Georgia Is Fighting Its Islamophobic Politicians
The Republican lieutenant governor candidate’s vile, AI-generated video is facing backlash
In our home state of Georgia, Republican state Sen. Greg Dolezal, a candidate for lieutenant governor, recently released a video that portrays Muslim Americans in a deeply offensive, dangerous manner. The video is amateurish, as if it was edited by a middle schooler. It depicts two black-clad individuals who look like ninjas fighting with swords, then a group of men on a suburban American street wearing Taliban-like garb firing Kalashnikovs into the air. It then closes with the dark message that Muslim Americans, who presumably are these cartoonish figures and represent but 1.3% of the population, are intent on taking over America.
The caption accompanying the video was equally explicit: “London has fallen. Europe is under siege,” it declared, calling Muslim Americans “invaders who would rather pillage our generosity than assimilate” and closing with the message: “Keep Georgia sharia free.”
The backlash was immediate and, at least to some extent, bipartisan. State Rep. Ruwa Romman, one of two Muslim members of the Georgia House—and whose family lives in Dolezal’s district—called the video appalling. State Sen. Sheikh Rahman condemned it from the Senate floor and called on Dolezal to publicly apologize and remove the ad. Even Republican former state Sen. John Kennedy distanced himself, calling the video “bizarre” and “outlandish.”
Dolezal refused to apologize, saying he would not “take campaign advice from the Democrats,” and invoked President Trump, who had similarly claimed that “Sharia courts” were “adjudicating law” in London. Georgia’s Democratic state Sen. Nabilah Parkes, who is Muslim, went further, resigning her seat and entering the race against Dolezal, saying she refused to let the rhetoric go unanswered.
Dolezal is not an outlier. Across the country, MAGA politicians have normalized anti-Muslim rhetoric—with members of Congress declaring that “Muslims don’t belong in American society” and senators calling Muslim elected officials “the enemy inside the gates.” As The UnPopulist has reported, Texas Republicans have gone further still, moving from rhetoric to policy: designating CAIR a terrorist organization, excluding Muslim schools from state voucher programs, and spending more than $10 million on anti-Sharia campaign ads this election cycle. What begins as a campaign video has a destination.
When History Repeats
This recalls a dark chapter in American life. After Sept. 11, 2001, Muslim Americans faced a wave of suspicion, harassment, and violence fueled by rhetoric that portrayed an entire faith community as a fifth column—disloyal by definition, dangerous by nature. That rhetoric was wrong then, and its reappearance now is no less dangerous. But at least party elders refrained from embracing it then.
Not so now with Texas Republicans and Dolezal.
What is additionally troubling is that Dolezal chose to dress this vileness in AI-generated imagery. West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center warns that generative AI is increasingly capable of producing propaganda, narratives, and imagery designed to radicalize audiences, spread disinformation, and inflame social tensions. Its 2024 report notes that generative AI tools can be used to create persuasive extremist messaging cheaply and at scale, manipulating emotions and fueling polarization. Technology that once required sophisticated propaganda networks can now be deployed by almost anyone with a laptop.
What makes this moment different is not merely that hateful rhetoric exists—it always has—but that the barrier to producing it with professional force has collapsed entirely: a state senator with a laptop can now do what once required a propaganda apparatus.
What Freedom Actually Requires
Free societies are not self-sustaining, and depend on something more than legal protections. They rely on a civic culture in which citizens recognize one another as rights-bearing equals, worthy of dignity and respect. That culture is not guaranteed by the Constitution; it has to be cultivated, generation after generation, by the communities, institutions, and leaders who shape how we see one another. When political rhetoric portrays a group of Americans as an existential threat—as “invaders” or “the enemy within”—it doesn’t merely offend. It erodes the shared social trust that makes self-governance possible. And when that rhetoric can now be manufactured at scale by AI, cheaply and convincingly, the erosion accelerates.
This is why defending freedom requires more than defending the right to speak freely. It requires those of us who cherish freedom to actively reject speech that treats our neighbors as less than human—not because of anything in the law, but because the health of the republic relies on it.
The responsibility to respond falls on all of us. Speaking out against dehumanizing rhetoric—naming it clearly, refusing to normalize it—is not a partisan act. It is what free citizens owe one another.
The Right Messengers
Here in Georgia, we helped build First Five Freedoms to do exactly this: bring together faith and civic leaders across denominational and political lines to model the civic culture they are asking others to adopt, convening difficult conversations, standing publicly against dehumanizing rhetoric, and calling on elected officials from both parties to lower the temperature of our politics. As former U.S. Sen. John McCain said: “Our shared values define us more than our differences. And acknowledging those shared values can see us through our challenges today if we have the wisdom to trust in them again.”
The choice of messenger matters as much as the message. AI-generated propaganda that portrays Muslim Americans as a civilizational threat draws its power partly from the silence of those whose moral authority might otherwise check it. Our nation’s faith traditions, which at their best speak to the inherent dignity and worth of every human being, are precisely the guardrail that fear-based rhetoric cannot survive.
In January, members of First Five Freedoms assembled on the steps of the Georgia capitol in the hour before state legislators began their annual legislative session. When faith leaders of diverse religions and politics—an evangelical pastor from an exurban Georgia county, a female rabbi, a young Black Baptist minister, a prominent Muslim lay leader, and a leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—stand together to bring down the political temperature in Georgia, they cut off the oxygen that fear-based rhetoric needs to spread through communities of faith.
Dolezal’s video is defamatory and inflammatory, and we will continue to call out such rhetoric whenever and wherever it occurs. And we will continue to vigorously defend our First Amendment rights—our country’s first five freedoms—while encouraging their civil exercise, in Georgia and beyond.
That means showing up—to press conferences and town halls, to legislative sessions and houses of worship. It means calling out dehumanizing rhetoric by name, in your own community. And it means building the kinds of relationships across lines of faith and politics that make solidarity possible before a crisis demands it.
We invite faith leaders, civic leaders, and concerned citizens around the country to join us. George Washington prayed in 1783 that Americans would “make a wise and virtuous use of the blessings placed before them.” That prayer is not self-fulfilling. Preserving democracy for future generations requires us to actively reinforce the moral foundations that make it possible—to speak, to organize, and to insist that our neighbors’ dignity is not negotiable. That is what responsibility demands of those who love freedom.
Andrew Lewis and Steve Grand are co-founders of First Five Freedoms
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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"All citizens recognize one another as rights-bearing equals, worthy of dignity and respect".
This is all it takes.
One sentence that can apply to the entire world.
We are all the same, as we are all humans.
Freedom begins in accepting differences, not fighting them or enforcing them.
Islam?
Let’s talk about the treatment of women.
Let’s talk about the treatment of gays.
Let's talk about the treatment of those who want to leave the religion.
Let's talk about the treatment of those of other beliefs.
Let’s talk about martyrdom and the slaughter of countless innocents.
Let's talk about what happened in every country a majority was reached.
Let's talk about reality.