CLEVELAND, United States - This week in Cleveland, Trumpism went from being a punchline to solidifying into a genuine political ideology - one that may to forever change the political landscape of the United States.
For many Muslim-Americans, that’s an especially frightening prospect.
On Thursday night, Julia Shearson gathered with a group of Muslim-American families to watch Donald Trump’s speech. Over creampuffs and basbousa, a Middle Eastern sweet cake, eight of them listened intently to the new Republican Party nominee’s defining discourse.
Shearson, who is also the executive director of the Cleveland Chapter of the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said she vacillated between being mesmerised by his seductive promises to being horrified by his scapegoating.
“There was lots of coded language, he was speaking to white Americans,” Shearson said. “He speaks about minorities, not to us.”
The picture of the US that Trump painted was a dark one. America, as he described it, is under siege - by the deceptive liberal elite, by criminal immigrants, and most of all by “radical Islamists”. It’s a vague enemy, with the lines blurred between terrorism, crime and violence.
The only solution? Himself, of course.
“Beginning on January 20th, 2017, safety will be restored,” Trump promised. What that means for non-white Americans is not clearly defined.
The call for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to be arrested came not only as a recurring chant from his crowd of supporters, but also from keynote speakers. One key Trump adviser even called for her to be “exec
