A Rhetoric of Traumatic Nationalism in the Ground Zero Mosque Controversy

Abstract

In the summer of 2010, a national controversy erupted suddenly as a majority of Americans protested the building of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero. In this essay, I suggest the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” controversy makes visible the emergence of a rhetoric of traumatic nationalism that articulates suffering to citizenship and reproduces national crisis through a motif of consecration whose upshot is a conservative, bipartisan moralism. An anti-political discourse of victimization masquerading as a memory discourse of righteous sacrifice, traumatic nationalism serves as an alibi that excuses the United States from answering responsibly for the war on terror and prevents critical examination of the state of the union.

Keywords:

• Nationalism
• Citizenship
• Trauma
• 9/11
• Rhetoric

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers as well as Bradford Vivian, Edward Panetta, Thomas Lessl, Belinda Stillion-Southard, Jeremy Grossman, Devon Bouffard, and Joseph Packer for their insightful critiques. The author's deepest gratitude is reserved for Barbara Biesecker whose enduring vision and patience have helped so many of us to imagine differently.

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers as well as Bradford Vivian, Edward Panetta, Thomas Lessl, Belinda Stillion-Southard, Jeremy Grossman, Devon Bouffard, and Joseph Packer for their insightful critiques. The author's deepest gratitude is reserved for Barbara Biesecker whose enduring vision and patience have helped so many of us to imagine differently.

Notes

[1] Terry Eagleton, “September 11,” London Review of Books, October 4, 2001, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n19/nine-eleven-writers/11-september/print.

[2] Laura Ingraham and Daisy Khan, “Impact Segment: Controversy Surrounds Islamic Mosque at Ground Zero,” The O'Reilly Factor, Audio transcript, December 21, 2009, http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=2497&dest=/pg/jsp/community/tvshowprint.jsp. Ingraham also remarked during this interview that she “can't find many people who really have a problem with” Cordoba House.

[3] Anne Barnard, “For Imam in Muslim Center Furor, a Hard Balancing Act,” New York Times, August 21, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/nyregion/22imam.html.

[4] Charlie Brooker, “'Ground Zero mosque? The Reality is Less Provocative,” The Guardian, August 23, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/23/charlie-brooker-ground-zero-mosque.

[5] See Beth Fouhy, “‘Ground Zero Mosque’ Debate Divides New York Democrats,” Huffington Post, August 19, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/19/ground-zero-mosque-debate_1_n_687430.html; Maggie Haberman, “NY Members in Swing Districts Coming Out Against Mosque,” Politico, August 17, 2010, http://www.politico.com/blogs/maggiehaberman/0810/NY_members_in_swing_districts_coming_out_against_mosque.html; Chris Moody, “Opinions on Cordoba House blur party lines in Florida,” The Daily Caller, August 16 2010, http://dailycaller.com/2010/08/16/opinions-on-cordoba-house-blur-party-lines-in-florida/.

[6] Steven Greenberg, “Voters are Following NYC Mosque Issue Closely; Still Oppose It; Support Constitutionality of Building it,” Siena Research Institute, 2, August 18, 2010, http://www.siena.edu/uploadedfiles/home/parents_and_community/community_page/sri/sny_poll/10%20August%20SNY%20Poll%20Release%20--%20FINAL.pdf.

[7] Alex Altman, “TIME Poll: Majority Oppose Mosque, Many Distrust Muslims,” TIME, August 10, 2010, http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2011799,00.html; “Overwhelming Majority Oppose Mosque Near Ground Zero,” Political Ticker, August 11, 2010, http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/11/overwhelming-majority-oppose-mosque-near-ground-zero/. See also CNN Opinion Research Corporation, “CNN Opinion Research Poll,” 3, August 11, 2010, http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/08/11/rel11a.pdf.

[8] Cited in John McCormack, “Juan Williams Opposes Ground Zero Mosque,” The Weekly Standard, August 1, 2010, http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/juan-williams-opposes-ground-zero-mosque.

[9] Richard Land, “Is a Mosque Near Ground Zero a Bad Idea?” Council on Foreign Relations, August 23, 2010, http://www.cfr.org/religion/mosque-near-ground-zero-bad-idea/p22830.

[10] Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at Iftar Dinner,” August 13, 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/08/13/remarks-president-iftar-dinner.

