The New Hate Economy: How Trump’s Return, Media Money, and Normalized Violence Are Fueling a Global Anti-Arab Crusade

A Confession and a Warning

I want to start with something uncomfortable: I used to assume the worst of history was behind us. I believed the arc of human progress was bent, at least a little, toward decency. In 2025 that faith feels fragile.

The return of Donald Trump to the American presidency did not merely change policy. It reopened a permission structure - a permission to say, to broadcast, and ultimately to act on things that used to be unacceptable. That permission has an economy. It is paid for with clicks and donations. It is amplified by algorithms and defended as “free speech.” It turns tribal fear into profit, and it is especially deadly when directed at Arabs - Muslim and Christian - whom entire political and media ecosystems now treat as convenient enemies.

This essay is a warning. It is also a map: how we got here, what we are seeing now, and - if we are brave - how we push back.

1. The Return That Reopened Old Wounds

When Trump campaigned and governed previously, he proved a single truth: leadership sets the tone. Words from the podium ripple into airwaves, then into town halls, then into living rooms. In 2016 and again in 2025, the rhetoric of exclusion - about borders, about identity, about who belongs - did more than energize a base; it normalized a disposition.

We are not talking only about policy or voting blocs. We are talking about cultural permission. When a president uses dehumanizing metaphors to describe entire peoples, the cost is not merely rhetorical. It is practical: more harassment reports, more workplace bias, more violence at the margins.

In the months after Trump’s return, the pattern became visible. Hate incidents rose. Social media chatter intensified. Political pundits grew bolder. Networks that once treated explicit bigotry as taboo started treating it as part of “robust debate.”

2. When Racism is Rebranded as “Common Sense”

Hatred today arrives in a suit and a running time. It is framed as policy or “realism” or “security.” The language is polished: menace replaced by “threat,” people replaced by “cultures,” nuance replaced by slogans. It’s the same old script, but with better production values.

We still have numbers that show this shift is not abstract. Surveys and civil-rights groups have registered significant increases in bias and harassment targeting Arabs and Muslims across Western countries since the early 2020s. Workplaces report more subtle discrimination. Airports and schools report more reports of profiling. These are not anomalies; they are signals.

Pull-quote:

“What was once whispered in bars and back alleys is now said on cable, trimmed for an audience and optimized for engagement.”

3. The Media-Monetized Permission Structure

Let me be blunt: outrage is a business model. Algorithms reward anger. Sensationalism is easier to monetize than nuance. In a media economy obsessed with watch time and engagement, it is rational - from a profit perspective - to amplify the loudest, angriest voices.

A lot of prejudice today looks less like street violence and more like carefully calibrated messaging. Think tanks publish “studies.” Media outlets commission “security experts” to warn about “the Arab threat.” Social influencers package xenophobia as “honest talk.” Every retweet, every click, every ad dollar reinforces the loop.

What does that look like on the ground? It means panels where bigotry goes unchallenged. It means mainstream pundits inviting guests who use dehumanizing language, then treating those words as legitimate argument instead of what they are: incitement.

4. The Political Engine: Strategy, Not Accident

This is not accidental heat; it is strategic heat. Political operators understand how to use fear to mobilize voters. Identity becomes the lever. The “other” becomes the scapegoat. If you are struggling to pay the rent, to find a job, to buy food, it is easier for politicians to tell you that the problem is someone who looks, prays, or speaks differently - and to offer revenge disguised as policy.

When political leaders use metaphors of invasion and contamination, they are not merely describing reality. They are creating one. They are giving people a narrative that simplifies complex economic and social problems into a target that can be shouted at, demonized, and ultimately punished.

5. On Funding and Influence: Who Pays for the Message?

Here we enter sensitive territory - which I will navigate carefully. The media ecosystem does not operate in a vacuum. It is funded. It is influenced. Foundations, wealthy donors, political action committees, and interest groups all buy narrative access. Some of that money supports security research and policy analysis; some of it supports advocacy for a particular geopolitical stance. Some of it funds messaging that blurs the line between critique of foreign policy and prejudice against entire peoples.

