The Stochastic Terrorist in Chief and the Massacre in New Zealand
I’m told the New Zealand mass murderer’s manifesto invoked Trump as his hero. I won’t read it. I won’t use his name. I won’t write about his videos. I won’t share the sick humor of his admirers lurking in the comments section of various right wing publications.
Broad statements about who we should be don’t cut it. “Thoughts and prayers” are weasel words. It’s time to call out the enablers and ideology at the root of this. It’s time to admit we have a white supremacy problem and follow through with action.
The massacre in New Zealand was an act of white supremacist TERROR. Islamophobia is a global crisis. Right-wing media stir up hatred and division at every single opportunity and they should be shamed.
I will write about the man living in the White House, the ideology behind his actions, along with the need for good people to stand against hate, racism, Islamophobia, misogyny. and Antisemitism.
Since the 2016 election, there have been more than 80 documented hate incidents against Muslim and Islamic Centers. California leads the pack with this sad statistic registering 23 such incidents.
In the same time period, there have been investigations by law enforcement of more than 100 reports of anti-Muslim violence and crimes directed at individuals.
Since 2015, Republican officials in 49 states have openly expressed anti-Muslim bigotry and have even codified such bigotry into legislation.
As former Voice of San Diego reporter Will Carless, who now covers hate and extremism for Reveal, noted this morning, “It is now abundantly clear that the biggest terrorist threat facing most Western nations is hateful young men, radicalized online by the far-right.
In an article posted shortly after the bombing of a Mosque in Minnesota in 2017 Buzzfeed News reporter Talal Ansari wrote:
Trump has ignored or has had delayed responses to incidents involving violence against Muslims since taking office — but doesn’t hesitate to condemn Muslims, and has demonized them both on the campaign trail and in office. (Trump referred to terrorist attacks in his message about Ramadan, which is extremely abnormal.)
Trump never publicly addressed a February shooting at a mosque in Quebec that left six dead and many others wounded. Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said President Trump called the Canadian Prime Minister to offer condolences and assistance. Just days after the Quebec attack, the president tweeted about a “radical Islamic terrorist” within hours of a failed attack at the Louvre in Paris that left one soldier with light injuries.
Donald Trump didn't ask the Christchurch shooter to act, but, like the Charlottesville neo-Nazis and the Florida pipe bomber, he found encouragement to hate in the president's words.
Donald Trump is knowingly inspiring racial hatred and violence. And he has begun linking such talk to what’ll happen if we dare to remove or replace him — even at the polls.
Via Esquire:
On Wednesday, Donald Trump, American president, gave an interview to Breitbart, the once-prominent right-wing content machine that was caught laundering white-nationalist propaganda into the mainstream. In the interview, he hits a familiar refrain—but ratchets things up a notch.
“You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. OK? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad. But the left plays it cuter and tougher. Like with all the nonsense that they do in Congress … with all this investigations]—that’s all they want to do is —you know, they do things that are nasty. Republicans never played this.
https://twitter.com/evaposner/status/1106565445262303234
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1106559271779606529
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Following is a statement from Muslim Advocates Executive Director Farhana Khera on the deadly mass shootings at two mosques in New Zealand:
It is not enough for President Trump to merely send thoughts and prayers. The President called neo-nazis and white nationalists ‘very fine people.’ This hate-filled murderer drew inspiration from Trump, and the white nationalist movement has celebrated Trump’s words and policies. The President needs to immediately and unequivocally condemn and disavow this attacker and the white nationalist movement.
Elected officials and law enforcement must do more to protect our community and all Americans from the white nationalist threat by calling on FBI Director Christopher Wray to prioritize the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of right-wing, white nationalist violence—the most significant threat to public safety in our nation today.
Social media platforms and tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google need to do much more to detect and shut down online hate content. The New Zealand shooter was able to livestream a 17-minute video of his murderous rampage that continues to spread like wildfire online. This is flatly unacceptable. Tech companies must take all steps possible to prevent something like this from happening again. Further, hate groups have long used platforms like Facebook to organize, spread their violent messages and build their membership online. Facebook needs to do more to remove these hate groups before they inspire even more harm.
If there are public events in San Diego where people can express their solidarity with the Muslim community, I’ll add them to this post.
Update: Solidarity for our Muslim Community, 12:30pm, Friday, March 15. Organized by Indivisible & other groups. Islamic Center of San Diego, 7050 Eckstrom Avenue. (Press conference at 3pm)
https://twitter.com/Ismahan_M_A/status/1106416109979201537
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Email me at DougPorter@WordsAndDeedsBlog.com