Terrorism is when one person or a group of people kill indiscriminately a bunch of people in a public place driven by a particular ideology of hatred. The FBI has been mislabeling too many acts of domestic terrorism. There can be lone-wolf terrorism. Someone might not be an official member of some organized group, but might be inspired by some ideological teachings online, and they might go perpetrate a well thought out act of violence. It is not true America has not seen acts of terrorism on its soil since 9/11. It just saw two. Most mass shootings, if properly investigated, will be found to have been acts of domestic terrorism. Some might be mental health fail scenarios.
Which makes the ideology of hate very relevant. Hate speech is not harmless. When you openly incite violence from a podium, that has got to count. What do you think Al Qaeda and ISIS do in their online videos?
You can not whitewash terrorism. Just because a white male opened fire inside a black church does not make it any less of an act of terrorism.
Mass shootings hit America with greater regularity than hurricanes and tornadoes. Gun deaths far exceed war deaths in this country. The gun laws, as they stand, are insane.
Deadly violence heightens concerns about domestic terrorism and white supremacists Investigators recovered extremist materials during a search of 19-year-old gunman Santino William Legan’s home in Nevada, according to one law enforcement source, and Legan had posted a photo on Instagram urging people to read a novel widely associated with white supremacists....... the Gilroy attack fell into into an increasingly common category of domestic threat: those associated with white supremacy...... in the El Paso massacre. The suspected assailant taken into custody, Patrick Crusius of suburban Dallas, is believed to be the author of a hate-filled manifesto posted online ..... In July, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee that a majority of domestic terrorism cases the bureau has investigated are motivated by white supremacy. ..... the bureau was investigating about 850 cases of domestic terrorism...... the gunman in the Parkland, Fla., shooting in February 2018 that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School fixated on racist imagery, but authorities did not designate the attack as a hate crime ...... political polarization and a rise of far-right nationalism is contributing to hate crime around the globe....... Louisville resident Ed Harrell told the Louisville Courier-Journal that as he crouched in the parking lot and grabbed his own revolver, the gunman walked past and said: “Don’t shoot me. I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot whites.” ...... For months before the attack, Bowers posted angrily on social media, calling immigrants “invaders” and said Jews were the “enemy of white people.” ...... Tarrant livestreamed the shooting and left a 74-page manifesto in which he detailed how he grew to hate immigrants and specifically Muslims, and aimed to kill them and encourage others to do the same.
Trump briefed on Ohio mass shooting In a second tweet , he wrote, “God bless the people of El Paso Texas. God bless the people of Dayton, Ohio.” ...... Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley says the gunman in a mass shooting that killed nine people in Ohio was wearing body armor and had extra magazines. ...... Two women who were in a bar across the street from the Dayton, Ohio, shooting say they are in shock...... The 23-year-old says people her age “don’t think something like this is going to happen.” ..... Tianycia Leonard says she heard “loud thumps” she initially thought were people pounding on a dumpster. The 28-year-old says she then realized “it was gunshots and there was a lot of rounds.”..... the Dayton shooting is the 22nd mass killing and sixth public mass shooting in the U.S. in 2019. It came just hours after 20 people were killed in an El Paso, Texas, shooting...... the second mass shooting in the U.S. in less than 24 hours took place in “a safe part of downtown.” .... The Oregon District is a historic neighborhood known for its entertainment offerings.
2020 Dems back gun limits after El Paso mass shooting “It’s not just today, it has happened several times this week. It’s happened here in Las Vegas where some lunatic killed 50 some odd people,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said as he and 18 other White House hopefuls were in Nevada to address the nation’s largest public employees union. “All over the world, people are looking at the United States and wondering what is going on? What is the mental health situation in America, where time after time, after time, after time, we’re seeing indescribable horror.”...... Sanders blasted Republican Senate leadership for being “more concerned about pleasing the NRA than listening to the vast majority of the American people” ...... O’Rourke appeared shaken as he told the union forum he’d heard early reports that the shooter might have had a military-style weapon, saying the country needs to “keep that (expletive) on the battlefield. Do not bring it into our communities.” ....... O’Rourke said the U.S. may require direct action, urgency and in some cases nonviolent civil disobedience, to make real change. ...... “This is a sickness,” Biden said. “This is beyond anything that we should be tolerating.” He added: “We can beat the NRA. We can beat the gun manufacturers.” .......
Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, noted: “We are the only country in the world with more guns than people.”
...... New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said, “This has got to be a movement, politics or not, we’ve got to make ending this nightmare a movement before it happens to yet another community or another person dies.” ........ Elizabeth Warren tweeted: “Far too many communities have suffered through tragedies like this already. We must act now to end our country’s gun violence epidemic.Ideology Kills. How Do You Police It? The manifesto that appeared just before the El Paso shooting opposed racial mixing...... Is Donald Trump—recently seen on Twitter gloating over the burglary of a congressman’s home in Baltimore—capable of a statesmanlike response that acknowledges and repudiates his support from those who openly or tacitly celebrate the crime? ...... no debate will be necessary about what motivated the killer, or what fountains of ideas he drank from. ...... The author of the manifesto pronounced himself in “general” agreement with the Christchurch murderer. He opposed racial mixing; he thought America was committing suicide by letting Hispanics “invade.” He intended to kill to counter these trends, and he claimed to be ready to die in the act. He even endorsed, tactically, the targeting of innocent and unarmed people, using the phrase “low-security targets” (imagine the type of subhuman consciousness that would refer to cowering children this way)........ The ideal, he suggests, would be automation without immigration, so the low-paying jobs would go to robots, and non-immigrant Americans would get the good jobs. ...... To my knowledge only one politician on the national stage has done all of these things. ........ These conspiracies have been snatched from the buffet line of bad ideas, then served up as a form of fascism. .......
keep in mind how commonplace, on a sentence-by-sentence level, portions of that manifesto are.