[11] See George W. Bush, “Remarks at Emma Booker Elementary School,” September 11, 2001, American Rhetoric, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush911florida.htm; “9/11 Address to the Nation,” September 11, 2001, American Rhetoric, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush911addresstothenation.htm; “Address to a Joint Session of Congress Following 9/11 Attacks,” September 20, 2001, American Rhetoric, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush911jointsessionspeech.htm; “State of the Union Address,” January 29, 2002, Presidential Rhetoric, http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/01.29.02.html; and “State of the Union Address,” January 20, 2004, Presidential Rhetoric, http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/01.20.04.html.

[12] Bush, “Address,” September 20, 2001.

[13] Rick Hampson, “Post-9/11 Mantra: Make Sure the Terrorists Don't Win,” USA Today, September 8, 2011, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011–09–07/How-9–11-changed-us-IV-Have-terrorists-won/50303168/1.

[14] See Mo Costandi, “Pregnant 9/11 Survivors Transmitted Trauma to Their Children,” The Guardian, September 9, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/neurophilosophy/2011/sep/09/pregnant-911-survivors-transmitted-trauma; Manav Tanneeru, “9/11 Trauma Persists Five Years Later,” CNN, September 8, 2006, http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/08/911.overview/index.html?eref=yahoo; Brian Trappler, ed., Modern Terrorism and Psychological Trauma (New York: Gordon Knot, 2007).

[15] Justin Elliott, “How the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ Fear Mongering Began,” Salon, August 16, 2010, http://www.salon.com/2010/08/16/ground_zero_mosque_origins/.

[16] Michael C. McGee, “In Search of ‘The People’: A Rhetorical Alternative,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 61, no. 3 (1975): 235–49.

[17] Though we arrived at our projects separately, Stephen John Hartnett's recent traumatized nationalism thesis is instructive of my essay for two reasons. One, his connection between trauma and militancy supports my assertion that trauma rhetorics perpetuate righteous moralistic discourses that sequester and besiege the national ethos. Two, Hartnett's identification of the past tense (traumatized) in contrast to my insistence on the present tense (traumatic) underscores my argument that the primary goal of traumatic nationalism is to re-present 9/11 as a post-war on terror alibi, “Google and the ‘Twisted Cyber Spy’ Affair: US–Chinese Communication in an Age of Globalization,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97, no. 4 (2011): 413.

[18] Bush, “State of the Union,” January 20, 2004.

[19] Bush, “Address,” September 20, 2001.

[20] Roger Stahl, “A Clockwork War: Rhetorics of Time in a Time of Terror,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 1 (2008): 75.

[21] For a definition of social imaginary, see Lauren Berlant, The Anatomy of National Fantasy: Hawthorne, Utopia and Everyday Life (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 5.

[22] Barbara A. Biesecker, “No Time for Mourning: The Rhetorical Production of the Melancholic Citizen-Subject in the War on Terror,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 40, no. 1 (2007): 152.

[23] Biesecker, “No Time for Mourning,” 147 and 153.

[24] Biesecker, “No Time for Mourning,” 152.

[25] Caroline Smith and James M. Lindsay, “Rally ‘Round the Flag: Opinion in the United States before and after the Iraq War,” Brookings Institute, Summer 2003, http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2003/06/summer-iraq-lindsay.

[26] BBC World Service Poll, “US ‘War on Terror’ Has Not Weakened al Qaeda, Says Global Poll,” September 28, 2008, http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep08/BBCAlQaeda_Sep08_rpt.pdf.

[27] Glenn Greenwald, “Bush and Blair Found Guilty of War Crimes for Iraq Attack,” Salon, November 23, 2011, http://www.salon.com/2011/11/23/bush_and_blair_found_guilty_of_war_crimes_for_iraq_attack/.

[28] Marita Gronnvoll, “Gender (In)Visibility at Abu Ghraib,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10, no. 3 (2007): 371.

[29] Lisa Miller, “War Over Ground Zero: A Proposed Mosque Tests the Limits of American Tolerance,” Newsweek, August 16, 2010, 27, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/08/08/war-over-ground-zero.html.

[30] Feisal Abdul Rauf, What's Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), xviii.

[31] Rauf, What's Right with Islam, 252.

[32] Paraphrased in Rick Hampson, “Drawn-out Afghanistan War drains post-9/11 fervor,” USA Today, 5 September 2013, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/05/911-anniversary-afghanistan-war-syria/2771437/.

[33] Bernard Comrie, Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 17.

[34] Comrie, Aspect, 5.

