ABSTRACT
Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 Islam has become the new enemy of the US right, which has led to a growing paranoia that increasingly resembles the infamous anti-communist "Red Scare" of the Cold War era. While Islamophobia is nothing new to the West, clearly it has reached unprecedented heights in the post-9/11 era. Many commentators have named it the new anti-Semitism, arguing that the Muslims are the Jews of the 21st century. Just as with anti-communism, the political mainstream is united in its fear of "radical Islam", but divided over who to fear, i.e. where the boundaries between moderate and radical fall. Just like in the 1950s and 1960s, when anti-communist conspiracies were accepted by many within the political mainstream, with Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy as the prime example, Islamophobic conspiracy theories have gained a far greater level of acceptance than ethnic or racial prejudices have in the postwar period.
