No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need

by Naomi Klein

Take the administration’s incendiary public statements and policies relating to Muslims and “radical Islamic terrorism.” A decade and a half into the so-called war on terror, it’s not controversial to state the obvious: these kinds of actions and rhetoric make violent responses distinctly more likely. These days, the people warning about this danger most forcefully are not antiracism or antiwar activists, but leading figures in the military and intelligence communities and the foreign policy establishment. They argue that any perception that the United States is at war with Islam as a faith and Muslims as a group is a gift to extremists looking to rationalize bloody attacks on American soldiers and civilians. Daniel L. Bynam, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served on the Joint 9/11 Inquiry Staff of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, puts it this way: “Trump’s actions and rhetoric add credibility to the jihadists’ narrative of civilizational war.” Already, ISIS reportedly described Trump’s first anti-Muslim-travel executive order as a “blessed ban” that will help to recruit fighters. Iran’s foreign minister warned the ban was “a gift to extremists.” Even Trump’s own national security adviser, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, has described Trump’s repeated use of the term “radical Islamic terrorism” as unhelpful because, he says, the terrorists are “un-Islamic.” Yet nothing has changed. Trump seems determined to do everything possible to reinforc...