Congressman Peters' Condemnation of Poway Shooting Is ‘Political’ -- San Diego GOP Chair
San Diego Republican chair Tony Krvaric felt the need to respond to Congressman Scott Peters’ twitter message deploring hate in reaction to the latest white supremacist shooting, saying “shame on you for making this political.”
Following a firestorm of angry responses, the GOP’s top dog elected to repeat messages of condolence from Republicans interspersed with retweets praising Trump’s Wisconsin rally.
So apparently it wasn’t Rep. Peters condemnation eliciting Krvaric’s response, it was making the connection with other hate crimes.
The Congressman was absolutely correct in pointing to the larger picture. And people like the GOP chair fear this kind of response, because--once acted upon as happened in New Zealand--it is the best way to stop these hatemongers.
From the Poway Shooting Didn’t Just Target Jews at the Forward:
Whenever a white nationalist is committing murder, then, they are not targeting one single group. They are targeting any and all people who do not fit into their view of what a white nation should look like — Jews included.
So as long as we keep looking at these attacks as singular, as focused on only one minority, we are missing the story that white nationalists are telling us about themselves. And if we do not wake up to this reality, we will keep ourselves blind to a terrorist and political threat that grows by the day.
Characterizing all these violent acts as one-offs is a convenient way for those soft-selling the concept of European hegemony as the savior of civilization. And that is the foundation of modern-day Republican ideology.
There is after all, no need to praise the dastardly deeds of those who seek glory as martyrs for the cause. The mission has been accomplished. Fear and loathing of the ‘other’ has had its day in the spotlight.
***
A 19 year old punk read some stuff on the internet and was impressed enough attack houses of worship.
His first act was (allegedly) trying to burn down a mosque in Escondido. Having failed miserably and not gained any notice for his irrational ideology, this person upped the ante, walking into Passover celebrations at the Chabad of Poway synagogue and opened fire on the congregation with an assault rifle.
The gun jammed, but not before he’d killed Lori Kaye, injured Rabbi Yisrael Goldstein along with a child and another man. The shooting happened six months to the day of the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh in which a white-supremacist gunman murdered 11 people.
The shooter did the usual thing, leaving behind a manifesto on sicko site 8chan decrying the threats to people of European descent, referencing the “red pill” movement, an anti-feminist, men’s rights, alt-right identity group.
***
The San Diego County GOP chair is no stranger to controversies seeming connected to extremism. And when he got called out, Krvaric turned to lesson 1 in the reactionary’s handbook, blame the media.
From East County Magazine:
San Diego Republican Party Chairman Tony Krvaric has named a new acting executive director, Sage Naumann. But there’s controversy surrounding the appointment due to photos of Naumann making Nazi jokes while wearing a German military uniform for Halloween seven years ago in 2009, when he was 18 years old.
The photos torpedoed Naumann’s run for the Carlsbad School Board in 2014. Naumann had posted the photos on his own social media account originally, voicing sympathy over Hitler’s death. In one photo, he wrote in Finnish, “Sad Nazi mourns the loss of der Fuhrer.” (View photos at the San Diego Union-Tribune)
Copies of his post were sent to media and to PTA parents during his school board campaign. Naumann called it a mistake he attributed to youthful lapse in judgment. That lapse cost him the support of some prominent Republicans, though the county party stood by its endorsement.
Naumann’s actions were defended by The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist site.
Krvaric, an e-mail to the San Diego Union-Tribune, called the attire an East German military officer’s uniform and noted Naumann’s youth at the time. He praised Naumann, who formerly served a Deputy Executive Director of the local party, as “one of the hardest working and most talented young individuals I've ever met.”
Krvaric called media coverage of the incident “vile and disgusting” noting that Naumann has a brother with Cerebral Palsy who “would have no doubt perished under the Nazis.”
(h/t Gaby Dow for the above)
Mentally unbalanced white men with guns hear Trump’s words and are triggered them to shoot people out of hate.
Republicans who refuse to rebuke the rhetoric spewed by him are just as responsible for the increasing dangers in America today.
***
The connections between the performance art of Donald J Trump and the hate crimes set are varied and numerous. He is the reason for their ascendancy.
Some of the internet-based right-hadists have even turned on the President, apparently because they haven’t bought into the end-times prophecies behind the administration’s embrace of Israel.
As J.M. Berger, author of Extremism, points out at The Atlantic:
It may be that the president lacks a detailed understanding of the factions he unites, although he surely understands that bigotry is crucial to his success. To him, these multifarious groups are simply a part of his “base.” His careful avoidance of further detail serves him well. By neglecting to embrace any one faction, he empowers them all.
With his nativist and anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric, Trump is the rising tide that lifts all boats in the sea of right-wing extremism. When he stokes fear about caravans of migrants invading the United States, when he promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about George Soros, when he allows that white supremacists are “very fine people,” when he repeatedly invokes the language of white nationalists and prioritizes their policy preferences, when he demonizes the press as the “enemy of the people,” when he spins conspiracies to obscure his own questionable activities—in all these ways and more, he pours energy and coherence into a movement that might otherwise succumb to its well-established history of infighting.
More Thoughts, Via Twitter...
https://twitter.com/PopChassid/status/1122318482580832256
https://twitter.com/escapedmatrix/status/1122340570653917184
https://twitter.com/SocialPowerOne1/status/1122497716611796993
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1122315246205640704
***
Hey folks! Be sure to like/follow Words & Deeds on Facebook. If you’d like to have each post mailed to you, check out the simple subscription form on the right side of the front page.
Email me at DougPorter@WordsAndDeedsBlog.com