The Guandolo Islands (of Intolerance)
April 30, 2024
In May of 2015, around 250 anti-Muslim protestors gathered at a mosque in downtown Phoenix, led by Jon Ritzheimer, the founder of the Three Percenters militia. Ritzheimer and his supporters were met by hundreds of counter-protestors who came to support the mosque and the idea of interfaith peace.
The militia leader rationalized the protests by arguing that Muslims were inherently intolerant by culture and nature. Ritzheimer said, “They don’t believe society should be multicultural or multiethnic. They think everyone should believe like them, I guess.” He wore a t-shirt that said, “Fuck Islam.”
Ritzheimer’s display of anti-Muslim hate reflects the values of the militia movement, which relies on a nostalgic notion of what it means to be “American” to justify its tactics and xenophobia. Far-right movements have long targeted Muslims with hateful tactics and intimidation. (And then, of course, Trump carried the mission forward when he became president.)
But anti-Muslim hate is neither relegated to the backwaters of the far-right nor FBI counter-terrorism initiatives (based on false theories few have bothered to debunk). For over a decade, it has been staple fare for local law enforcement, who were trained to see religious and cultural displays of Islam as a threat.
Take the teachings of John Guandolo, an ex-FBI agent who went around the country teaching local law enforcement to see objects like a Qur’an on a car seat as signs of danger. (Michael Flynn was a member of Guandolo’s board – Guandolo’s training business has undergone a reorganization, so I am not sure what the current composition is.) During the course of his career, Guandolo has not only accused various people of being terrorists just because they were Muslim; he has also testified in Congressional hearings and called anyone who opposes him part of a “jihadi plot.” In 2017, I reported that Guandolo had launched a (now defunct) organization called the Thin Blue Line Project, which I described as follows:
The Thin Blue Line Project offers training videos, tips on catching terrorists, a live stream of news, a message board, and, most importantly, a national map that geolocates Muslim targets. The locations are benign: Muslim student associations; mosques; offices of the Council On American-Islamic Relations. But, in Guandolo’s words, it’s a way to “locate these jihadis.”
I point this out to say that the recent police violence against college protestors isn’t just about free speech and a war on colleges (and students) – it’s also about the subtle and not-so-subtle anti-Muslim beliefs of law enforcement across the board. While people rightly decried Trump’s Muslim ban, no one has really bothered to correct the horrific xenophobic lies of people like Guandolo. One of the justices on the Arizona Supreme Court, Bill Montgomery, in addition to be an out-and-out hater of women’s rights and marijuana, was a major purchaser of Guandolo’s teachings.
While I don’t know whether any local law enforcement officers responding to college protests were specifically trained in Guandolo’s rhetoric, I think it is fair to say that the fact LEO agencies were permitted to hire an openly racist man to provide what was framed as “training reflects police agencies’ underlying and under-explored anti-Muslim bias. This surely must be informing their response to anti-war protestors.