White Supremacist Kills Two in Portland

The new face of the GOP

The Washington Post has a lengthy piece on the brutal murder of two good Samaritans in Portland, Oregon who sought to assist two Muslim women under harassment by a white supremacist - and I suspect Trump supporter.  Sadly, the event is symptomatic of the manner in which first Trump's campaign of hate and division and now his continued anti-Muslim efforts have made racists and extremists feel empowered to attack other citizens who differ in skin color, religious belief, sexual orientation, etc. What is frightening to me as a former Republican is the sad reality that individuals with views nearly identical to those of this murderer have been welcomed with open arms into the GOP.   Here are brief excerpts from the Post story: 

Two men were stabbed to death and one injured Friday on a light-rail train in Portland, Ore., after they tried to intervene when another passenger began “ranting and raving” and shouting anti-Muslim hate speech at two young women, police said.

Portland police on Saturday identified the two slain victims as 53-year-old Ricky John Best and 23-year-old Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche.

A third victim, 21-year-old Micah David-Cole Fletcher, is being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, police said. Police identified the suspect early Saturday morning as 35-year-old Jeremy Joseph Christian, of north Portland. Christian is being held without bail on two counts of aggravated murder, one count of attempted murder, two counts of intimidation in the second degree and one count of possession of a restricted weapon as a felon.  

The Portland Mercury, a local newspaper, reported that Christian was a “known right wing extremist and white supremacist” who had attempted to assault protesters at local demonstrations in the past. Video from April 29, shot by Mercury reporter Doug Brown, showed Christian arriving at a “March for Free Speech” draped in an American flag and carrying a baseball bat. While there, Christian yelled to the crowd that he was a “nihilist,” shouted the n-word at people and gave Nazi salutes, Brown reported.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Facebook page they said belonged to Christian showed he held racist, white supremacist and extremist beliefs. On that profile, the Facebook user said he supported creating a “White homeland” in the Pacific Northwest and declared on April 9 that he had “just Challenged Ben Ferencz (Last Living Nuremberg Persecutor) to a Debate in the Hague with Putin as our judge. I will defend the Nazis and he will defend the AshkeNAZIs.”

On April 19, the anniversary of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the user praised bomber Timothy McVeigh in another status update.

On April 28, the same Facebook user shared a meme that showed a picture of Confederate statues being removed.   “If we’re removing statues because of the Civil War, We should be removing mosques because of 9/11,” the meme stated.

Words do have consequences and frankly, I am over pundits who describe Trumps appeals to hatred as "hyperbole."   It's hate speech plan and simple and the GOP seemingly believes it's just fine. 

P.S., for Fox News viewers, "hyperbole" is defined as exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.  Obviously, many are taking Trump's statements literally and acting on them.  As for the "good Republicans," if you don't want to be lumped in with people like this killer, there's an easy solution: stop voting Republican. 

Federal Judge Blocks Part of Trump’s Immigration Order

While Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Fuhrer seemingly views himself as another Vladimir Putin who can rule by dictatorial fiat, last evening a federal court threw a wrench into Trump's immigration order that panders to the Islamophobia and racism that motivates much of today's GOP base.  Trump may have no regard for the U.S. Constitution - which I suspect he has never bothered to read - the federal courts (at least until subverted by Trump and Senate Republicans) strive to uphold the rule of law and protect the constitutional rights of ordinary people.  The New York Times has highlights on this breaking story (updates will follow as more information becomes available):

A federal judge blocked part of President Trump’s executive order on immigration on Saturday evening, ordering that refugees and others trapped at airports across the United States should not be sent back to their home countries. But the judge stopped short of letting them into the country or issuing a broader ruling on the constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s actions.

Judge Ann M. Donnelly of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama, ruled just before 9 p.m. that implementing Mr. Trump’s order by sending the travelers home could cause them “irreparable harm.”

Dozens of people waited outside of the courthouse chanting, “Set them free!” as lawyers made their case. When the crowd learned that Judge Donnelly had ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, a rousing cheer went up in the crowd.