[35] The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks, directed by Pamela Geller (United States: 2010), DVD.

[36] Susan Jacoby, “Ground Zero Mosque Protected by First Amendment but it's Still Salt in the Wound,” The Washington Post, August 4, 2010, sec. “The Spirited Atheist,” http://archive.is/6EfbX.

[37] Daisy Khan and Mishal Hussain, “Controversy Over ‘Ground Zero’ Mosque Plans,” Impact, December 7, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/impact_asia/9265098.stm.

[38] Numerous scholars working in the traumatic turn of literary studies have identified something like testimony, witness, the plea, or confession as an integral part of working through trauma. See especially Linda Belau, “Trauma and the Material Signifier,” Postmodern Culture 11, no. 2 (2001); Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); and Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

[39] James Berger, After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 62.

[40] Sacrificed Survivors: The Untold Story of the Ground Zero Mega-Mosque, directed by Martin Mawyer (United States: PRB Films in association with Christian Action Network, 2010), DVD.

[41] Claire Sisco King, Washed in Blood: Male Sacrifice, Trauma, and the Cinema (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 10.

[42] Chris Cillizza, “Democrats Divided Over Proposed New York City Mosque,” Post Politics, The Washington Post, August 17, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/16/AR2010081605425.html.

[43] Miller, “War Over Ground Zero,” 27.

[44] Cillizza, “Democrats Divided.”

[45] Jim Cook, “Cordoba House Must be Sensitive to Victims’ Families,” Irregular Times, August 30, 2010, http://irregulartimes.com/2010/08/30/cordoba-house-must-be-sensitive-to-victims-families/.

[46] Geller, The Ground Zero Mosque.

[47] Maywer, Sacrificed Survivors.

[48] Anti Defamation League, “Statement on Islamic Community Center Near Ground Zero,” adl.org, July 28, 2010, http://www.adl.org/PresRele/CvlRt_32/5820_32.htm.

[49] Cillizza, “Democrats Divided.”

[50] Hendrik Hertzberg, “Zero Grounds,” The New Yorker, August 16, 2010, http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/08/16/100816taco_talk_hertzberg.

[51] Miller, “War Over Ground Zero,” 27.

[52] Henry A. Giroux, “War on Terror: The Militarising of Public Space and Culture in the United States,” Third Text 18, no. 4 (2004): 211–12.

[53] George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address,” January 28, 2003, Presidential Rhetoric, http://www.presidentialrhetoric.com/speeches/01.28.03.html.

[54] Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 22.

[55] George W. Bush, “Address to the Nation—Ultimatum to Saddam Hussein,” March 17, 2003, American Rhetoric, http://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/wariniraq/gwbushiraq31703.htm.

[56] Slavoj Zizek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real (London, UK: Verso, 2002), 45.

[57] Obama, “Remarks.”

[58] Michael Bloomberg, “Bloomberg on Mosque Vote,” August 3, 2010, The Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703545604575407673221908474.html.

[59] Clyde Haberman, NY/Region, “In Islamic Center Fight, Lessons in Prepositions and Fear-Mongering,” The New York Times, July 26, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/nyregion/27nyc.html?_r=2&ref=nyregion.

[60] Charles Krauthammer, “Sacrilege at Ground Zero,” The Washington Post, August 13, 2010, sec. Op-Ed, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/12/AR2010081204996.html.

[61] Mircea Eliade, Sacred and Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt Inc., 1957/1987), 26.

[62] Geller, The Ground Zero Mosque.

[63] CBS/AP, “Ground Zero's Boundaries Evolve in Mosque Debate,” US, CBS News, August 30, 2010, http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162–6807473.html.

[64] James L. Paxson, The Poetics of Personification (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 43.

[65] John M. Curtis, “Second Thoughts About Ground Zero Mosque,” OnlineColumnist.com, August 23, 2010, http://onlinecolumnist.com/082310.html; emphasis added.

[66] chinatsu, “Read the Koran Day,” Scott Westerfeld.com (blog), http://scottwesterfeld.com/forum/index.php?topic=2283.110;wap2.

[67] Joan Faber McAlister, “Domesticating Citizenship: The Kairotopics of America's Post-9/11 Home Makeover,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 27, no. 1 (2010): 91.

[68] Geller, The Ground Zero Mosque.

[69] Krauthammer, “Sacrilege.”

