At least 20 people were killed
and 26 injured at an El Paso shopping center today. The shooter, a white male named
Patrick Crusius of Dallas, had traveled all the way to El Paso because the city
has an 83 percent Hispanic population, and according to a manifesto he
reportedly wrote, “I can’t bring myself to kill my fellow Americans” as collateral
damage. Crusius feared a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” that would lead to a “Great
Replacement” of the white population, apparently advanced more rapidly by undesirable "race-mixing." Although Crusius claimed not to trust
either political party, he did support those Republicans who favored extreme
anti-immigrant laws, and he was especially grateful to Donald Trump in this
regard. Crusius, who saw in the Christchurch mass shooting in New Zealand a way
in which to put his own desires into action, decided to move “now” before he
lost his “nerve” to do it. Crusius hypocritically claimed that he wasn't a "white supremacist," just "concerned" about losing the country that he recognized as his. Even more sickening was his complaint about "fake news": there is nothing "fake" about his hatred of Hispanics--or for that matter Trump's--or the innocent dead he left behind in his genocidal rage.
After three years of demonizing
and dehumanizing rhetoric, calling Hispanics an “infestation” of crime,
violence and raping, Trump—with the help of Fox News and other purveyors of
anti-Hispanic hate like Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan—have finally reaped what
they have been sowing: a mass shooting specifically targeting Hispanics
regardless of their legal status. There is no denying this. The mainstream
media and politicians will of course say that it isn’t “right” to put two and
two together and “suggest” that racist hate rhetoric doesn’t eventually lead to
acts like this, but the media has been acting blind to this for years. It sickened me to read Trump’s tweet calling the killing “terrible”
and “pledging” support, when his responsibility for this is so great and so
obvious. The FBI is calling the shooting a domestic terrorist act; to me Trump has been terrorizing innocent people for these past three years simply because he doesn't like the way they look. He is calling the shooter a "coward"; what does he think he is? All bullies are cowards.
Trump knows where he can stick
his false “concern” and his racism. He is responsible for creating the atmosphere in which
something like this could happen. He has made anti-Hispanic migration the top
issue of his 2020 campaign, much as it was in 2016. He has before and continues
to stir-up anti-Hispanic hate in his base. This man never has anything positive to
say about Hispanics; he might suggest a few might be “good” people, but most
have no “merit.” And you have prime time Fox News commentators like Tucker Carlson
calling Hispanics “diseased” and “dirty,” Laura Ingraham spouting her “America
First” and cultural fearmongering, and far-right commentators like Coulter and
Buchanan fulminating that Hispanics are “out to destroy America.” The question
wasn’t if a mass killing of Hispanics by a racist white fanatic fed such a
steady diet of hate was going to happen, just when. And it has.
Don’t tell me that 2 and 2 don’t
equal four. This isn’t the world of George Orwell’s 1984 yet—is it?
No comments:
Post a Comment