Analyses of funding patterns show that millions have been directed, over recent years, to organizations and media projects that emphasize “security” narratives around the Middle East and migration. That funding - whether motivated by geopolitics, theology, or ideology - contributes to an ecosystem in which Arabs and Muslims are almost always framed as problems to be managed rather than neighbors to be known.

We should say explicitly: critique of any state’s policies is legitimate. Problematic - and dangerous - is when funding amplifies narratives that flatten people into threats, or when geopolitical advocacy bleeds into cultural stereotyping.

6. Extremist Voices Move from Fringe to Broadcast

Danger multiplies when extremist voices cross into mainstream audiences. I won’t rehearse the biographies of every provocateur, but a few trends are critical:

First, some well-known extremists - people who trafficked in conspiratorial and white-supremacist rhetoric - have become more visible in broader conservative networks. Their language shifts from coded to blunt.

Second, television and streaming panels sometimes platform these voices under the banner of “balance” or “free speech.” The impact is to normalize messages that once would have been immediately condemned.

Third, networks of online subcultures - forums and media channels - act as incubators. They radicalize, then export. When that export reaches a cable microphone or a political rally, the effect is amplified.

7. When Rhetoric Becomes Threat: The Randy Fine Moment and the Amsterdam Chants

There is a line between ugly opinion and a real threat to life - and lately that line has been crossed in plain sight.

In May 2025, Representative Randy Fine spoke on national television and offered one of the most chilling public statements of the era. Paraphrased, his remarks compared the U.S. use of atomic weapons in World War II to the situation in Gaza and argued that similarly extreme measures should be considered to “defeat” a culture. He said, in essence, that in the past America used overwhelming force to compel surrender and suggested the same calculus might apply now. Hearing that sentence - framed as a policy option on a major cable network - was a moment of collective nausea. It was proof that genocidal metaphors had migrated from the margins into polite political discourse.

Across the Atlantic, the danger looked different but no less lethal. During the 2024–25 football season, journalists and human-rights monitors documented repeated incidents in which some Israeli club supporter groups chanted racist slogans targeting Arabs and Palestinians. Video from an Amsterdam match showed fans chanting crude, violent phrases, tearing down Palestinian symbols, and engaging in street harassment of Arab residents. These were not private rants - they were public, recorded, celebrated by some, and defended by others.

Taken together, these episodes show the full pattern: dehumanizing talk from an elected official; boosterism from extremist subcultures; and mass public chanting that celebrates cruelty in stadiums and streets. This is not hyperbole. It is a pattern that escalates social permission into social violence.

Pull-quote:

“Words are not abstract. Once televised, they can become instructions for action.”

8. The Nick Fuentes Phenomenon and the Visibility of Extremist Provocateurs

It would be negligent to ignore the role of on-line provocateurs who traffic in explicit dehumanization. Figures like Nick Fuentes - identified in mainstream reporting as white-nationalist and extremist - have cultivated audiences by broadcasting contempt for minorities and normalizing violent rhetoric. Even when their content remains explicitly fringe, that content bleeds into larger movements, gives shape to otherwise diffuse hatreds, and trains audiences to accept dehumanization as a form of political theater.

This matters because the pathway from social-media provocation to mass action is shorter and faster than ever. What used to be confined to small forums now surfaces on video platforms, is clipped into “hot takes,” and gets fed back to mainstream viewers.

9. The Economic and Social Logic of Scapegoating

History repeats because the human mind seeks patterns and quick answers under stress. Economic anxiety - job loss, housing insecurity, shrinking public services - is fertile ground for scapegoating. Politicians and pundits who want power have long understood this dynamic.