While none of the detainees will be sent back immediately, lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case expressed concern that all those at the airports would now be put in detention, pending a resolution of the case. Inviting the lawyers to return to court if the travelers were detained, Judge Donnelly said, “If someone is not being released, I guess I’ll just hear from you.”

One can just imagine the tweet shit show that will be gushing forth from Der Fuhrer in the wake of the judge's order.  One can only hope that Trump will further display his mental instability.  It is important to realize that the ACLU brought this case challenging Trump.  Please consider making a recurring contribution to the ACLU which we will need now more than ever to fight for the rights of all Americans and the rule of law. 

Trump Camp: Khan Doesn't Deserve Title Of Gold Star Parent

Despite the polls that indicate that one of Donald Trump's biggest self-inflicted wounds has been his on going attacks on the Khan family, Trump's New York co-chair has launched a new attack claiming that Khizr Khan does not deserve the title of "Gold Star" parent.  The foulness, indecency and plain insanity of Trump and Carl Paladino, his New York co-chair is breathtaking. The simple facts are that Humanyun Khan was a U.S. Army Captain who died saving his men and civilians.  His parents lost their beloved son.  Anyone who questions the parents' right to be called "Gold Star" parents is not only morally bankrupt but also mentally unbalanced.  Talking Points Memo looks at this disgusting attack.  Here are excerpts:

The co-chair for Donald Trump’s campaign in New York is defending the Republican nominee's attacks against the Khan family, saying that Trump does not have to respect or refer to Khizr Khan as a "Gold Star parent" because he is "a member of the Muslim Brotherhood."

In an interview with "Imus in the Morning" interviewer Connell McShane, surfaced by BuzzFeed News, Carl Paladino said that focus in the election has unnecessarily shifted negatively to Trump, despite having an "un-indicted felon," presumably Hillary Clinton, in the race and a supporter of hers, Khan, being undeserving of the title of "Gold Star parent."

“We’ve got an un-indicted felon as his opponent and you’re talking about Khan, about him making a remark about this man,” he said.

“All right, I don’t care if he’s a Gold Star parent," he continued. "He certainly doesn’t deserve that title, OK, if he’s as anti-American as he’s illustrated in his speeches and in his discussion. I mean, if he’s a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or supporting, you know, the ISIS-type of attitude against America, there’s no reason for Donald Trump to have to honor this man.”

Paladino, who made a failed bid for governor of New York in 2010, went on to say that he does not feel that Trump should change his rhetoric in any way and that no one can be sure that President Obama is not a Muslim. 

I'm sorry, but Donald Trump is human sewage!!

The Rise of Hate Search

One phenomenon that ought to be disturbing is the rise of hate speech, especially among the Republican party base.  And the increase in such hate speech has, in my view, directly correlated to the rise of the Christofascists and racists in the party base.  The mind set increasingly seems to be that if one is not a white, far right, heterosexual Christian, then you are not human and worthy of all kinds of lies, threats and intimidation.  We've seen this pattern directed towards gays for years by the "godly folk," but now it is taking on a wider range of targets.  Worse yet, Republican candidates are getting in on the act.  A column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

HOURS after the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2, and minutes after the media first reported that at least one of the shooters had a Muslim-sounding name, a disturbing number of Californians had decided what they wanted to do with Muslims: kill them.

The top Google search in California with the word “Muslims” in it was “kill Muslims.” And the rest of America searched for the phrase “kill Muslims” with about the same frequency that they searched for “martini recipe,” “migraine symptoms” and “Cowboys roster.”

People often have vicious thoughts. Sometimes they share them on Google. Do these thoughts matter?  Yes. Using weekly data from 2004 to 2013, we found a direct correlation between anti-Muslim searches and anti-Muslim hate crimes.

When Islamophobic searches are at their highest levels, such as during the controversy over the “ground zero mosque” in 2010 or around the anniversary of 9/11, hate crimes tend to be at their highest levels, too.

In 2014, according to the F.B.I., anti-Muslim hate crimes represented 16.3 percent of the total of 1,092 reported offenses motivated by religious bias. Anti-Semitism still led the way as a motive for these crimes, at 58.2 percent.

