Early on New Year’s Day, a truck drove into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, resulting in dozens of injuries and at least 14 deaths. The alleged attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was killed in a shootout with police. Immediately, the media and government seized on supposed and self-described connections with ISIS with no critical thought towards what they’re calling a terrorist attack.

On this episode, we interrogate who benefits from this framing, what else is behind this story and how it’s being used by the system to prop up the war drive as well as Islamophobia and anti-immigrant hate in the context of the Biden-Trump transition and beyond. We’re joined for the conversation by Syed, a human rights activist and local organizer with Al-Awda in Houston.

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