“Middle East conflict in Berlin schools”: on the affectability of “fake news”

Abstract The article revisits my older work on moral panics over “Muslim homophobia” and youth crime to make sense of the arrival of a new criminalized figure: the Palestinian school kid who becomes prone to terrorism and antisemitism after consuming “fake news” on social and Arabic-language media. It addresses the current outbreak of anti-Palestinian racism in Germany as the latest expansion of an archive of criminalization that targets young people who, far from innocent and deserving of care and education, are constructed as folk devils that require heavy-handed punishment, segregation and deportation. While former panics have singled out the problematic heterosexualities of Muslim populations that fail to catch up with women-and-LGBT-friendly communities that care about diversity, the debate about the “Middle East conflict in Berlin schools” foregrounds media use as a central determinant of cultural pathology. This departure from languages of care and diversity, the article argues, reflects a dehumanizing tendency in racial capitalism that appears increasingly undisguised.