The Third Reich didn’t begin with supporters of a nationalist demagogue bombing places of worship, killing worshiping Jewish people, vandalizing Jewish property, targeting political opponents, running opponents over with a car, violently attacking ethnic minorities on trains and shooting them in grocery stores, it rose in prominence through hateful rhetoric. These acts of violence conducted by white supremacist supporters of a fuhrer didn’t occur in 1939, but since the 2016 Presidential election. Are people who want universal-healthcare meant to coddle the white supremacist brown shirts and their sympathizers in unity? Quiet tolerance in the face of state-sponsored, violent intolerance is consent for the dozens of lives taken by an ideology of hate.
Radicalized by self-proclaimed nationalist President Trump’s cabinet of nazis, affirmations calling the Charlottesville nazis “very fine people,” repeated incitement of violence with promises to pay their “legal fees,” scapegoating of the media as “the enemy of the American people,” repeated spats with political opponents , “sh*thole countries” comments, immigrant child internment-camps, scapegoating of all immigrants as “drug traffickers and rapists,” and anti-semitic rhetoric, the ideological vermin of this country have been emboldened to carry out domestic terror attacks against American minorities and political opponents.
The tragic terrorist attacks on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania aren’t isolated, they follow a pattern of deathly attacks by avid conservative supporters of President Trump. While Trump didn’t pull the trigger, he created an environment where supremacists were emboldened to act on beliefs shared by the president. An environment built by “the second-amendment people” stopping 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, by all Mexicans being “drug-traffickers and rapists,” by Muslim bans, and a “very fine people” pat on the back to the neo-nazis who murdered Heather Heyes.
The problem isn’t immigrants who commit crime at lower rates than native-born Americans, it’s not Muslims, or other minorities it’s the:
Domestic Right-Wing Terrorist Attacks on Muslims, Jews, Minorities, and Democrats:
- Between 2014 and 2016, hate crimes rose 10 percent.
- White supremacists committed the largest share of domestic-extremist related killings in 2017.
- On August 19, 2015, two men attacked a homeless man in Boston who they wrongly believed to be an undocumented immigrant. He was quoted saying “Donald Trump was right.illegals need to be deported.”
- On October 14, 2016, the FBI arrested three men for plotting bomb attacks in Kansas (Two of them, Trump supporters.)
- On January 29, 2017, a man opened fire on worshippers at the Islamic Cultural Center in Quebec City, Canada, killing six and wounding 19. ( He was obsessed with Trump and searched for him more than 800 times. )
- Jewish cemeteries were vandalized across the country, including Philadelphia, Seattle, and Missouri.
- Arm-bearing neo-nazis with MAGA hats terrorized the streets chanting “Jews will not replace us,” & “blood and soil,” at a “Unite the Right” rally.
- A white supremacist Trump supporter killed Heather Heyer, a woman protesting white supremacism. But “both sides.”
- A xenophobic conservative man yells “Get out of my country,” and lethally shoots two Indian men in Kansas.
- Three members of a conservative militia bomb the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minnesota on August 5, 2017.
- On January 9 and 10, 2018, a19-year-old threatened to kill employees at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters. He idolized Hitler like Trump reportedly does, and viewed them as the “enemy of the American people” as Trump does.
- February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz, pictured wearing a MAGA hat on his social media, shot and killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
- Jeremy Christian, who allegedly stabbed two people to death on a train in Portland, Oregon, and wrote, “If Donald Trump is the Next Hitler then I am joining his SS”;
- “Proud Boys”- an anti-Muslim, proto-fascist, Trump-supporting group of beta brown shirts, assaulted peaceful protestors on Manhattan streets while the NYPD protected them.
- A Trump supporter in Kentucky murders shoots and kills two black men in Krogers. He’d tried to previously enter a black church.
- A Trump supporter sends pipe-bombs to 14 Democrat targets of Trump’s attacks.
- A Trump supporter kills 11 Jews in a synagogue. He blamed Jews for helping “evil” Muslim immigrants come to this country. “All these Jews need to die,” he told police on scene at Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.
This large rise in hate crimes post-2016 election is no coincidence. Trump’s scapegoating of immigrants (including legal immigrants), Muslims, anti-semitic dog-whistles (“America First”, attack ad against only Jews, “globalist” attacks) creation of an immigrant-children human rights crisis at the border, admiration of Hitler speeches, calling neo-nazis “very fine people,” 1970s housing discrimination, and appointment of white supremacists such as Stephen Miller, former Breitbart-owner Steve Bannon, Hungarian nazi Sebastian Gorka, and Sessions – man deemed too racist to pass a Reagan-era confirmation in the South, has radicalized right-wing terrorists.
This all, on top of his incitement to violence of course, telling his supporters he’ll pay their legal fees, and that he’d like to punch a protestor himself.
Trump of course, victim-blames the media and synagogue: “If the press was fair, I’d have a much different tone all the time. But I’m fighting the media, I’m fighting — the media is not being honest & I’m fighting that lack of honesty so I have to have that tone.
When asked about gun laws, he said the synagogue should have had armed security and the gunman wouldn’t be able to do what he did. This callous comment completely ignoring the three officers that were shot, and not condemning the perpetrator. Trump’s thoughts and prayers provide zero solutions. An AR-15 was used in Aurora, Orlando, Parkland, Las Vegas, Sandy Hook, Waffle House, San Bernardino, Sutherland SPrings, and the Pittsburgh Synagogue, but we must uphold the right for Republicans to blast deer into a million pieces with weapons of war.
Tolerance in the face of domestic-right-wing-terrorism and their party of sympathizers who can overlook the state-sponsored hate and incitement to violence, is consent. Hate isn’t just a differing opinion. The dichotomy has switched from ‘big versus small government,’ to either supporting a fascist regime and its hateful minions, or being a country for all Americans upholding the values that brought non-English speaking migrants fleeing religious persecution or poverty to the land of the free. We must not forget our own history, German immigrants once faced discrimination for their cultural differences.
There have been more bombs sent to kill Americans from Trump supporters than from ISIS. This isn’t how it started in Germany in the 1930s, it’s several phases into the fascist agenda. The fascism alarms should be ringing when over 35,00 people signed a letter to President Trump from the leaders of a Pittsburgh-based Jewish saying he won’t welcome in the city unless he denounces white nationalism and stops “targeting” minorities.
There’s no reason for right-wing extremists to be emboldened enough to target people for their faith and ethnicity 75 years after the Holocaust. Make racists afraid again – vote, protest, and stand up for vulnerable communities under attack.
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