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Mass Hysteria In America

Good Essays

On September 11, 2001, 19 members of a terrorist group called al-Qaeda hijacked four U.S. airplanes and used them to strike various targets on the East Coast. The carefully planned attacks killed nearly 3,000 people, making it the worst attack on the United States in history. Al-Qaeda is a small, very violent group of people who practice the Muslim religion and who want to create a Muslim state independent of other countries. Al-Qaeda considers the freedoms that U.S. citizens have to be evil and does not want the United States to spread those freedoms to other countries. Everyone witnessed it on TV or experienced it in real life, which made it a reality for everyone across America. 9/11 created mass hysteria in the U.S., whereby false conclusions …show more content…

9/11 also resulted in racial stereotyping, which is the use of race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed an offense. Racial stereotypes are automatic and exaggerated mental pictures that we hold about all members of a particular racial group. The post 9/11 feeling of fear and paranoia greatly contributed to an increase in anti-Muslim sentiments through the generalizations that one extremist religious group can be applied to an entire widespread culture of people. These conclusions left the people of America in fear of an event similar to 9/11 happening again, and anger and constant paranoia transgressed into the lives of Americans and their interactions with other people. A dramatic increase in hate crimes towards Muslim people and in TSA racial profiling show how real fear, anger, and paranoia are in our society. People live in complete fear of an entire race, when only a very small part of the Muslim race believed in the …show more content…

Washington Post reported in February of 2015 that “Prior to the 9/11 attacks, the Uniform Crime Reports program typically recorded between 20 and 30 anti-Muslim hate crimes per year. But in 2001 that number rose more than tenfold to nearly 500.” The sheer volume of crime directed towards Muslim people highlights a widespread misconception that every Muslim is a threat. Once people thought they knew who was to blame, they sought revenge; but one extremist group of terrorists cannot be applied to an entire complex culture of people. The actual hate crime instances included in statistics are disturbing and atrocious. International Business Times reported the brutal killing of a Somali 15-year-old boy who was killed when an SUV “intentionally swerved toward him” (2013). The SUV had anti-Muslim graffiti on the back window reading “Quran is a virus disease [worse] than Ebola”. The act that this is a hate crime is undeniable and unfortunately, it is just one example of many. This appalling example of prejudice displays the theme of mass hysteria, in which people are collectively acting out of fear and threatening those who played no role in terrorism against America. These continuous patterns show a snowball effect in our nation, in which as fear increases over time, people are becoming more violent. By the time 2013 hits, we are having

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