How Anti-Imperialists Copy Empire's Anti-Arab Hatred

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If your vocabulary has room for the “Gulf Arab slave” but none for the “Algerian Arab revolutionary”, “Palestinian Arab steadfastness”, or “Yemeni Arab resistance”, then something has gone badly wrong

There’s something really bothering me of late. A verbal habit within parts of the anti-imperialist media that deserves more attention. Once you notice it, it becomes difficult to ignore: the word Arab appears most confidently when there is something shameful or negative to describe.

A Gulf monarch embraces Washington. An autocrat signs a normalization agreement. A prince poses beside the powerful, the corrupt, or the depraved. Suddenly, everyone remembers that these men are Arab. The word is made to carry the full moral weight of the scene. It comes to signify submission, decadence, political cowardice.

They call them Arab monarchies, Arab autocracies, Gulf Arabs, Arab slaves.

But t…