Trump’s Caravan Hysteria Led to This
The president and his supporters insisted that several thousand Honduran migrants were a looming menace—and the Pittsburgh gunman took that seriously.
Adam Serwer3:23 PM ET
Adam Serwer
Staff writer at The Atlantic
Gene J. Puskar / AP
On Tuesday, October 16, President Donald Trump started tweeting.
“The United States has strongly informed the President of Honduras that if the large Caravan of people heading to the U.S. is not stopped and brought back to Honduras, no more money or aid will be given to Honduras, effective immediately!”
"We have today informed the countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that if they allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States, with the intention of entering our country illegally, all payments made to them will STOP (END)!,"
Vice President Mike Pence also tweeted:
"Spoke to President Hernandez of Honduras about the migrant caravan heading to the U.S. Delivered strong message from @POTUS: no more aid if caravan is not stopped. Told him U.S. will not tolerate this blatant disregard for our border & sovereignty,"
The apparent impetus for this outrage was a segment on Fox News that morning, which detailed a migrant caravan thousands of miles away in Honduras. That caravan began sometime in mid-October, made up of refugees fleeing violence in their home country. Over the next few weeks, Trump would do his best to turn the caravan into a national emergency. Trump falsely told his supporters that there were “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” in the caravan, a claim that had no basis in fact, which was meant to imply that terrorists were hiding in the caravan—one falsehood placed upon another. Defense Secretary James Mattis ordered more troops to the border. A Fox News host took it upon herself to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen whether there was “any scenario under which if people force their way across the border they could be shot at,” to which Nielsen responded, “We do not have any intention right now to shoot at people.”
Pence told Fox News on Friday that “what the president of Honduras told me is that the caravan was organized by leftist organizations, political activists within Honduras, and he said it was being funded by outside groups, and even from Venezuela … So the American people, I think, see through this—they understand this is not a spontaneous caravan of vulnerable people.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s Twitter account “confirmed” that within the caravan there were people who are “gang members or have significant criminal histories,” without offering evidence of any such ties. Trump sought to blame the opposition party for the caravan’s existence. “Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws!” Trump tweeted on October 22. “Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally.”
In the right-wing fever swamps, where the president’s every word is worshipped, commenters began amplifying Trump’s exhortations with new details. Representative Matt Gaetz wondered if George Soros—the wealthy Jewish philanthropist whom Trump and several members of the U.S. Senate blamed for the protests against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and who was recently targeted with a bomb—was behind the migrant caravan. NRATV, the propaganda organ of the National Rifle Association, linked two Republican obsessions, voter fraud and immigration. Chuck Holton told NRATV’s viewers that Soros was sending the caravan to the United States so the migrants could vote: “It’s telling that a bevy of left-wing groups are partnering with a Hungarian-born billionaire and the Venezuelan government to try to influence the 2018 midterms by sending Honduran migrants north in the thousands.” On CNN, the conservative commentator Matt Schlapp asked pointedly, “Who's paying for the caravan? Alisyn, who's paying for the caravan?,” before later answering his own question: “Because of the liberal judges and other people that intercede, including George Soros, we have too much chaos at our southern border.” On Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, a guest said “these individuals are not immigrants. These are people that are invading our country,” as another guest asserted they were seeking “the destruction of American society and culture.”
In the meantime, much of the mainstream press abetted Trump’s effort to make the midterm election a referendum on the caravan. Popular news podcasts devoted entire episodes to the caravan. It remained on the front pages of major media websites. It was an overwhelming topic of conversation on cable news, where Trumpists freely spread disinformation about the threat the migrants posed, while news anchors displayed exasperation over their false claims, only to invite them back on the next day’s newscast to do it all over again.
In reality, the caravan was thousands of miles and weeks away from the U.S. border, shrinking in size, and unlikely to reach the U.S. before the election. If the migrants reach the U.S., they have the right under U.S. law to apply for asylum at a port of entry. If their claims are not accepted, they will be turned away. There is no national emergency, there is no ominous threat. There is only a group of desperate people looking for a better life, who have a right to request asylum in the United States, and have no right to stay if their claims are rejected. Trump is reportedly aware that his claims about the caravan are false. An administration official told the Daily Beast simply, “it doesn’t matter if it’s 100 percent accurate … this is the play.” The "play" was to demonize vulnerable people with falsehoods in order to frighten Trump's base to the polls.
Nevertheless, some took the claims of the president and his allies seriously. On Saturday morning, Shabbat morning, a gunman walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and killed 11 people. The massacre capped off a week of terrorism, in which one man mailed bombs to nearly a dozen Trump critics, and another killed two black people in a grocery store after failing to force his way into a black church.
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.”
