Sarah Kendzior

For the Globe and Mail, I wrote about Trump’s long-running birther crusade against President Obama:

What Americans did not know is that this was arguably the moment Mr. Trump’s serious presidential ambitions began. When Mr. Trump announced his 2016 candidacy, he had not yet shaken the mockery of President Obama’s riposte, nor had he gained, in the interim, the “credentials” or “breadth of experience” Barack Obama said he lacked.

What he had managed to do was turn birtherism into a national narrative. Birtherism is a vision of the U.S. that excludes Mr. Obama and any American whose name or heritage marks a break in white Christian dominance. Mr. Trump’s vow to “make America great again” always rested on rendering non-white, non-Christian citizens inherently suspect. Proclaiming Mexicans “rapists” and Muslims “terrorists,” Mr. Trump propelled white nationalism out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

Birtherism was never truly about where Barack Obama came from. It was about where he was allowed to go. Power, for Mr. Trump, a wealthy real estate scion, was rooted in birthright. Birthright became a theme of his campaign, as he insisted to supporters that illegitimate outsiders like Mr. Obama had taken what was rightly theirs. In ways both subtle and overt, Mr. Trump promoted whiteness as assurance, for white Americans, of immunity from hard times.

Read the whole thing at the Globe and Mail

I have been writing and tweeting about Trump’s relationship with the US media for over a year. Now I have written a summary of the fiasco, appropriately published in a Canadian newspaper, where I can speak freely. An excerpt:

Some have accused the media of fabricating a “horse race,” but this is an erroneous assumption. As shown over the summer – when Mr. Trump insulted the family of a fallen veteran, feuded with a baby and called on Russia to obtain Ms. Clinton’s e-mails, among other things – one does not need to cover Mr. Trump favourably to get favourable ratings. Viewers will tune in because it is the Trump Show. Ms. Clinton, similarly, is a source of both fascination and contempt. Americans will watch no matter what.

Something more ominous seems to be guiding the skewed coverage. Mr. Trump has named the media his enemy, despite its history as his friend. He has banned multiple organizations from his rallies. He has a history of litigation, is currently suing several outlets over articles on his wife, and is backed by Peter Thiel, the billionaire who sued Gawker out of existence. He is also advised by Roger Ailes, the former Fox News chief who has compiled massive dossiers on journalists he despises.

Mr. Trump’s campaign is run by Steve Bannon, a veteran of Breitbart, a paramount right-wing website. On Aug. 18, Mr. Bannon’s employees told the Associated Press of their plan to “humanize” Mr. Trump in the media and “use the Internet to win a general election.” The AP went on that week to release a Trump puff piece ignoring all scandals, a widely debunked exposé on the Clinton Foundation, a fake map showing the candidates tied, and other pro-Trump coverage. The AP’s behaviour was so egregious that it was questioned on CNN, where AP editor Kathleen Carroll admitted they were printing lies, but shrugged off the complaints. (On Friday, The AP admitted they had erred in their election coverage.)

CNN, meanwhile, has hired Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as a paid commentator while he is still being paid by the Trump campaign. CNN is headed by Jeff Zucker, former CEO of NBC, which produced Mr. Trump’s reality-TV series The Apprentice. Today Mr. Zucker keeps a framed Trump tweet in his office.

On Twitter, Mr. Trump gleefully brags about his insider knowledge of the media industry. Given his 40 years working in or with the media, he likely has secrets that could destroy careers. Trailing in the polls, Mr. Trump is planning to launch his own media empire should he lose the election. Some U.S. journalists appear to be auditioning. Others seem scared into silence.

Americans in general should also be afraid. Mr. Trump, who spent his life buying buildings, appears to have bought the Fourth Estate.

