Mapping Anti-Muslim Discrimination and Information Manipulation, and its Impact on

The allegations made of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, in the context of these campaigns are filled with Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of conspiratorial thinking and fallacious logic, playing Democracies, and Sarah Stern of the Endowment for on particularly narrow understandings of Muslim- Middle East Truth. [...] Recent interstate and civil conflicts such as the These dynamics are both reinforced and exacerbated Russian invasions of Ukraine, the Arab Uprisings, the by developments in the political economy of news US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and festering media, including the emergence of lucrative partisan conflicts in Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, and Myanmar media spaces and the corresponding targ. [...] Much of the content produced by the generators Of the five generators that we identify here, two relies on the fact that bad impressions and negative organizations—the Middle East Forum (MEF) and the stereotypes form more quickly and are more resistant Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)—create by far to disconfirmation than good and positive ones.70 most of the manipulated information used t. [...] The Gatestone Institute and the various projects and spinoff groups, as well as in US Center for Security Policy (CSP) produce a relatively publications such as The American Spectator, The Daily small amount of content and act more as policy Caller, The National Review, and The American Thinker.71 incubators. [...] the executive committee of the Middle East Forum and is a founding member of the Board of Regents for In 2017, figures with explicit anti-Muslim agendas— the Center for Security Policy.75 Rosenwald has also including Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and Sebastian been a major funder of four of the five generators we Gorka—were brought into the center of government identify here (see Section 5 on fundin.