The frightening thing is this: If our model is right, Islamophobia and thus anti-Muslim hate crimes are currently higher than at any time since the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.  

If someone is willing to say ‘I hate them’ or ‘they disgust me,’ we know that those emotions are as good a predictor of behavior as actual intent,” said Susan Fiske, a social psychologist at Princeton, pointing to 50 years of psychology research on anti-black bias. “If people are making expressive searches about Muslims, it’s likely to be tied to anti-Muslim hate crime.”

[M]any Muslim Americans have already experienced the havoc that one Islamophobe can create.

Asma Mohammed Nizami is a 23-year-old Muslim woman from Minnesota who directs services for students at a nonprofit and wears a head scarf, or hijab. Last Saturday, driving home from an event, she stopped at a traffic light, where she saw a man in the next car over glaring at her. He rolled down his window and called her a “Muslim bitch.” When Ms. Nizami started to drive away, he trailed her and then tried to run her off the road with his red Chevy Impala.

While the vast majority of Muslim Americans won’t be victims of hate crimes, few escape the “constant sense of fear and paranoia” that they or their loved ones might be next, said Rana Ibrahem, a Muslim woman from Long Island who works as a paralegal.

We examined prejudicial searches against black people, white people, gay people, Asians, Jews, Mexicans and Christians. We estimate that negative attitudes against Muslims today are higher than prejudice against any group in any month since 2004, when Google began preserving detailed data on search volumes.

[W]e think there are three things the rest of us not giving speeches in the Oval Office can do.

First, parents should be talking to their kids about how the overwhelming majority of Muslim Americans pose no threat to them.

Second, police departments would be wise to use search data to allocate resources through predictive policing. The data, for example, could tell police chiefs when sending a cop to do an extra drive through a Muslim neighborhood, or making sure that the town mosque was safe overnight, would be a good idea.

Third, Muslim Americans are right to take some precautions. Like most grave threats, hate crimes are rare. Our model suggests that, if Islamophobic sentiment stays at its current level, about one in every 10,000 Muslims will be the victim of a reported hate crime over the next year, similar to the rate of automobile fatalities and orders of magnitude higher than the chance of being a victim of terrorism.

Has the GOP Become A Neo-Fascist White-Identity Party?

My personal answer to the question posed in the title to this post is a resounding yes.  In addition, I'd add that the GOP is also the party of Christian extremists who want a Christian theocracy just as much as the mullahs in the Middle East seek an Islamic theocracy.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the 20 year journey that the Republican Party has taken to get to the point where it is today.  All of today's insanity and misogyny is the result of decisions made over the years to welcome in the ugliest elements of the far right fringe.  Now the members of the fringe outnumber the sane, sentient members of the GOP.   Here are article excerpts:

I’ve been reading recently about Bill Clinton’s presidency for a project I’m working on, and I just got to the part about the Oklahoma City bombing. What stood out to me, reading over this material in the Era of Trump, is the way a number of congressional Republicans at the time played footsie with the then-burgeoning far-right militia movements in the run-up to the bombing itself.

If you have no memory of that time, here’s what happened in a nutshell. Right-wing militia movements started growing in the late 1980s. . . . . three months into Clinton’s term came the FBI storming of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, resulting in 76 deaths. The next year Clinton and Congress passed, over the NRA’s objections (yes, this was possible, although it did help lose the Democrats their House majority in 1994), an assault-weapons ban. Finally, in April 1995, on the second anniversary of the Waco siege, Timothy McVeigh exploded his truck bomb in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

What’s relevant to us today is the way Republicans and the mainstream conservative movement pandered to these militant far-right groups. Many didn’t merely criticize the ATF and the FBI, which was entirely reasonable under the circumstances, but went beyond that to stoke these peoples’ paranoia about government and suggest/not suggest, in that same way we’re familiar with on those non-answer/answers about Obama’s citizenship, that armed resistance was acceptable. Texas Senator Phil Gramm, who was prominent and respected and at one point a plausible presidential candidate, was probably the highest-profile pol to use such rhetoric, arguably aside from Newt Gingrich himself. And of course Republican and conservative movement stoking of fears about immigrants has been constant.

