There is no question that had Donald Trump and his Fox News enablers not embarked on a cynical attempt to gin up public hysteria about that pathetic group of asylum-seeking migrants over a thousand miles away, eleven members of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pa., would still be alive today.
Republicans can scream and howl all they want about that fact. It is irrefutable.
The proof is in the shooter's shared postings on social media that unequivocally show the "caravan" lie was not only a motivating factor, but the motivating factor that prompted the actual killings.
Prior to committing the Tree of Life massacre, the shooter, who blamed Jews for the caravan of "invaders" and who raged about it on social media, made it clear that he was furious at HIAS, founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a Jewish group that helps resettle refugees in the United States. He shared posts on Gab, a social-media site popular with the alt-right, expressing alarm at the sight of "massive human caravans of young men from Honduras and El Salvador invading America thru our unsecured southern border." And then he wrote, "HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in."
As described in this article by Adam Serwer for The Atlantic, Trump and Fox News did their utmost during the month of October to turn this non-event into a "national emergency" for the sole purpose of animating Trump's racist base of electoral support in the upcoming midterm elections. Fox News hyped its viewers anxieties about the "caravan" on a near-hourly basis. Trump claimed that "Middle Easterners" had infiltrated this ragtag group of migrants, while Vice President Mike Pence helpfully poured more gasoline on the fire, claiming that "outside groups" had funded the caravan.
No comments:
Post a Comment