Last month, United States President Donald Trump indulged in his favorite “executive” pastime. He took to Twitter to castigate “the Fake News Media” for “working overtime to blame (him) for the horrible attack in New Zealand.”
‘Trumpism’ is upending decency, diversity.What is not “fake news” is that Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old man Australian gym trainer accused of the murder of 50 mostly immigrant Muslims as they prayed at their mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on Mar. 15, wrote in his 74-page manifesto titled “The Great Replacement”, that Trump is “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”
That is definitely not “fake news”.
Ever since Trump’s birther movement, his subsequent xenophobic and racist campaign for president and his administration’s continued and targeted anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim policies, white supremacists are rejoicing globally.They no longer feel the need to hide how they feel. They no longer have to wear masks. Now they feel emboldened by the public anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric of Trump, ever since he began his campaign with the words: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
And: “It’s coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably— probably— from the Middle East … it’s got to stop, and it’s got to stop fast.
SCAPEGOATING
And that was only the beginning. It is not “fake news” that Trump has made scapegoating and attacking immigrants and Muslims a cornerstone of his campaign and administration.
From the “build the wall” campaign, to banning Muslims from entering the U.S., to caging innocent brown children torn from the arms of their poor immigrant parents to blaming immigrants and Muslims for “fake” crimes against “native-born” Americans, Trump continues to give the white supremacists new fuel for their hate.
The fact is that Trump in 2016 did for the white supremacists, the KKK, the alt-right, the Aryan Brotherhood and all racists what the abolition of slavery did in the southern states.It gave them a new opportunity to publicly unleash their hate against a “new” race of people they see as a global “threat” to their white power; a people who they feel are helping to diminish their numbers and make the world “brown” again.
RISE
Across Europe, we are seeing the rise of leaders and groups who demonize minorities and immigrants and play on nativist policies.
In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has described his country as an “illiberal state” and the anti-Semitic Jobbik party is the country’s third-largest.
In Slovakia, neo-Nazis were recently elected to the parliament. In Greece, the Golden Dawn party, which makes use of Nazi symbolism, commands a sizable parliamentary bloc. And Trumpism has now come to Brazil with the election of a far-right President – Jair Bolsanaro.
It is a frightening reality that is hardly “fake news”.
What is further from “fake news” is that 50 brown and black Muslims and immigrants in New Zealand are dead because one man believed in the U.S.president’s hateful brand of Trumpism, and that these immigrants don’t belong in “white” countries.
It is why the number of white supremacists’ groups in the U.S. are growing while racists on social media are increasingly buying into the bile of hate and celebrating these killings. It is why, in 2017, one year after Trump became president, white supremacists unleashed a killing spree – killing a 34 people domestically in the U.S. The FBI’s own data shows that in 2017, 7,175 hate crime incidents were reported across the U.S.
The reality is that hate groups are not just a small group of people, like Trump claims, but a growing terror threat, much like ISIS.
They must be treated and hunted as such or more innocent immigrants and Muslims will lose their lives while Trumpism, white supremacy and hate upsurges, upending diversity and decency with the bile of revulsion.