When economic structures fail millions, pointing the finger at “the other” is an immediate, seductive narrative. It is simpler to blame a neighboring community, a migrant caravan, or a mosque than to confront complex fiscal policy failures or oligarchic capture.

So the media monetizes fear, political machines exploit it, and extremist voices sharpen it. The result is a public environment where prejudice is both profitable and politically useful.

10. Arab Christians: The Overlooked Victims

Let’s be clear: bigotry does not parse confessions. Arab Christians - often assumed to be outside the “Muslim” target - face the same ethnicity-based discrimination. A Coptic shopkeeper in Detroit, a Maronite student in Boston, a Syrian-Lebanese family in Melbourne: they can be profiled, dismissed, and attacked because their names, faces, or accents read as “Middle Eastern.”

When media and politicians speak of Arabs as a monolith - as a threat or a problem - they erase centuries of overlapping identities. The effect is a double injustice: religious and ethnic difference intersect and magnify vulnerability.

11. The Global Echo Chamber: Europe, the Middle East, and Beyond

American rhetoric does not stay in the United States. Language travels faster than policy. European populists mirror U.S. narratives, and right-wing parties across the continent echo the same fears in campaigns and parliamentary debates. In 2024 and 2025, European watchdogs recorded significant upticks in hate crimes targeting Arabs and Muslims - incidents that were often preceded by inflammatory media coverage.

But the ripple also flows the other way. In the Middle East, the open hostility from Western public figures becomes fodder for authoritarian narratives. Governments use Western Islamophobia to justify local repression: “Look, they hate us there; we must be strong here.” That dynamic is corrosive on both sides.

12. The Human Cost: Jobs, Education, and Mental Health

For those who live with these headlines, the costs are immediate and material.

Employers make split-second judgments. Students self-censor. Families delay travel plans. Mental-health clinics report higher rates of anxiety and depression among Arab youth abroad, often tied to identity-based harassment and the constant stress of surveillance.

An example: young Arab professionals speak to me privately about how they anglicize their names on résumés to avoid bias. Parents tell stories of children reluctant to wear cultural dress for fear of taunts. Scholars report that Arab studies programs in universities see fewer applicants, deterred by hostile climates.

These are not abstract metrics. They are daily erosions of dignity.

13. Sport and Public Culture: When Stadiums Celebrate Hate

Culture is a mirror. Football terraces - once spaces of tribal belonging that could be joyous and multicultural - now sometimes reflect the worst of public sentiment. The Amsterdam incidents showed how chants of violent triumph can become normalized, filmed, and then spread as proof that hatred is OK.

Sports have always been political. When stadiums become spaces of public humiliation for Arabs and Palestinians, that humiliation normalizes contempt in wider society. That desensitization makes it easier to accept discriminatory policies and harder to mobilize universal outrage.

14. The Funding Ecosystem: Advocacy, Geopolitics, and Messaging (Careful Framing)

Funding shapes narratives. Donors support think tanks, advocacy organizations, and media programs. Some of these entities operate legitimately, researching security and publishing reports. Others cross a line when their work blends geopolitical advocacy with cultural stereotyping and fearmongering.

Among the actors who influence public discourse are pro-Israel organizations, Christian Zionist donors, conservative advocacy groups, and geopolitical strategists. The nuance is crucial: many donors are motivated by genuine geopolitical concerns, religious solidarity, philanthropic aims, or national security beliefs. Yet the combined effect of some funding streams has been to magnify worst-case narratives about Arabs and Palestinians and to underwrite media campaigns that conflate criticism of a government with hatred of a people.

I write that as a sober observation, not an accusation. Moving from careful geopolitical argument to dehumanizing generalization is a narrow but dangerous step - and financial incentives can make that step easier.

15. The False Comfort of “Both-Sides” Arguments

Another danger lies with liberal and left-leaning voices that, in the name of “free speech” or “debate,” give oxygen to hate. A segment of progressive discourse insists on absolute equivalence: “Both sides are guilty,” or “We must defend free expression at all costs.” These positions, when applied inelegantly, play into the hands of those who would normalize hate.