[70] Quoted in Michael Hussey, “Alex Sink's Stance on Freedom of Religion,” Pushing Rope (blog), September 8, 2010, http://pushingrope.blogspot.com/2010/09/alex-sinks-stance-on-freedom-of.html; ellipsis in original.

[71] Andy Barr, “Newt Gingrich Compares Mosque to Nazis,” Politico.com, August 16, 2010, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41112.html.

[72] Liz Benjamin, “King: Mosque Near Ground Zero Like Convent Near Auschwitz,” Capital Tonight, July 14, 2010, http://www.nystateofpolitics.com/2010/07/king-mosque-near-ground-zero-like-convent-near-auschwitz/.

[73] Zaid Jilani, “Franken Calls Opposition to Mosque Near Ground Zero ‘One of the Most Disgraceful Things That I've Heard,’” Think Progress, August 19, 2010, sec. Politics, http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/08/19/114560/franken-mosque-disgraceful/?mobile=nc.

[74] Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, “Auschwitz and the Mosque Near Ground Zero: The Problems with this Analogy,” The Huffington Post, September 28, 2010, sec. The Blog, Religion, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-eric-h-yoffie/the-mosque-auschwitz-and-_b_739756.html.

[75] Verena Dobnik and Beth Fouhy, “In Debate Over How Close is Too Close for NY Mosque, Questions Loom About Where Ground Zero is,” Fox News, August 26, 2010, http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/08/26/debate-close-close-ny-mosque-questions-loom-ground-zero/.

[76] Reproduced in Tom Topousis and Philip Messing, “One Block Between Ground Zero Mosque and Human Remains,” New York Post, September 10, 2010, http://commonamericanjournal.com/grim-map-shows-human-remains-found-within-one-block-of-proposed-ground-zero-mosque/. According to the authors, the FDNY's “Phoenix Team” produced the map and the re-printed copy was “obtained by The Post from sources after the Fire Department did not respond to requests to review it.” Map image file, http://commonamericanjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ground_zero_map090251.jpg.

[77] Topousis and Messing, “One Block.”

[78] Timothy Barney, “Power Lines: The Rhetoric of Maps as Social Change in the Post-Cold War Landscape,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 95, no. 4 (2009): 413.

[79] Barney, “Power Lines,” 419; emphasis in original.

[80] Topousis and Messing, “One Block.”

[81] Sam Okoth Opondo and Michael J. Shapiro, “Introduction” in The New Violent Cartography: Geo-Analysis After the Aesthetic Turn, eds. Sam Okoth Opondo and Michael Shapiro (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012), 2.

[82] Christopher Caldwell, “A Mosque the Wrecks Bridges,” Financial Times, August 6, 2010, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/11e44166-a199-11df-9656-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1poWpz6tp.

[83] Wendy Brown, Politics Out of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 21.

[84] Brown, Politics, 22.

[85] Brown, Politics, 29.

[86] Hampson, “Drawn-out Afghanistan.”

[87] Geller, The Ground Zero Mosque.

[88] Pamela Geller, “Big Government: Big Media Lauds Imaginary Opening of Ground Zero Mosque,” Atlas Shrugs, September 22, 2011, http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/09/pamela-geller-big-government-big-media-lauds-imaginary-opening-of-ground-zero-mosque.html.

[89] “Newt Gingrich: ‘No Mosque Near Ground Zero,’” The Sean Hannity Show, August 6, 2010, reposted by fab4bear at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-TUqnipuMA.

[90] David Dayen, “More Bed-Wetter Democrats Join Reid on Cordoba House,” Fire Dog Lake (blog), August 17, 2010, http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/08/17/more-bed-wetter-democrats-join-reid-on-cordoba-house/.

[91] Nicole Bell, “WTH?? Harry Reid Comes Out Against Cordoba House,” Crooks and Liars, August 16, 2010, http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/wth-harry-reid-comes-out-against-cord.

[92] RonPaul.com, “Ron Paul to Sunshine Patriots: Stop Your Demagogy About the NYC Mosque,” RonPaul.com, August 20, 2010, http://www.ronpaul.com/2010-08-20/ron-paul-sunshine-patriots-stop-your-demagogy-about-the-nyc-mosque/.

[93] Amy Sullivan, “Reid Comes Out Against Cordoba House,” TIME Swampland (blog), August 16, 2010, http://swampland.time.com/2010/08/16/reid-comes-out-against-cordoba-house/.

[94] “Park51 and the shame of American skittishness,” sec. Democracy in America, The Economist, August 21, 2010, http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/08/ground-zero_mosque_1.