The people killed on Saturday were killed for trying to make the world a better place, as their faith exhorts them to do. The history of the Jewish people is one of displacement, statelessness, and persecution. What groups like HIAS do in helping refugees, they do with the knowledge that comes from a history of being the targets of demagogues who persecute minorities in pursuit of power.
Ordinarily, a politician cannot be held responsible for the actions of a deranged follower. But ordinarily, politicians don’t praise supporters who have mercilessly beaten a Latino man, as “very passionate.” Ordinarily, they don’t offer to pay supporters’ legal bills if they assault protesters on the other side. They don’t praise acts of violence against the media. They don’t defend neo-Nazi rioters as “fine people.” They don’t justify sending bombs to their critics by blaming the media for airing criticism. Ordinarily, there is no historic surge in anti-Semitism, much of it targeted at Jewish critics, coinciding with a politician’s rise. And ordinarily, presidents do not blatantly exploit their authority in an effort to terrify white Americans into voting for their party. For the past few decades, most American politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, have taken care not to urge their supporters to take matters into their own hands. Trump did everything he could to fan the flames, and nothing to restrain those who might take him at his word.
Many of Trump’s defenders argue that his rhetoric is mere shtick. That his attacks, however cruel, aren’t taken 100 percent seriously by his supporters. But to make this argument is to concede that following Trump’s statements to their logical conclusion could lead to violence against his targets, and it is only because most do not take it that way, that the political violence committed on Trump’s behalf is as limited as it currently is.
The Tree of Life shooter criticized Trump for not being racist or anti-Semitic enough. But with respect to the caravan, the shooter merely followed the logic of the president and his allies: He was willing to do whatever was necessary to prevent an “invasion” of Latinos planned by perfidious Jews, a treasonous attempt to seek “the destruction of American society and culture.”
The apparent spark for the worst anti-Semitic massacre in American history was a racist hoax inflamed by a U.S. president seeking to help his party win a midterm election. There is no political gesture, no public statement, and no alteration in rhetoric or behavior that will change this fact. The shooter might have found a different reason to act on a different day. But he chose to act on Saturday, and he apparently chose to act in response to a political fiction that the president himself chose to spread, and that his followers chose to amplify.
As for those who aided the president in his propaganda campaign, who enabled him to prey on racist fears to fabricate a national emergency, those who said to themselves, “This is the play”? Every single one of them bears some responsibility for what followed. Their condemnations of anti-Semitism are meaningless. Their thoughts and prayers are worthless. Their condolences are irrelevant. They can never undo what they have done, and what they have done will never be forgotten.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ws/574213/
Laura Ingraham is currently warning that the migrant caravan could be infested with rabies and other diseases
Classic extremist dehumanization tactic; cf. "A recurrent theme in Nazi antisemitic propaganda was that Jews spread diseases
Joyce Fienberg, 75
Richard Gottfried, 65
Rose Mallinger, 97
Jerry Rabinowitz, 66
Cecil Rosenthal, 59
David Rosenthal, 54
Bernice Simon, 84
Sylvan Simon, 86
Daniel Stein, 71
Melvin Wax, 88
Irving Younger, 69
Rep. Kevin McCarthy Deletes Tweet Singling Out 3 Jews Helping Bankroll Democrats
The Republican leader warned that the wealthy donors are trying to "buy" the midterm election.
By Mary Papenfuss
10/28/2018 12:45 AM ET
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Updated 59 minutes ago
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) deleted a tweet that had warned that three wealthy Jewish Democrats are “buying” the midterm elections for their party, a posting that appeared after liberal billionaire philanthropist George Soros ― one of his targets ― had been sent a pipe bomb.
The McCarthy tweet — which also named former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and California businessman Tom Steyer — was taken down three days before a gunman killed 11 people Saturday in an anti-Semitic attack at The Tree of Life, a Pittsburgh synagogue.
Soros has been accused by right-wing conspiracy theorists of orchestrating a range of political activities and events, including most recently the migrant caravan heading to the southern U.S. border and the protests on Capitol Hill that unsuccessfully sought to block Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court nominee. Earlier this month President Donald Trump said at a campaign rally that people criticizing Kavanaugh were “paid for by Soros — or somebody else.”
The man arrested in the synagogue shooting, Robert Bowers, blamed Jews for the caravan in a social media post.
McCarthy could not immediately be reached by Huffpost for comment about why he deleted the tweet. But his message danced dangerously close to well-trod anti-Semitic attacks that portray Jews as the central members of a wealthy international cabal that secretly controls the world.
McCarthy posted a new tweet after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, saying that the “heinous attacks on Tree of Life synagogue perpetrated by anti-Semitism and hate will not shake our love for each other.”
Soros’ son, Alexander Soros, blamed “hate” for the series of pipe bombs sent to Democratic political figures and other targets of harsh attacks from Trump, including his father.
