Lobelog - Sheldon Adelson rode in like an apocalyptic horseman to save the campaign of Newt Gingrich with a $5 million donation to Newt’s super-PAC, Winning Our Future.

Adelson is perhaps the most well-known heavy hitter among contributors largely motivated by their extreme hawkish stances on Israel. He has been honored by the far-right Zionist Organization of America (ZOA, a group so extreme even AIPAC tends to try to keep its distance from them), but he has also been a major funder of AIPAC, making sure he keeps his hand in mainstream US politics on this issue and enabling him to exert a strong push of those politics toward the right.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011 are often cited as the roots of “Islamophobia” in the United States. However, attributing Americans’ Islamophobia solely to the events of 9/11 ignores the anti-Muslim propaganda that predated the attacks, and that continues today.