Saturday, August 3, 2019

Trump and Fox News' anti-Hispanic hate rhetoric leads to its “logical” conclusion in El Paso


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?

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