths caused by their military/intelligence/executive, and by extension they themselves, from their consciousness.) They're more open to other cultures, more willing to be friendly and to want everyone to get along and be treated well. And because of some historical conditions, they're more willing to see Muslims as a minority and thus part of the oppressed class - again, blocking out the reasons for this which implicate themselves. (In different circumstances, they'd be just as willing to see Muslims as the "oppressors", but that's not the direction Leftist trends have gone for the past decades.)
Conservatives are less open and more conscientious. They're more insular, weary of or even hostile to outsiders. And they're more inclined to search for the solutions to bring order to chaos, even if that means being rigid (too much order). So I'd say conservatives are more inclined to see ALL Muslims as bad. (Writing off 99 innocent people is worth it to protect against the 1 guilty one, in the name of order and stability.) And they're just as efficient at selecting and substituting data.
Now, the way it has all played out. Back in the 90s, there wasn't a huge network of Islamic terrorists that posed any real threat to the U.S. In fact, the head "Al-Qaeda" honchos were working with the Americans the whole time. According to Sibel Edmonds, in 1996 or 1997 the CIA decided to rebrand Gladio using Muslim extremists as the weapon to use primarily against Russia (via Central Asia and the Caucasus). So while they'd already used these guys in Afghanistan and the Balkans, the project was reorganized primarily under NATO. This was just after the First Chechen War.
Then comes 9/11 and the War on Terror. Bush was the conservative version, then we got the Obama liberal version. Both were equally Orwellian: propping up a manufactured enemy to go to war against for ulterior motives, but the second version had a more "humanitarian" image. But what they essentially did was to weaponized ponerogenesis/pathocracy. (Lobaczewski describes something very similar in his section on "artificially infected pathocracy".) And the problem naturally metastasized. What used to be a ragtag bunch of crazies became an army, and now a pseudo-state. In essence, the CIA and friends created the very enemy they needed, and which they largely had to pretend existed previously. Now, there IS a giant army of crazies. Given other circumstances, it could have been Hindus, or Jews, or Buddhists, or Christians.
And that's not to say that the U.S. created it out of whole cloth. Every group always has its aspiring pathologicals (Israel has a lot of them in the West Bank, for example). Wahhabism has been around for a couple hundred years, and radical Islamic political ideas and theorists from before the first war in Afghanistan. The Americans didn't write the books, even if they inspired them. These guys have their own schizoidal "Marxes", their ideological "professors", etc. And when it comes down to it, they're not much different than the Communist revolutionaries in Russia pre-1917. It's all in Ponerology - just strip back the ideology and the progression of the disease is the same.
You can get a glimpse of this in the Hizb ut-Tahrir movement. They're a "moderate" revolutionary Islamic group that fully supports the Syrian rebels (they won't go as far as to support ISIS, though). See the comment on these two articles on SOTT, for example:
https://www.sott.net/article/334471-Moderate-rebel-supporter-Hizb-ut-Tahrir-member-at-Chicago-conference-Islam-is-here-to-dominate
https://www.sott.net/article/335252-St-Petersburg-Russia-jails-Hizb-ut-Tahrir-member
Notice that Russia has banned the group. They want to create a Caliphate and say they want to do so peacefully, but check out the video linked in the comment. They fully support the "revolutionaries" in Syria. They're the equivalent of naive Marxists who want to set up a Communist state - the end fully justifies the means. And if they're sincere about being an "intellectual, political" group, they're double dupes - playing into the hands of the CIA as well as the pathologicals who will just use them to create another ISIS.
Also, there's the fact that the CIA didn't create the terrorism problem in Chechnya, though they certainly exploited it, fanned the flames, and supported it. Again, the Chechen terrorists had their own ideologues, grievances, plans, etc. For the Russians, terrorism has been REAL in a way it hasn't been for Americans.
So essentially, we've had the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations creating a Frankenstein monster. However fake it started out, it's relatively real now. Not real in the sense of "OMG they're going to take over every Western country and install Shariah law." Yeah, a lot of them have such big ideas (like all ponerogenic unions), but it's mostly a pipe dream. Even then, they do pose a real threat, primarily to the countries they're currently operating in: Syria, Iraq, Libya. And even if all their American handlers were to get Raptured away and a lot of their intel/funding/logistical support were taken out in the process, all these guys would still be there. Some might pack up their bags to go home, but not all of them.
So now comes the wild card, Trump, who sees the problem that Clinton/Bush/Obama created and, whaddyaknow, actually seems intent on fighting it. That wasn't part of the plan. And he comes with a typical conservative backing, and all that goes along with that (i.e., the right-wing authoritarian mindset). It would probably look different if a Democrat like Tulsi Gabbard were in the same position. And the reason his rhetoric works is that it's plausible in a way Bush's and Obama's wasn't. Basically, "You know these guys Bush and Obama have been talking about for years, and not really fighting? Well not only was Clinton supporting a lot of them, but now I'm really gonna get the job done!" He piggy-backed on their propaganda, which they never intended to follow through on.
One of the reasons it's scary, IMO, is that it's uncertain. Trump could go "full conservative", really stoke up the anti-Muslim sentiment, and basically implement the "Phoenix Program" option. It might be more effective than the U.S.'s current "efforts", but it would also be ugly, bloody, and could get totally out of control.
Or he could turn out to be more responsible in the same situation, like Putin. But I think that's less likely at this point. Like others have said, he doesn't seem to have the moral backbone for that. But even with that said, I don't see him as an ideological nutbar like Hitler. If anything, how he handles this could create the conditions for a Hitler type, at which point the Phoenix Program would turn itself onto all Americans. And, ironically, the U.S. would be living under a regime that has more in common with ISIS than they'd like to admit.