Read the whole thing at the Globe and Mail

For twenty-five years, an invasion of Uzbekistan by Islamic terrorists has been predicted, and for twenty-five years, it has not happened. Instead, that fear has been used as a pretext for the state to clamp down on domestic dissent. For Politico Europe:

Despite Uzbekistan’s reputation as a hotbed of Islamic militancy, terror attacks in the country are extremely rare. Islamic militant groups have no substantive presence within the country, and few Uzbeks are interested in joining one. If there is a threat to the country and its citizens, it’s more likely to come from government security forces than from Islamic insurgents.

Karimov died as he lived, shrouded in secrets, discussed by his countrymen through the mish-mish— gossip — that forms the primary source of communication in his insular, authoritarian state. During his 27-year rule — he served first as secretary of the Communist Party before becoming president in 1991 — Karimov repressed the rights of his people and suppressed evidence of the repression.

His control of the country’s information system seems to have outlived him. On August 26, Uzbek officials abruptly announced that September 2 would be an official “day off,” claiming Uzbeks needed time to rest after the festivities. In reality, it appears to have been a pre-planned day of mourning. Late that evening, Karimov was announced dead, and he was buried the next day in an elaborate funeral in Samarkand.

The perception that Uzbekistan is beset by Islamic militants is a product of Karimov’s propaganda apparatus and his efforts to maintain control. Karimov encouraged Uzbeks to follow their Muslim faith, but in an extremely narrow way that conformed to state directives and acquiesced to state-approved mosques and imams.

Read  on as to what the death of Karimov means for Uzbekistan 

What is a Trump rally like without Donald Trump present? To find out, I drove to a Harley Davidson lot in Festus, Missouri, where the local branch of the Tea Party was holding their own rally without them. It was very different than the last time I attended a Trump rally in St. Louis. For Quartz:

But Trump rallies, which attract fanatical followers, do not tell the whole story of Trump’s support. This raises an interesting question: What is a Trump rally like without Trump? What happens to the crowd when the demagogue is absent?

In an attempt to answer this question, I drove to the parking lot of a Harley Davidson outlet in Festus, Missouri, a small city outside of St. Louis. This was where the local branch of the Tea Party was holding its own Trump rally—without Trump in attendance. Speakers included local Tea Party leaders like Jim Hoft, a popular right-wing blogger better known as the Gateway Pundit, and Ed Martin, Jr., an associate of ultraconservative pundit Phyllis Schlafly, a St. Louis native herself. This was a St. Louis gathering. Both in tone and topic, it was far more in the spirit of St. Louis—white, bigoted St. Louis, that is—than in the spirit of Trump.

I knew this because, back in March, I attended a Trump rally in St. Louis—the first to be significantly disrupted by protesters, and one of the bloodiest rallies to date. As Trump spewed hateful epithets from the podium that were broadcast through speakers placed outside the building where the rally was held, Trump fans and opponents clashed both inside and on the streets, sometimes getting into physical altercations. Novel at the time, this has since become standard for Trump rallies.

In Festus, the atmosphere was quite different. A comparatively small audience of roughly 200 people were in attendance—still overwhelmingly white, and mostly middle-aged or older. There were Trump hats and Trump signs on display. But there were just as many for local politicians like Eric Greitens (the Missouri GOP candidate for governor best known for ads in which he is shown shooting an Gatling-style machine gun). The differences between a Trump rally and a Trump fan-only rally were so stark, both in topic and tenor, that it raised the question of how closely Trump and Tea Party interests are aligned, particularly in a region home to many evangelical conservatives.

Read the whole thing here

As I noted in an earlier post — which you should read if you’re interested in Uzbekistan — I have been studying Uzbekistan extensively for over a decade. Islam Karimov, its first and only president, has died. I will likely be writing more about this in the days to come. For now, an excerpt of my op-ed for The New York Times:

Uzbeks who loved Mr. Karimov — and there are many who did — will mourn his passing. Others mourn because they fear for a greater loss of stability in a country already troubled by widespread poverty and a scarcity of gas, food and water. But some Uzbeks have already been mourning for years — for the Uzbekistan that Mr. Karimov never allowed to exist, and for the promises that were never honored in practice.