Alexander Soros wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed published on Wednesday that his father’s philanthropic efforts, which seek to “support those who promote societies where everyone has a voice,” have been a target of vicious attacks, many “dripping with the poison of anti-Semitism.”
The attacks have become much worse since Trump embarked on his presidential campaign in 2015, Soros said. He noted that Trump’s candidacy was endorsed by “white supremacist and anti-Semite David Duke,” a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. That’s when extremism began to slip into the mainstream of U.S. politics, the younger Soros said.
“A genie was let out of the bottle, which may take generations to put back in, ” he warned.
Florida resident Cesar Sayoc was arrested Friday and charged for the series of pipe bomb mailings. The van he was living in was plastered with photos of Trump, pro-Trump slogans and images of the president’s targets with gunsight crosshairs over their faces.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5bd4 ... ssion=true
Trump Rolls Out Anti-Semitic Closing Ad
By Josh Marshall
November 5, 2016 8:22 pm
Take a moment to look at this closing ad from Donald Trump.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vST61W4bGm8
From a technical and thematic perspective it’s a well made ad. It’s also packed with anti-Semitic dog whistles, anti-Semitic tropes and anti-Semitic vocabulary. I’m not even sure whether it makes sense to call them dog whistles. The four readily identifiable American bad guys in the ad are Hillary Clinton, George Soros (Jewish financier), Janet Yellen (Jewish Fed Chair) and Lloyd Blankfein (Jewish Goldman Sachs CEO).
The Trump narration immediately preceding Soros and Yellin proceeds as follows: “The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. For those who control the levers of power in Washington [start Soros] and for the global [start Yellen] special interests [stop Yellen]. They partner with these people [start Clinton] who don’t have your good in mind.”
For Blankfein: “It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the [start Blankein] pockets of a handful of large corporations [stop Blankfein] and political entities.”
These are standard anti-Semitic themes and storylines, using established anti-Semitic vocabulary lined up with high profile Jews as the only Americans other than Clinton who are apparently relevant to the story. As you can see by my transcription, the Jews come up to punctuate specific key phrases. Soros: “those who control the levers of power in Washington”; Yellen “global special interests”; Blankfein “put money into the pockets of handful of large corporations.”
This is an anti-Semitic ad every bit as much as the infamous Jesse Helms ‘white hands’ ad or the Willie Horton ad were anti-African-American racist ads. Which is to say, really anti-Semitic. You could even argue that it’s more so, given certain linguistic similarities with anti-Semitic propaganda from the 1930s. But it’s not a contest. This is an ad intended to appeal to anti-Semites and spread anti-Semitic ideas. That’s the only standard that really matters.
This is intentional and by design. It is no accident.
Trump has electrified anti-Semites and racist groups across the country. His own campaign has repeatedly found itself speaking to anti-Semites, tweeting their anti-Semitic memes, retweeting anti-Semites. His campaign manager, Steven Bannon, is an anti-Semite. The Breitbart News site he ran and will continue running after the campaign has become increasingly open in the last year with anti-Semitic attacks and politics.
Beyond that, this shouldn’t surprise us for a broader reason. Authoritarian, xenophobic political movements, which the Trump campaign unquestionably is, are driven by tribalism and ‘us vs them’ exclusion of outsiders. This may begin with other groups – Mexican immigrants, African-Americans, Muslims. It almost always comes around to Jews.
It’s true there is son-in-law Jared Kushner, a Jew and Ivanka, who converted to Judaism. But this isn’t terribly surprising. Kushner appears to be conscienceless. And as I noted here, there is a storied history of anti-Semites being happy to distinguish between good Jews and bad Jews.
There’s been a lot of discussion of anti-Semitism and the Trump campaign but a fierce resistance to coming to grips with the fact that anti-Semitism is a key driving force of the Trump campaign, that the campaign itself is an anti-Semitic one even though the great majority of Trump’s supporters are not anti-Semites. When he closes out his campaign with a blatantly anti-Semitic ad, it’s time to rethink that resistance.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/tr ... closing-ad
trump leaves the stage following a MAGA campaign rally at the Southern Illinois Airport Hangar 6, in Murphysboro, IL,
Leah McElrath
Leah McElrath
@leahmcelrath
·
3h
Hitler used the word “Endseig” or “ultimate victory” in Mein Kampf.
Tonight - on the very eve of the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history - Donald Trump gives a speech concluding by talking about “total victory.”
And the Republican Party tweets it out.
Josh Marshall
@joshtpm
Straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Just moments ago, Lou Dobbs guest Chris Farrell (head of Judicial Watch) says Caravan is being funded/directed by the "Soros-occupied State Department".
Synagogue shooting suspect just charged with 29 federal counts of violence & firearms offenses.
