The Trace of the Cryptic in Islamophobia, Antisemitism, and Anticommunism: A Genealogy of the Rhetoric on Hidden Enemies and Unseen Threats

Abstract

This chapter examines the trope of the ‘cryptic’ and the form of the cryptographic as key elements in contemporary social discourse about Muslims in ‘western’ societies. These tropes gather together liberal social anxieties about Muslims and the ‘failure’ of multiculturalism amongst the general Muslim populations residing within western, multicultural states. The ‘cryptic’ is looked at in a historical frame tracing a genealogy from US anticommunism to European antisemitism.