Trump + white nationalism = hate crimes. On the rise.
“Hate crimes in California are increasing, particularly attacks on Muslims and gay men, after nearly a decade of decline, the state attorney general’s office reported Monday.” This, from the San Francisco Chronicle’s legal reporter, Bob Egelko, in Tuesday’s paper.
Jews, too, as well as their synagogues, are increasingly being attacked. “The largest number of religiously motivated hate crimes were aimed against Jews,” Egelko writes, citing data from the attorney-general’s office. African-Americans also are frequently on the receiving end of hate crimes.
Hmmm. Who could be beating on all those Muslims, gays, Jews and Blacks? Here’s your multiple choice quiz for the day, kids. Your choices are:
- ISIS
- Mexican immigrants
- The LGBTQ community
- Handicapped people
- White Christian males
Yes, kids, if you guessed (e), white Christian males, you win a free lifetime subscription to this blog, because you’d be right! According to the FBI’s “Hate Crimes Statistics” website, 62.4% of known offenders were white. Typical of these offenders (although his hate crime was much worse) was Dylann Roof, the young white man who shot up that Charleston, South Carolina church, murdering nine Black worshippers, in a racially motivated attack. In a “manifesto” he wrote about the attack, Roof said he was inspired by an organization called the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as “a crudely white supremacist group.”
CCC has its roots in the old White Citizens Councils of the deep south, themselves an outgrowth of the Ku Klux Klan. The Trump administration and its enablers have extensive ties with CCC. Ryan Zinke, Trump’s Interior Secretary, accepted a $500 campaign contribution from the group. CCC also has contributed “substantial sums” of money to the campaigns of such Republican rightwingers as Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Scott Walker. A top CCC official—the founder’s son-in-law—wrote on his website, “We like Steve Bannon” (a top Trump advisor), calling him “a proud son of the South” and describing him as “the most important figure in the Alt-Lite,” a term the most radical extremists use for “diluted versions” of the alt.right. Bannon’s friend, the current attorney-general of the United States, Jefferson “Jeff” Beauregard Sessions, also has ties to the CCC; in 2012, when he was a Senator, he placed into the Congressional Record a “congratulations” to a racist named Roy Beck, the founder of another hate group, Numbers USA, an organization affiliated with the CCC. And when Sessions was named Attorney-General, one of CCC’s board members wrote on his (the board member’s) website, “Suck it, shitlibs! It’s a new day at DOJ!”
As SPLC notes, “White nationalists…see Trump as their last stand and last best hope for controlling the country.” California’s Attorney-General agrees. In a thinly-disguised reference to Trump’s speeches and tweets, he said, in the Chronicle article, “Discriminatory rhetoric does not make us stronger, but divides us and puts the safety of our communities at risk.” In fact, according to the SPLC, these are the group affiliations inspiring the highest number of hate crimes:
- KKK (72)
- Neo-Nazi (142)
- White Nationalist (115)
- Racist Skinhead (119)
- Christian Identity (21)
- Neo-Confederate (37)
- Black Separatist (113)
- General Hate (165)
Indeed, we see on the right wing of the Republican Party what Charles M. Blow, the New York Times columnist, calls “an utter contempt for decency,” in his powerful op-ed piece from Monday’s paper. Blow issues a stark warning to Republicans: they “have bound themselves up with Trump. His fate is their fate. They have surrendered any moral authority to which they once laid claim — rightly or not. If Trump goes down, they all do.” However much Republicans say they denounce hate crimes, they cannot run away from their complicity. “Trump is an abomination, and a cancer on the country, and none of us can rest until he is no longer holding the reins of power,” Blow writes—harsh words, but true, and necessary to say.
Deposing Trump will not eliminate hate crimes in America; we’ll still have Pence to deal with, and a revanchist Republican Party that has shown no signs, yet, of moderating their negativity. But by removing the hater-in-chief, the sociopathic white males who bash Muslims, gays, Jews and Blacks (and homeless, immigrants and handicapped people) will lose a symbol that, for the time being at least, is emboldening them.