Aside from all the normal racial and xenophobic ranting, the AM airwaves were also full of defenses of these movements. G. Gordon Liddy, of Watergate infamy, once advised his listeners that if they saw an ATF man approaching, “Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests.”

There’s no serious counterpart to this on the liberal left.

The line from all this to the rise of Donald Trump, based wholly on his immigrant-bashing rhetoric, is direct and indisputable. Back in August, in The New Yorker, Evan Osnos went out and spoke to white nationalists and far-right figures who were enthusiastic about Trump. One, a man named Jared Taylor, who edits a white nationalist magazine, told Osnos: “I’m sure he would repudiate any association with people like me, but his support comes from people who are more like me than he might like to admit.”

Trump thus culminates a process that’s been going on in the Republican Party for two generations now. Fringe elements never properly denounced then are now, under Trump, becoming an in-broad-daylight part of the Republican coalition. But now, since all this has been going on so long, are they even fringe elements?
The Republican Party of Trump is becoming a white-identity party, like the far-right parties of Europe. Yes, it includes token members of other races, which accounts for Ben Carson, who’s just a political idiot, whatever his skills in the operating theater. 

But whatever one wants to say about those three and others like them, they’re part of a tiny minority in a party that’s probably 97 percent white people, a significant percentage of whom are now openly embracing their racial identity; that is, they’re supporting Trump as white people, because they feel he will protect their white privilege. 

What is the Republican Party going to do about this? So far it sure hasn’t done much. . . . . The only one who for my money sounds genuinely shocked and saddened by this situation is Lindsey Graham. The rest of them are basically ducking the historical moment and hoping it passes.

So there’s a strong chance all of this won’t just go away on its own.   Then the Republican Party will have a choice, a choice it really has to make already, about whether it is collectively willing to stand up and say no, we don’t want to become a neo-fascist, white-identity party. Of course if the party’s leaders do that, they are thwarting, potentially, the will of their voters. It’s quite a bind to be in. And it’s one they created, starting at least 20 years ago.

Goose-Steppers in the Republican Party

I honestly try to not post about Donald Trump everyday, but it is near impossible given Trump's continued outrageous racist statements, the rest of the GOP political hierarchy's failure to fully repudiate his agenda, and the ugliness of the party base that is perhaps finally being made open to public view.  When Neo-Nazi extremists are applauding and major party candidate and rallying around him, you realize that the party in question may be past the point of no return.  I have long criticized the GOP for welcoming in Christofascists who have turned the party into a sectarian lunatic asylum.  But to now welcome in Neo-Nazi's and white supremacist extremists confirms that the party has completely succumbed to swamp fever.  A column in the New York Times looks at this disturbing phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

Well, he’s got the Hitler vote. The neo-Nazi website, Daily Stormer, was out and proud earlier this week: “Heil Donald Trump — the Ultimate Savior.” After endorsing the Republican presidential front-runner earlier this year for his call to deport 11 million Mexican immigrants, the fomenters of American fascism have now added an apt twist to his slogan, one not far from the truth of the campaign: “Make America White Again.”

Nazis — I hate these guys. Oh, but they’re a tiny minority of pink-faced malcontents living in basements with the widows taped up. Everybody hates them. Add to that supporters of the Ku Klux Klan, who’ve thrown in with Trump as well. David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Klan, liked everything he heard from Trump this week, embracing him for standing up for white nationalism.

It’s a very ugly political moment, but there it is: The Republican Party is now home to millions of people who would throw out the Constitution, welcome a police state against Latinos and Muslims, and enforce a religious test for entry into a country built by people fleeing religious persecution. This stuff polls well in their party, even if the Bill of Rights does not.

Trump’s proposal — “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” — is not just flotsam from the lunatic fringe. Well, it is. But the fringe is huge: Early polls show a plurality of Republican voters agree with Trump on banning all Muslims. And many would go even further.