For 25 years, Uzbeks were told they lived in a “future great state.” That slogan, still ubiquitous, never came with a timeline. Previously, when one would ask Uzbeks when they thought Uzbekistan would change, they would always say, “When Karimov is gone.”

That day, both longed for and dreaded, may be here. What is Uzbekistan without Islam Karimov? For the first time in independent Uzbekistan’s history, the future has arrived.

Read the whole thing here

For the Globe and Mail, I wrote about Trump’s trip to Mexico and his horrifying immigration speech:

The proposed Mexican wall is fantastical. It is as fantastical as the wall being built in Atlanta, a wall that guards nothing but the sanctity of bigotry. The Trump fans, endlessly mocking political correctness, are building themselves a safe space. Their safe space is a shrine – to Mr. Trump, to audacity, to doing things because one can, not because it serves the public good. Such is the Trump campaign.

The wall was never truly about Mexico, but it was always about borders. His antipathy toward Mexicans – and Muslims, and blacks, and other minorities – was aimed at capturing the allegiance of whites. His campaign was born this way, and it thrived this way, until he became too erratic and vulgar. His support stagnated, then fell.

Now he is attempting to appease the groups he insulted – visiting Mexico, reaching out to blacks – but his message still targets white voters. He needs to reassure them he is not a bigot so they can reassure themselves they are not either.

Mr. Trump followed up his Mexico excursion with a rally speech in Arizona. Surrounded by cheering fans, he reverted to form: energetic and paranoid, portraying the divide between the U.S. and Mexico as a divide between safety and danger. Any illegal immigrant who committed a crime stood in for all illegal immigrants. When not murdering “good Americans,” they were leeching off the system, stealing resources and jobs.

Early in his speech, Mr. Trump bemoaned the “illegal flow of drugs, cash, guns and people.” In his world view, objects are the same as human beings: dangerous and disposable, so long as they come from Mexico.

He spoke of “compassion for Americans,” but the Mexicans and Mexican-Americans he insulted merited none. His rage in Arizona stood in stark contrast to his meekness earlier in the day. Confronted with the humanity of his enemy in Mexico, he faltered; surrounded by adoration, he struck from afar.

Read the whole thing here

For De Correspondent, I wrote on the white supremacist movement surrounding the Trump campaign, and the complicated history of “whiteness” in America. An excerpt on Polish-Americans:

Here it is important to understand how, exactly, Americans ‘become white’. The history of Polish-Americans is an illuminating example. Upon arriving in the U.S. en masse in the late 19th and early 20th century, Poles endured discrimination based on their appearance, religion and culture.In 1903, the New England Magazine decried the Poles’ “expressionless Slavic faces” and “stunted figures” as well as their inherent “ignorance” and “propensity to violence”. Working for terrible wages, Polish workers were renamed things like “Thomas Jefferson” by their bigoted Anglo-Saxon bosses who refused to utter Polish names.

The Poles, in other words, were not considered white. Far from it: they were considered a mysterious menace that should be expelled. When Polish-American Leon Czolgosz killedPresident William McKinley in 1901, all Poles were deemedpotential violent anarchists. “All people are mourning, and it is caused by a maniac who is of our nationality,” a Polish-American newspaper wrote, pressured to apologize for their own people. The collective blame of Poles for terrorism bears great similarity to how Muslims (both in the U.S. and Europe) are collectively blamed today.

But then something changed. In 1919, Irish gangs in blackface attacked Polish neighborhoods in Chicago in an attempt to convince Poles, and other Eastern European groups, that they, too, were “white” and should join them in the fight against blacks. As historian David R. Roedigerrecalls, “Poles argued that the riot was a conflict between blacks and whites, with Poles abstaining because they belonged to neither group.” But the Irish gangs considered whiteness, as is often the case in America, as anti-blackness. And as in the early 20th century Chicago experienced an influx not only of white immigrants from Europe, but blacks from the South, white groups who felt threatened by black arrivals decided that it would be politically advantageous if the Poles were considered white as well.