[95] Brown, Politics, 21.

[96] Kenneth Burke, “Rhetoric of Hitler's ‘Battle,’ The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action, 3rd ed. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973), 217.

[97] Maywer, Sacrificed Survivors.

[98] Robert Spencer, “Why There Should be No Mosques at Ground Zero,” Human Events (blog), May 24, 2010, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37132.

[99] Maywer, Sacrificed Survivors, my emphasis.

[100] Anti-Cordoba House protests, officially entitled “9/11 Rallies of Remembrance,” deploy the “Never Forget” topoi frequently and repetitively to precisely ensured that “Never Forget” continues to translate, in Kendall Phillips’ words, as “Never Remember Differently”; See “The Failure of Memory: Reflections on Rhetoric of Public Remembrance,” Western Journal of Communication 74, no. 2 (2010): 212.

[101] Quoted in Jack d'Annibale, “What Must Come Next in the Park51 Debate: Democrats Protecting America,” Huff Politics Blog, 26 August 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-dannibale/post_750_b_695486.html.

[102] TheAgendaProject, “Hate Begets Hate,” YouTube video, August 26, 2010, 1:11, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFlfIQD22Ys

[103] aiken-augusta prsn 2010, comment on TheAgendaProject, “Hate Begets Hate.”

[104] theFailQuail 2010, comment on TheAgendaProject, “Hate Begets Hate.”

[105] RonPaul.com, “Ron Paul to Sunshine Patriots.”

[106] Dayen, “More Bed-Wetter Democrats.”

[107] JGibson, “The GOP's War on Islam and Park 51, aka Ground Zero Mosque,” sec. “It's not about the mosque! It's America's war on ‘the Other.’” Daily Kos, August 18, 2010, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/08/19/889777/-The-GOP-s-War-on-Islam-and-Park-51-aka-Ground-Zero-Mosque.

[108] MasterAdam100, comment on TheAgendaProject, “Hate Begets Hate.”

[109] Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997), 74.

[110] Geller, The Ground Zero Mosque.

[111] Gerald Warner, “Ground Zero Mosque is an Insult to 9/11 Victims,” Scotsman, July 27, 2012, http://www.scotsman.com/news/gerald-warner-ground-zero-mosque-is-an-insult-to-9–11-victims-1–1368521.

[112] Newt Gingrich, “No Mosque Near Ground Zero.”

[113] Rush Limbaugh, “The First Amendment, Zoning Laws and the Ground Zero Mosque,” The Rush Limbaugh Show, Audio transcript, August 12, 2010, http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2010/08/12/the_first_amendment_zoning_laws_and_the_ground_zero_mosque.

[114] Cited in Femi Sobowale, “Rudolph Giuliani: Ground Zero Mosque is ‘divisive,’ Examiner, August 20, 2010, http://www.examiner.com/democrat-in-new-york/rudolph-giuliani-ground-zero-mosque-is-divisive.

[115] Editors, “Mosque Man Blinks; Funding Still Hidden and Sharia Law Still Sedition,” Coalition to Honor Ground Zero, September 27, 2010, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2597024/posts.

[116] “Mayor Bloomberg, Follow the Money! Stop the Mosque at Ground Zero!” No Mosques at Ground Zero (blog), December 22, 2009, http://nomosquesatgroundzero.wordpress.com/2009/12/.

[117] Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, “Ground Zero Mosque: The Real Issue,” Dick Morris.com, August 18, 2010, http://www.dickmorris.com/ground-zero-mosque-the-real-issue/.

[118] Amanda Hughes, “Ground Zero Proposed Mosque a Threat to US National Security,” sec. Politics, Examiner, August 7, 2010, http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-washington-dc/ground-zero-proposed-mosque-a-threat-to-u-s-national-security.

[119] Michelle A. Vu, “Islam Experts: Ground Zero ‘Mega Mosque’ is Political Statement,” The Christian Post, July 19, 2010, http://m.christianpost.com/news/islam-expertsground-zero-mega-mosque-is-political-statement-45962/.

[120] Diana West, “Do We Deserve a Mosque at Ground Zero?” Jewish World Review, May 14, 2011, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0510/west051410.php3.

[121] Rush Limbaugh, “The Terrorists Win: NYC Panel Votes 9–0 for Ground Zero Mosque,” The Rush Limbaugh Show, Audio transcript, August 3, 2010, http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2010/08/03/the_terrorists_win_nyc_panel_votes_9_0_for_ground_zero_mosque.

