How the FBI’s visit to a Muslim woman over pro-Palestinian Facebook posts became a right-wing rallying cry

[essentialsaltes]

A viral video of FBI agents looking into pro-Palestinian Facebook posts reflects the muddled politics and social media swirl of 2024​

The video begins with a door opening onto a recent bright spring day. Three visitors, identifying themselves as FBI agents, stand in the yard of a woman who makes it clear they are not welcome.

Using her phone to record the exchange, she lays into the agents, demanding to see their credentials. When they tell her they want to “have a conversation with you about some social media posts,” the woman, sounding incredulous, asks: “So we no longer live in a free country?”

There will be no conversation, the woman tells them, and refers them to her attorney. [Eventually, they leave.]

Devoid of information about Abdeljawad or her beliefs, the video was uncomplicated by racial, religious or ideological baggage.

Muslim civil rights groups saw it and worried about a resurgence of surveillance tactics that vilified communities in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Among Donald Trump’s Republican base, the visit was evidence of “Joe Biden’s Justice Department” harassing ordinary citizens. Left-wing activists saw the long arm of the state. Far-right militia groups saw proof of the “tyranny” they profess to fight.

“Wake up, America,” posted Richard Grenell, who is said to be a top contender for secretary of state if Trump wins the November election. “The thought police,” declared Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder, to his 2.2 million followers on X. “Holy smokes,” wrote Libs of TikTok, an account known as a right-wing outrage factory,

The video has since popped up in Reason, the libertarian magazine, and in a Fox News article. Anti-government militants hailed her as a patriot. Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower living in Russia, weighed in on X: “So, the FBI is now doorstopping ordinary Americans for criticizing the White House’s Gaza policy online?”

“Definitely a strange turn of events. Didn’t see that one coming,” said Adam Soltani, executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, referring to the right-wing support for Abdeljawad.

[but it may not last long]

Conservative figure Chris Loesch, for example, shared Abdeljawad’s video last week with the comment: “The FBI needs to be dismantled from the top down. An agency that had lost its way.” By Saturday, Loesch was on the defensive as followers called him out for supporting what one described as “an un-American Muslim.”

“Is she an American citizen? I disagree with her, think her views are disgusting and she is wrong but I see that sort of [poop] from popular accounts on X all day,” Loesch replied. “She still has a right to be offensively wrong, right?” [Hey, the vision-impaired squirrel found a nut! The First Amendment protects speech we don't like.]

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The scenes of carnage [in Gaza] make her feel helpless and furious, she said. She said she began looking for ways to express her solidarity with Palestinians and to condemn the actions of Israel, which she pronounces “Isra-hell.” In late October, she changed her Facebook profile picture to a masked figure in the black-and-white Palestinian kaffiyeh.

As the war continued to rage, Abdeljawad posted angry screeds, including thinly veiled support for armed Palestinian resistance. She posted an image lionizing a Hamas militant and another calling Israeli military forces “terrorist filth.” At least one post nodded to antisemitic tropes about Jewish power. In other Facebook posts, her tone was conciliatory, such as when she praised an interfaith peace effort.

Abdeljawad said she hasn’t heard from the FBI since and sees no reason to pick up the conversation: “If I have not transgressed the boundaries, the limitations, on free speech, and I’m not breaching the law, I’m not calling for violence against others, then really I have nothing to discuss with them.”

“I am that person that actually has a pocket Constitution on their shelf,” Abdeljawad said. “They actually, unfortunately for them, walked in on a very educated, very aware American.”