Over time, the strategy of positioning Poles as “white” against a dark-skinned “other” was successful. Poles came to consider themselves white, and more importantly, they came to be considered white by their fellow Americans, as did Italians, Greeks, Jews, Russians, and others from Southern and Eastern Europe, all of whom held an ambivalent racial status in U.S. society. With that new white identity came the ability to practice the discrimination they had once endured.

Read the whole thing at De Correspondent

I’ve been studying Uzbekistan for over a decade. As both an MA and a PhD student, I studied the country extensively, and was the first scholar to study Uzbek digital media in depth. Other areas of research are state and dissident politics, terrorism, propaganda, Islamic movements, exile groups, human rights, and the politics of the Uzbek-speaking diaspora. I’ve also written extensively on the massacre of civilians by state forces in Andijon in 2005, and debunked the existence of the terrorist group “Akromiya”, which the government used as a justification for the massacre.

Uzbekistan’s first and only president, Islom Karimov, is said to be gravely ill — either from a stroke or a brain hemmorrhage, depending on the source. This is a crisis moment for Uzbekistan, regardless of the outcome. Never in Uzbekistan’s history has the government released a public statement on the president having a major illness. There is no clear successor, and many rivalries within the government elites. Secrecy and gossip both rule in Uzbekistan, making the situation difficult to understand and probable outcomes difficult to determine.

Below is a full list of everything I’ve written about Uzbekistan so you will have background to understand the current crisis. Uzbeks have already endured decades of routine, quiet, state-sanctioned violence. I hope that a better and safer future lies ahead. Omon bo’ling.

Update: Karimov has died. Below are articles I wrote and interviews I did since this became clear.

This Is Hell Radio, “Lockout”, Interview on Uzbekistan (9/10/16)

Radio Free Europe, “Uzbekistan Without Karimov” (9/11/16)

Salaam Media, South Africa, interview on Uzbekistan’s past and future (9/9/16)

The Stream, Al Jazeera, “The future of Uzbekistan” (9/8/16) [Heated debate; recommended***]

Uzbekistan’s real problem is not terrorism, it’s politics (9/6/16) (Politico Europe)

Independence Day for a Scared Nation (9/1/16) (New York Times op-ed)

BBC World Service, interview on Uzbekistan about 26 minutes in. (9/3/16) [Not the greatest interview because an earthquake shook my house right before I went on! ]

Al Jazeera English, live interview on Uzbekistan (9/3/16)

CBC, Uzbeks experience “mass anxiety, mourning and worry” after president’s death (9/2/16) [***Recommended interview}

ArHaberlar Arabic-language interview on Uzbekistan (9/2/16)

MO*nieuwsbrieven “Vermist: Oezbeekse dictator. Gezocht: toekomstplan voor explosief werelddeel” (9/2/16) On Uzbekistan

Wiadomosci,”Zbliza sie koniec Islama Karimow. Kto nastanie po smierci dyktatora?” (8/31). Polish interview on Uzbekistan

ACADEMIC WORK

2016 “Recognize the Spies”: Transparency and Political Power in Uzbek Cyberspace. Social Analysis, 59 (4): 50-65

2011    Digital Distrust: Uzbek Cynicism and Solidarity in the Internet Age
American Ethnologist 38 (3): 559-575

2010    A Reporter Without Borders: Internet Politics and State Violence in Uzbekistan
Problems of Post-Communism57 (1): 40-50

2007    Poetry of Witness: Uzbek Identity and the Response to Andijon
Central Asian Survey 26 (3): 317–334

2006    Redefining Religion: Uzbek Atheist Propaganda in Gorbachev-era Uzbekistan Nationalities Papers34 (5): 533-548

2006    Inventing Akromiya:The Role of Uzbek Propagandists in the Andijon Massacre Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 14 (4): 545–562

POLICY PAPERS

2016      “Nations in Transit: Uzbekistan“. Freedom House, Nations in Transit 2015

2014     “Digital Memory and a Massacre: Post-Soviet Uzbek Identity in the Age of Social Media“, Central Asia Program, Uzbekistan Initiative Papers, George Washington University. Co-written with Noah Tucker.

