🚨 American History Tells Me That Angry White Men Will Soon Respond with Violence

I am not a pessimist, but I am a student of American history. And whenever white people feel threatened in America, they act out - normally with violence.

Quick note before we begin: If you value journalism that doesn’t just celebrate a win but also names the danger and prepares our communities for what comes next, you’re in the right place. I write these pieces to put receipts and conscience on the same page — and to keep them free to the world so people most at risk can read without a paywall. If that matters to you, become a member. If you’re able, join monthly, annually, or as a founding member so I can keep covering what mainstream outlets gloss over: the cost of political lies in real people’s lives.

Last night was joy. A young, Muslim, South Asian, democratic socialist — Zohran Mamdani — earned a mandate that shook the city. But braided into the cheers is something nefarious that we must confront head-on, because it’s not an online rumor anymore. It’s leadership-level incitement.

In the final weeks of this campaign, multiple sitting members of Congress and well-known business figures shared images and videos of the Twin Towers being hit and told the public — explicitly — that it would happen again if Zohran won. They called him a “jihadist.” They didn’t hedge. They didn’t whisper. They broadcast it. These weren’t anonymous trolls or anonymous burner accounts. These were public officials with blue checks and committee seats, and CEOs with boardrooms, deliberately inviting people to connect a Muslim public servant with mass murder.

Now Zohran has won, and won big. So here’s the question their own supporters are left with: What are everyday conservatives supposed to do with those lies now?
Do they ignore them — quietly admit they were told a story their leaders didn’t believe either? Or do they act on them? Because that’s how homegrown terrorism works: you seed enough people with apocalyptic fear, and one person decides to “prevent” the catastrophe you promised. It only takes one. That’s the danger of these lies.

America has a pattern. Every time the circle widens, those who profit from a smaller circle mobilize to shrink it back. After emancipation came Redemption and lynch law. After Brown v. Board came “massive resistance.” After the Civil Rights Act came COINTELPRO and the carceral turn. After Obama’s election came birtherism, the racialized Tea Party, and a presidency built on the lie. Each time, backlash isn’t just policy obstruction; it is moral permission for cruelty that someone will take as license.

That’s the sober frame for this moment in New York: the same people who posted the 9/11 footage to stop a Muslim candidate will now try to launder those posts into “overheated rhetoric,” like it never happened. Meanwhile, their most committed followers are left holding a story about a jihadist mayor who will cause another attack.

That is a powder keg.
We can’t pretend it isn’t.

Nevermind that New York City had a white Catholic Republican Mayor and the nation had a white evangelical President when 9/11 happened.

First, we must regularly name the lie and its source. Not to amplify it, but to assign responsibility where it belongs: elected officials and elite donors who told their base that a Muslim neighbor equals imminent terror. If you are in Congress or sit atop a fund and you published that, you are now responsible for publicly withdrawing the claim, apologizing, and instructing your audience to stand down. Silence is complicity. “That was just campaign heat” is cowardice. If you still sit in your office after posting that, your ethics committee should already be meeting.

Second, let’s be clear about what backlash looks like now. It’s not just slurs in your mentions. It’s a pipeline from leadership to local harm: influencers who scream “jihadist,” a county chair who repeats it at a civic club, a precinct captain who tells volunteers to “watch the mosques,” a man who scrolls those posts at 3 a.m. and decides he’s preventingsomething by doing something. I will not write around this. We’ve buried enough people to know how this goes.

Third, we prepare like adults — security and solidarity alongside governance — because delivery is still the best antidote to panic. The more visible the improvements become — the rent freeze mechanics people can read, the five fast and free bus corridors they can ride, the child-care slots a parent can stand in and see — the less oxygen there is for apocalyptic lies. You can’t spook a mother whose kid finally has a slot. You can’t scare a nurse whose commute is 25 minutes shorter and reliably so.

Here are the tells to watch in the weeks ahead — not to scare you, but to lower your surprise and raise our readiness:

• A leadership-level narrative blitz: Not bots. Members of Congress and donors repeating “jihadist,” “9/11,” “unsafe city,” now repackaged as “Just asking questions.”

• Procedural hostility: “Unexpected” cost memos, rescheduled votes, lawsuits intended to stall, then headlines that say “Mamdani’s agenda falters.” (It didn’t falter. They tripped it.)

• Targeted intimidation: Doxxing of Muslim staffers, harassment at mosques and community centers, provocateurs at hearings — the goal is to make you regret hope.

• Wedge campaigns: Pieces crafted to pit renters vs. workers, riders vs. drivers, Muslims vs. Jews — anything to isolate the movement and launder the smear as “concern.”

• National noise to spook locals: Threats from Washington about “defunding” the city — often unenforceable — meant to rattle agencies, vendors, and the bond market.

We answer with two tracks running at once: shields and delivery.

Shields (because words can get people hurt):
– Immediate protection for mosques and community centers; a multilingual hotline for harassment and doxxing; pro-bono teams to scrub staffers’ personal info and respond when lines are crossed.
– Public retractions demanded from officials who shared the 9/11 content — cataloged, timestamped, and kept on file. If you posted it, you need to say you were wrong and say no one should act on it.
– Rapid-response comms to call out Islamophobic incidents within hours, not days, so communities see the city and their neighbors standing with them.

Delivery (because results inoculate against lies):
– Rent freeze steps visible on a public page: legal authorities, anti-warehousing tools, and pilot projects — with dates next to each item.
– Five bus corridors launched with enforcement and signal priority; publish weekly on-time rates and ridership changes. Put the drivers and riders at the mic together.
– Child-care buy-downs targeting the longest waitlists; report slots added in plain English every week, with maps where families can see the queue shrinking.

And we keep the coalition in one room. A weekly movement briefing — not for press, for people — where tenants, drivers, small landlords, bodega owners, faith leaders, nurses, and students get the same update and bring back the same truth: the city is moving. That unity is the antidote to the wedges they’re paying to drive.

Let me end where I began: the danger here isn’t only that liars lied. It’s that they elevated the lie to a moral directive for their base.

And now that they’ve lost, their supporters are sitting with two options: either their leaders lied to them, or there’s a jihadist in City Hall. The only safe path forward is for those leaders to unload what they put in people’s heads — publicly, repeatedly, and without weasel words. If they won’t, then responsible conservatives — pastors, business owners, precinct captains, PTA presidents — must fill the gap. Say it out loud to your own people: We were told a lie. Do not act on it. Our Muslim neighbors are our neighbors. Full stop.

We will keep telling the truth here — every lie cataloged, every pilot tracked, every wedge named, every Friday prayer guarded by neighbors of every faith. We will meet malicious speech with protective action and material progress. That’s how you make the backlash small and the mandate large.

If you want me to continue this two-track coverage — exposing the lies at the top while tracking the delivery on the ground — help me keep it free to the world. Become a member or, if you’re able, join monthly, annually, or as a founding member so we can build the shields and the pilots at the same time — and make progress hard to undo.

Love and appreciate each of you!
Your friend and brother,

Shaun

Here are 3 FREE articles for you with NO PAYWALL…

---

---

---

---