About the Author (s)
I want to start by saying there is a small team of Research associates who have been the backbone of this project. I sit at the front of it with the writing. The ideas are a mix of both, and I am grateful for their support.
I hate to say it, but this isn’t the type of writing I imagined writing first, especially when I have been specifically trained to write “punchy and quick posts for an American or an international audience.” But to be frank, I have never been good at that and that’s why I am here. Editors and policymakers rarely appreciate long-form pieces that go in the weeds. And they are fairly apprehensive about pieces that deal with ideology and religious movements. And so, we have been trained into accepting what’s common… such as headlines that grab attention in foreign policy and geopolitics. Although I spent two decades shaping my writing to fit that model, I believed it served policymakers, but I also think that the public is owed more.
What preoccupies me, however, is not only the geopolitical events and headlines, but also how societies are transformed from within, often without resistance, and how what once felt intolerable becomes, over time, normalized. That’s what I want to focus on in this project that I created, the Ideology Machine.
About the Ideology Machine Project
When I think about the trajectory that led me to create The Ideology Machine, I return to a central observation that is rooted in the Frankfurt School… that the most profound political changes rarely announce themselves. They don’t arrive through dramatic proclamations or overnight coups, but instead, they seep into the fabric of daily life, altering the terms of what we consider possible, reasonable, or necessary. And to some extent, I experienced this personally.
I began this project with a question: What if the people who happen to shape our world aren’t always the ones who possess armies? What if sometimes, they’re simply the ones with stories to tell? Stories that teach obedience, stoke fear, and erase alternatives. What if these stories offer fewer facts and more… fantasy? That fantasy is wrapped in belief, or ideology.
Washington flinches at the word ideology. It prefers chasing missiles to grappling with meaning. But the slogans, the myths, the moral contortions outlast the airstrikes.
And coming from the Middle East and living in America, I have so much to share about how societies change under pressure. Most of my essays will be geared towards the Middle East; most of my research will be translations from Arabic, and occasionally from Persian.
The Ideology Machine looks at what’s left behind: warped vocabularies, eroded trust, and the quiet damage that survives every ceasefire.
I often write in English, but the majority of the research is translated from Arabic or Persian, and language models assist in the translation; but the work and research findings are thoroughly ours, edited and scrutinized.
What You’ll Find Here
What drives this work are essays that trace how narratives work, what they hollow out, how they endure, and the quiet ways they shape a future before anyone notices it’s gone. This means that change happens in language, not on battlefields.
I am also going to attempt to turn to critical theory as much as I can. And although I want to completely eliminate the desire to analyze events geopolitically, I may not be able to relinquish this damned skill, because explaining geopolitical context might still be a necessary evil, or just necessary.