2014     “Nations in Transit: Uzbekistan“. Freedom House, Nations in Transit 2014

2013     “Nations in Transit: Uzbekistan“. Freedom House, Nations in Transit 2013

2012    “Digital Freedom of Expression in Uzbekistan: An example of social control and censorship in the 21st Century”. Published by the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation

MAINSTREAM MEDIA ARTICLES 

Trumpmenbashi: What Central Asia’s spectacular states can tell us about authoritarianism in America (3/22/16) — The Diplomat
Dashcams for Freedom (8/5/15) — Foreign Policy
‘We Are Not Afraid’ (7/14/15) — Foreign Policy
Uzbekistan’s Forgotten Massacre (5/13/15) — The New York Times
Can Minor Languages Make Revolution? (10/1/14) — The Common Reader
The Curse of Stability in Central Asia (2/19/13) — Foreign Policy
An American dream, an exile’s nightmare (6/30/13) — Al Jazeera
Kim Kardashistan: A Violent Dictator’s Daughter on a Quest for Pop Stardom (8/8/12) — The Atlantic
Censorship as Performance Art: Uzbekistan’s Bizarre Wikipedia Ban (2/23/12) — The Atlantic
The Strange Saga of a Made-Up Activist and Her Life—and Death—as a Hoax (12/20/11) — The Atlantic
My archive on Central Asia from Registan

INTERVIEWS ABOUT UZBEKISTAN

The Future of Central Asian Studies: A Eulogy keynote at Indiana University (3/7/15)
Here and There with Dave Marash, hour-long interview on Central Asian politics (9/1/15)
This is Hell, “Journalist Sarah Kendzior explains how Uzbeks turned a hashtag against a dictatorship” (7/25/15)
BBC Uzbek, interviewed by Uzbek novelist Hamid Ismailov (6/18/15) (In Uzbek)
Crikey, “Follow Friday: @sarahkendzior, commentator and the full Kendzior” (1/24/14)
Ferghana News, Вашингтон больше не интересуют исследования Центральной Азии (“Washington losing interest in Central Asia:), interviewed (12/17/13)
VOA Uzbek, “As Uzbeks share their pain on the internet, they create their own identity”. In Uzbek. (6/12/13)
BBC Uzbek, “Three years after the tragedy in southern Kyrgyzstan, how are people getting by?” In Uzbek. (6/7/13)
Voice of America, “An American scholar analyzes Central Asia in the age of the internet”(Print interview in Uzbek) (4/14/13) (TV interview in English, original)
Voice of America, “Experts: Central Asia on the threshold of an uncertain future” (in Uzbek) (3/27/13)
The Seattle Spectator, “Speakers Address Election Fraud in Uzbekistan” (1/23/13)
Voice of America Uzbek “Sara Kendzior: O’qimishli fuqarolarga imkon bermaslik – O’zbekiston fojiasi” (“Sarah Kendzior: The tragedy of Uzbekistan is that educated citizens are being denied opportunities”) (12/20/12)
Radio Free Europe, “Gulnara Karimova takes the fight to Twitter” (11/30/12)
BBC Uzbek, “‘Twitter’ da Gulnora Karimova va ‘boshqa’lar bilan dahanaki jangnter”. (“A war of words between Gulnara Karimova and ‘others’ on Twitter”). Interview about the daughter of the dictator of Uzbekistan attacking me on Twitter (11/30/12)
BBC Uzbek, “‘Ўзбекистонда ўз ҳуқуқингни билиш давлатга қарши амал’..ми?” Uzbek-language interview about law and justice in Uzbekistan (6/19/12)
Voice of America, Russian service: “Uzbekistan has banned Wikipedia”. Interview with me on online media censorship in Uzbekistan (2/25/12)

DISSERTATION

2012     The Uzbek Opposition in Exile: Diaspora and Dissident Politics in the Digital Age
Washington University in Saint Louis, Department of Anthropology.