[122] Geller, The Ground Zero Mosque.

[123] Morton A. Klein and Daniel Mandel, “Opposition to Mosque Near Ground Zero Not ‘Islamaphobia,’ The Washington Post, September 8, 2010, sec. Guest Voices, On Faith, http://onfaith.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/09/opposition_to_mosque_near_ground_zero_not_islamophobia.html.

[124] “About,” Bare Naked Islam (blog), n.d., http://barenakedislam.com/about/.

[125] Geller, The Ground Zero Mosque.

[126] The Agenda Project, “Hate Begets Hate.”

[127] “beget, v.,” OED Online, September 2013, Oxford University Press, http://www.oed.com.proxygsu-uga1.galileo.usg.edu/view/Entry/17086?rskey=jQJpoA&result=2&isAdvanced=false (accessed January 19, 2014).

[128] Brown, Politics, 35.

[129] RonPaul.com, “Ron Paul to Sunshine Patriots.”

[130] d'Annibale, “What Must.”

[131] Brown, Politics, 28.

[132] Brown, Politics, 28.

[133] Sam Stein, “Pro-Cordoba House Group Ties Harry Reid and Howard Dean to Muslim Cab Driver Stabbing,” Politics, Huff Politics Blog, August 28, 2010, Updated May 25, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/26/procordoba-house-group-ti_n_695433.html.

[134] Karen Tumulty and Michael D. Shear, “Obama: Backing Muslims’ Right to Build NYC Mosque is Not an Endorsement,” The Washington Post, August 15, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/14/AR2010081401796.html.

[135] The Associated Press, “W.H.: Politics had no role in mosque remarks,” The Washington Post, August 16, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2010/08/16/VI2010081605249.html?sid=ST2010081605451.

[136] Brown, 23.

[137] Stein, “Pro-Cordoba.”

[138] Thomas Fitzgerald, “Sestak, Toomey Weigh in on Proposed Mosque near Ground Zero,” Philly.com, August 17, 2010, http://articles.philly.com/2010–08–17/news/24973526_1_ground-zero-mosque-sestak.

[139] Martin Peretz, “The Mosque is not about the First Amendment,” New Republic, August 7, 2010, http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/the-spine/76874/the-mosque-not-about-the-first-amendment.

[140] See “Map-Nationwide Anti-Mosque Activity,” American Civil Liberties Union, n.d., http://www.aclu.org/maps/map-nationwide-anti-mosque-activity.

[141] Theresa Ann Donofrio, “Ground Zero and Place-Making Authority: The Conservative Metaphors in 9/11 Families’ ‘Take Back the Memorial’ Rhetoric,” Western Journal of Communication 74, no. 2 (2010): 163.

[142] Rauf, What's Right with Islam, 281.

[143] Geller, “Big Government.”

[144] Jessie Stewart and Greg Dickinson, “Enunciating Locality in the Postmodern Suburb: FlatIron Crossing and the Colorado Lifestyle,” Western Journal of Communication 72, no. 3 (2008): 280–307. See also Danielle Endres and Samantha Senda-Cook, “Location Matters: The Rhetoric of Place in Protest,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97, vol. 3 (2011): 257–82; McAlister, “Domesticating Citizenship”; Phaedra Pezzullo, Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Pollution, Travel, and Environmental Justice (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2007).

[145] Endres and Senda-Cook, “Location Matters,” 260.

[146] For representative essays that take trauma as a point of departure for rhetorical analysis, see David A. Frank, “A Traumatic Reading of Twentieth-Century Rhetorical Theory: The Belgian Holocaust, Malines, Perelman, and de Man,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 93, no. 3 (2007): 308–43; Claire Sisco King, “Rogue Waves, Remakes, and Resurrections: Allegorical Displacement and Screen Memory in Poseidon,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 4 (2008): 430–54; A. Susan Owen and Peter Ehrenhaus, “Communities of Memory, Entanglements, and Claims of the Past on the Present: Reading Race Trauma through The Green Mile,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 27, no. 2 (2010): 131–54; Jay P. Childers, “The Democratic Balance: President McKinley's Assassination as Domestic Trauma,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 99, no. 2 (2013): 156–79; McAlister, “Domesticating Citizenship.”

[147] McGee, “The People,” 242.

[148] Jacques Derrida, “Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides,” in Jurgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, and Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 94.