To be clear: defending free expression has value. But treating a call for genocide or a chant celebrating the murder of children as an equivalent piece of “controversial” commentary is morally bankrupt. Equivalence is not balance when one side advocates for the denial of another group’s humanity.

16. The Moral and Institutional Failure

Institutions - universities, newsrooms, corporations - have a choice: they can either push back against dehumanizing narratives, or they can profit from them. Too often recently they have chosen the latter.

A newsroom that gives a platform to violent rhetoric because it drives ratings has made a moral choice. A university that tolerates harassment because it fears losing donors has made a moral choice. These choices compound. They tell people that some victims are less worthy of protection. They corrode trust in public institutions.

17. The Policy Front: What Real Pushback Looks Like

If we are to resist this new hate economy, we must act on several fronts, simultaneously:

Media reform. Platforms must adopt transparency about what content they amplify and why. Editorial standards must be enforced. When politicians use genocidal metaphors on air, networks must either refuse the platform or contextualize and condemn the language.

Funding transparency. Donor networks that influence public messaging on geopolitics should be transparent about their grants and goals. Not all funding is bad; sunlight is simply a disinfectant.

Stronger hate-crime enforcement. Law enforcement and civil-rights bodies must treat identity-based violence seriously, invest in reporting mechanisms, and protect vulnerable communities.

Civic education. Schools must teach media literacy and civic empathy. A population that can decode propaganda is harder to radicalize.

Economic measures. Address the structural anxieties that fuel scapegoating: jobs, housing, healthcare. Economics and empathy are not mutually exclusive.

18. Personal Resistance: What Individuals Can Do

Not everything is at the mercy of politicians and media executives. Each of us can practice resistance in daily life:

- Call out dehumanizing language in conversations, even when friends use it as “a joke.”
 - Amplify stories that complicate stereotypes: share profiles of Arab scientists, business owners, artists.
 - Support institutions and journalists who do responsible work on the Middle East.
 - Mentor and hire across difference. Practical inclusion matters.
 - Teach children how to read media critically.

Resistance is often small and unstylish, but it is durable.

19. A Larger Moral Argument

Ultimately, this is about what kind of world we want to be. If we allow the erosion of dignity for some, we do not make a safer world - we make a world where cruelty accrues power. That cruelty will not stop along a neat border. It mutates.

I believe - stubbornly - that most people do not want a world defined by contempt. But we are at a moment when comfort, convenience, and profit have conspired to make hatred seem tolerable. That toleration is our real enemy.

Pull-quote:

“To remain silent in the face of broadcast hate is to be, at least implicitly, complicit.”

20. The Global Crossroads: Rebuilding a Shared Future

If 2025 forces any truth on us, it is this: our fates are entangled. Global trade, climate change, pandemic risks, and migration make isolation a fantasy. We can only recover by recognizing interdependence - and by refusing to let fear corrode our basic humanity.

The fight is not only to protect Arab dignity abroad; it is to preserve the moral infrastructure that enables cross-border cooperation, scientific exchange, and shared prosperity. That infrastructure collapses when people normalize the dehumanization of “the other.”

21. A Call to Courage

I am not naive about politics. I know how hard real change is. But I also know history’s blunt lesson: empires don’t fall because of armies alone; they fall because their people stop feeling the pain of others.

If you read this essay and feel a flicker of unease - good. That feeling is moral alarm. Don’t let it pass. Use it. Call a friend. Correct a comment. Write to an editor. Donate to a civil-rights group. Vote for leaders who defend dignity even when it costs them votes.

The new hate economy is profitable only if we allow it to be. It dies when people choose courage over comfort, and humanity over headline.

Have you witnessed rising prejudice or organized hate in your community - online, at work, or at sporting events? Share your experience below. Your story matters in the fight to break the permission structure that hate depends on.