Trump himself doesn’t seem to care about comparisons to the buffoonish (Mussolini), the truly scary (the evil one admired by the Daily Stormer) or the fictional — worse than Voldemort, as J. K. Rowling tweeted.

He sloughed off the fascism talk by associating his proposal with the internment in America of the Japanese during World War II. There’s a winning thought. I was wondering when he was going to get around to alienating Asian-Americans, the highest-earning, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the United States, according to Pew.

To review: He started with “the blacks,” through his smear campaign on the citizenship of the nation’s first African-American president. Moved on to Mexicans, war veterans, women who look less than flawless in middle age, the disabled, all Muslims and now people whose grandparents were rousted from their American homes and put in camps.

His supporters, most of them, do not see the shadow of the Reich when they look in the mirror. They are white, lower middle class, with little education beyond high school. The global economy has run them over. They don’t recognize their country. And they need a villain.

Trump has no solutions for the desperate angst of his followers. Tearing up trade agreements is not going to happen. Deporting workers who pick our fruit and hang sheetrock is not going to lift the fortunes of those who will no longer do those jobs. Barring all Muslims will not make us safer.

What he’s done is to give marginalized Americans permission to hate. He doesn’t use dog whistles or code. His bigotry is overt. But the table was set by years of dog whistles and code. The very “un-American” sentiment that Republican elders now claim to despise has been a mainstay of conservative media for at least a decade.

[I]t’s hard to take seriously House Speaker Paul Ryan’s rare objection to a lunatic suggestion from his party’s presidential front-runner when he says he would also back Trump should he be the nominee. . . . the only way to get rid of the goose-steppers drawn to the G.O.P. is to vow to never support the man giving them something to march to.

Many of us thought a Trump campaign would provide entertainment.  Now, it is becoming something frightening.  What's most frightening is Trumps supporters and the levels of hatred they harbor.

Donald Trump Personifies Today's GOP

While leading elected Republicans are belatedly criticizing Donald Trump for his proposal to bar all Muslims from entering America, none have as yet said they will oppose his candidacy should he frighteningly become the GOP nominee.  Moreover, most have been peddling a milder form of the same racism and religious based hatred that Trump has now raised as the main standard of the Republican Party.  Why?  Because years back the o-called GOP establishment cynically welcomed Christian extremists and white supremacists into the party.  Trump is merely the culmination of an agenda that has been in place for more than two decades or longer.  And driving the trend are the Christofascists who have turned the GOP into an extreme sectarian party.  These are people who embrace ignorance as a badge of honor, hate all who differ from themselves, and want a theocracy.  Trump is merely peddling what these nasty base of the GOP demands.  It is ugly  and it is frightening.  The New York Times slams it in its main editorial today.  Here are excerpts:

Go ahead, deplore Donald Trump. Despise his message. Reject his appeals to exclusion and hatred. But do not make the mistake of treating him as a solitary phenomenon, a singular celebrity narcissist who has somehow, all alone, brought his party and its politics to the brink of fascism.

He is the leading Republican candidate for president. He has been for months. The things he says are outrageous, by design, but they were not spawned, nor have they flourished, in isolation.

The Republican rivals rushing to distance themselves from his latest inflammatory proposal — a faith-based wall around the country — have been peddling their own nativist policies for months or years. They have been harshening their campaign speeches and immigration proposals in response to the Trump effect. Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush want to allow only Christian refugees from Syria to enter the country, and Mr. Cruz has introduced legislation to allow states to opt out of refugee resettlement.

In 31 states, governors — most but not all Republicans — have formed an axis of ignorance, declaring their borders closed to refugees fleeing the Islamic State in Syria. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has sued the federal government and a nonprofit relief agency to keep refugees out. Indiana’s refusal forced one family to seek refuge in Connecticut. Georgia is seeking to deny displaced Syrians federal benefits, like food stamps, and keep their children out of school.

Civil rights organizations — the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigration Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center — are defending the displaced against blatant discrimination.  