MASTER’S THESIS

2006       State Propaganda on Islam in Independent Uzbekistan
Indiana University, Department of Central Eurasian Studies.

BOOK CHAPTERS

2014     “Reclaiming Ma’naviyat: Morality, Criminality and Dissident Politics in Uzbekistan”. In Ethnographies of the State in Central Asia: Performing Politics, ed. Madeleine Reeves, Johan Rasanayagam, Judith Beyer. Indiana University Press.

As Milwaukee burns and Baton Rouge floods, I wrote about the abandonment of the heartland for Quartz:

They come for the chaos. They don’t stay for the banal brutality of the time in between, the slow erosion of opportunities that structure daily living. 

Dramatic events in these regions—a shooting, an environmental catastrophe—are cast, in the media, as moments of crisis. But the actual crisis is a collective refusal to examine systemic failures and understand the long-standing local problems that culminated in these tragedies. At the heart of this blindness is racism. It is hard to imagine an epidemic of poisoned white children, or white teenage boys killed regularly by black police, or white inner city residents living in poverty for decades while black suburbanites happily thrive, without media and political outrage surrounding it.

In the Midwest and South, racism is compounded by regionalism. When a politician wants votes, these regions are “the heartland” or “the real America” (unless, of course, they’re referring to non-white residents). Most of the time, however, it is “flyover country”—the immense swath of land that coastal media and political elites ignore. The region’s invisibility has increased, like its hardship, since the 2008 recession. As of 2014, one out of four journalists lived in three expensive coastal cities–a significant change from one out of eight in 2004, a number already disproportionate to the population. Meanwhile, Midwestern and Southern media is steadily being bought out and bankrupted, leaving its stories untold by the people best qualified to tell them.

Read the whole thing at Quartz

For Quartz, I looked over years of Russian-language coverage of Trump, which long preceded his campaign, and reflected on their relationship and their collaborative white supremacist bases:

While some members of the US media have dismissed attempts to examine Trump’s ties with Russia as “McCarthyism,” Trump’s long-standing public approval of Russia—and Russia’s equally enthusiastic response to Trump—merits scrutiny.  Throughout his campaign, Trump has vacillated on nearly every position, with the notable exception of his consistent praise for Putin. The genesis of this relationship is not as important as its consequences. Though Trump’s odds of winning the presidency have decreased, his campaign has empowered white-nationalist movements, many of which embrace Putin. In July, US white-supremacist leader Matthew Heimbach proclaimed, “Putin is the leader, really, of the anti-globalist forces around the world.”

In other words, Trump and Putin are two of a kind: xenophobic, bigoted demagogues with dual histories of corruption, aggression, and celebration of white supremacy repackaged as patriotic nationalism. Their radical American and Russian followers, now linked by the internet, share similar goals and are part of a larger revival of white-supremacist movements happening across the West.

The USSR collapsed twenty-five years ago. Russia is no longer the center of the communist Soviet Union but rather a hyper-capitalist, authoritarian state. Dominated by oligarchs, modern Russia has retained the worst trappings of the Soviet system—such as mass surveillance and personality cults—while cracking down on political dissidents, gays and lesbians, Muslims, Jews, migrant laborers, and others who do not fit with Putin’s nationalist vision. In other words, he engages in many of the same practices Trump proposes.

 Trump and Putin are two of a kind: bigoted demagogues with dual histories of corruption and aggression. Critics of this relationship are therefore not merely reacting to outdated Cold War stereotypes—in fact, many are not even old enough to remember this era. Rather, they are rightfully wary of a mutually beneficial relationship between a Russian dictator and an American demagogue that could ultimately harm citizens of Russia, citizens of the US, and citizens of the many other states most directly affected by this alliance, starting with Ukraine and the Baltic members of NATO.

Read the whole thing here