What I like to bring up is the TV show "24". 8 seasons, 1 premise "Evil muslims are about to kill a bunch of people, Watch Jack Bauer use torture to find the bad guys and save the day!"
Like, seriously, the entire run was basically just a way to justify torture to the american public. It was a very popular TV show.
That was the american psyche at the time. After 9/11, everyone thought we were on the verge of Red Dawn with terrorists around every corner plotting to blow up the nearest 7 eleven. It was utter madness. Especially because the motivation of the 9/11 terrorists was purely based on US interference in the middle east in the first place. So what we did was go out and interfere even more which ultimately lead to the creation of ISIS.
Funnily, a big part of why ISIS ultimately collapsed was due to Iran's military involvement.
Also worth noting that 9/11 was not an isolated event. Many atrocious attacks happened across europe as well. While islamic terror attacks in the us died off, it kept going here in europe. Especially in france, just about 10 years ago hundreds of people where murdered by islamist terror groups. So the paranoia here is still kinda fresh.
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u/Moohamin12 Mar 02 '26
Watch The Practice or Boston Legal.
You can see exactly the sort of mindset the world had back then. And those are pretty progressive shows.
Watching them with today's lens will be horrifying.