[S]erious damage is already being done to the country, to its reputation overseas, by a man who is seen as speaking for America and twisting its message of tolerance and welcome, and by the candidates who trail him and are competing for his voters.

[T]he danger right now is allowing him to legitimize the hatred that he so skillfully exploits, and to revive the old American tendency, in frightening times, toward vicious treatment of the weak and outsiders. . . . . there are millions of Muslims who have good reason to fear that the darkness is falling again.

The time to renounce Mr. Trump’s views was the day he entered the race, calling Mexico an exporter of criminals and rapists. He played to the politics of nativism and fear that was evident last year, when a wave of Central American mothers and children, fleeing gang-and-drug warfare to the Texas border, presented themselves upon the mercy of the United States, and were met with derision and hysteria.

The racism behind the agenda of the right wing on immigrants and foreigners has long been plain as day. Mr. Trump makes it even plainer. After his remarks on Muslims, how many of Mr. Trump’s rivals have said they would reject his candidacy if he won the nomination? As of Wednesday, none.

Sane and decent Republicans need to understand that there is only one way to solve the nightmare: walk away and let the GOP self-destruct and then begin again with the Christofascists and white supremacists patently unwelcome in the party tent. 

The Growing Hysteria and Dangerousness of the Far Right

Candidly, if I were a Muslim American, I would be very frightened by the current atmosphere on the right of the political spectrum which is depicting every Muslim as a would be terrorist.  Perhaps I am especially sensitive to demonization since gays have long been called out as deviants and a danger by the "godly folk" and I know what it is to be fearful of my safety on occasion simply because of who I am.   Most often this fear was triggered by "godly folk," those who see themselves as "real Americans," and on one occasion, the Norfolk Police.  How long will it be until some self-appointed Christian vigilante lets loose violence on Muslims or others who they deem to not be "real Americans"?  A piece in Salon looks at this increasingly dangerous atmosphere.  Here are excerpts:.  

The escalating right-wing hyperbole is not just irresponsible but dangerous, as it promotes undue fears and offers more confrontations and violence as a solution, such as calls for all Americans to carry guns. What’s forgotten in that line of thinking is that many people won’t, or don’t want to use guns.

The GOP presidential candidates, in contrast, relish the thought of war with ISIS. One after another, at Thursday’s Republican Jewish Coalition summit in Washington, they declared the nation was “in a time of war” (Ted Cruz), facing “terrorist attack” (Chris Christie), “they’re already here” (Lindsey Graham) and the feds should spy on anyone, anywhere, anytime . . . .

There’s “fear in the air,” the Times reported Friday, echoing a national poll released Thursday finding 83 percent of Americans expect a major terrorist attack. Meanwhile, overseas, the U.S. is deepening the military response to ISIS following the Paris attacks, and NATO allies that had limited their involvement are now sending troops, planes and ships.

In other words, contrary to what the GOP presidential candidates would have the public believe, the U.S. is very much at war in Iraq and Syria. Meanwhile, they and their propagandist allies are opposed to removing weapons of war from individuals at home.

Americans who don’t believe the answer to violence is to carry a gun anytime they step outside find themselves in an escalating climate of fear-mongering, panic-driven gun sales and an urge by many to strike real or imagined foes.

What is lacking are people who can put these latest events and trends into perspective, historic contexts or offer wise responses—although the New York Times ran its first front-page editorial in decades on Saturday morning, urging Congress to ban militarized weapons and calling the recent domestic gun-caused slaughter terrorism. Most of the TV news, however, is reading a different script, hyping the FBI announcement that it was investigating the San Bernardino shootings as a terrorist incident.

The White House has ignored most of the noise coming from Congress and the 2016 campaign trail, making reasonable remarks that are quickly overshadowed by hyped headlines. The lack of a stronger, clearer and wiser countervailing presence from Obama has had serious consequences, however. It’s created a void filled by an onslaught of irresponsible GOP hyperbole and right-wing propaganda. Ironically, Obama is allowing the end of his presidency to be colonized by exaggerated fears and darkness, though he was elected by a majority of Americans seeking a far more hopeful future.