Our country is under attack from white nationalist terrorism, inspiring murder on our soil and abetted by weak gun laws. If we are serious about national security, we must summon the courage to name and defeat this evil.
— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) August 3, 2019
The House passed HR8, a Bipartisan Background Checks Act, *5 months ago* and the Senate has yet to vote on it.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 4, 2019
It was one of our 1st major priorities after ending the gov shutdown.
You’ve been sitting on it since February giving bogus excuses.
Care to explain the people why? https://t.co/l5ZSDyPyWw
We need to call out white nationalism for what it is—domestic terrorism. It is a threat to the United States, and we've seen its devastating toll this weekend. And we need to call out the president himself for advancing racism and white supremacy. pic.twitter.com/pdE9CAiQqx
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) August 4, 2019
For months, we have been raising questions around how white supremacists have been able to escape terrorist labeling.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 4, 2019
Here’s one example ⬇️ https://t.co/hXPqV9L8vJ
My message to the president on gun violence. pic.twitter.com/G0faCxtMSo
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) August 4, 2019
America is under attack by Donald J. Trump.
— Morgan J. Freeman (@mjfree) August 4, 2019
Can we talk about mass shootings now?
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) August 3, 2019
Can we start to condemn domestic terrorism now?
Can we work together to safeguard American lives on our soil now?
It’s time to talk and follow up with action! pic.twitter.com/ucLNVSyJsl
Focusing on flipping the Senate should be our #1 electoral priority right now.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 4, 2019
Presidential candidates have all of media focused on them - they’re good rn. We need to boost Senate candidates & get organizing.
What Senate races + candidates are you looking at? Comment below ⬇️ https://t.co/QIMmzsS1NE
This is the El Paso shooter.
— Kai Newkirk (@kai_newkirk) August 3, 2019
Patrick Crusius, a 21 year-old white male Trump supporter whose manifesto says he committed mass murder in “response to [the] Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
This is white supremacist terror.
It's part of a pattern.
And Trump is complicit. pic.twitter.com/PO4O4las3h
The tragedy in El Paso was the 291st mass shooting this year.
— Mike Levin (@MikeLevinCA) August 3, 2019
Earlier this year, the House passed common sense gun safety legislation, HR 8 and HR 1112.
Mitch McConnell won’t allow a vote in the Senate on either bill. Enough is enough.
Hey, Katie Hopkins the following weren’t immigrants:
— Emma Kennedy (@EmmaKennedy) August 4, 2019
Sandy Hook killer
Parkland killer
Charleston Church killer
Aurora Movie Theatre killer
Las Vegas killer
El Paso Mall killer.
When are you doing one of your angry little vids about white nationalist terrorists?
& again, this time asking the FBI.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 4, 2019
It seems easier to label domestic, self-radicalized shooters who are Muslim as terrorists.
Yet white supremacists, who are responsible for far more violence in the US,often escape these charges.
Now they’re the #1 source of domestic terror ⬇️ https://t.co/RCjp4687by
#WhiteSupremacistTerrorism is terrorism and should be treated as such. It is an evil scourge that must be rooted out and destroyed.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 4, 2019
Mass shootings, 2019:
— The Hummingbird 🐦 (@SaysHummingbird) August 3, 2019
Germany: 0
Italy: 0
UK: 0
Australia: 0
Spain: 0
Saudi: 0
France: 0
Canada: 1
Brazil: 1
Netherlands: 1
Mexico: 3
US: 249
Why is the US the only country which refuses to act?
After each one of these tragedies, our politicians do nothing.
This must change.
Your Republican government cut funding for a program called CVE - Countering Violent Extremism. They re-allocated the money from white domestic extremism and focused totally on foreign, middle eastern, Muslim extremism. They did so contrary to the data.
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) August 3, 2019
SHOOTER: I was inspired by trump.
— Imani Gandy (@AngryBlackLady) August 4, 2019
MEDIA: what could have caused this?
SHOOTER: look at this cool photo of the word “trump” spelled out in firearms
MEDIA: he probably played too much fortnite
SHOOTER: it’s like trump said, Hispanics are invading us
MEDIA: we may never know
In May, Trump said we are being “invaded” by immigrants. The El Paso shooter said he wanted to stop the “invasion.”
— Rep. Jim McGovern (@RepMcGovern) August 4, 2019
Trump asked his rally crowd: "How do you stop these people" from crossing the border?
"Shoot them!" Someone screamed.
He laughed. Then the crowd laughed.
White supremacy has quickly turned into a domestic terror crisis in the US.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 4, 2019
They rely on you thinking “it’s not a big deal.” It is a big deal.
White supremacy now makes up the majority of domestic terrorism in the United States. They radicalize online.https://t.co/JnrWkg5As1
Your prayers would be more meaningful, Mr. President, if you hadn’t so gleefully and cravenly fanned the flames of hatred.
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) August 3, 2019
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
Perhaps the prayers should be for YOU! https://t.co/EOg1hX4toY
You know what’s funny is that there are hundreds of millions of “disenfranchised, disaffected” women and not a single fucking one of them is shooting up a Wal Mart.
— feminist next door (@emrazz) August 4, 2019
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) August 4, 2019
Trump should be in prison for inciting murder. https://t.co/tkI1iISpKR
— kath 🙀❄️🇪🇺💚 (@KathyBurke) August 4, 2019
CNN reports that local officials in El Paso believe some mass shooting victims didn’t seek medical treatment because of their immigration status. America is in dire shape. pic.twitter.com/E68hiCN5H2
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 3, 2019
The El Paso shooters manifesto begins "This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from
— Will McAvoy (@WillMcAvoyACN) August 4, 2019
cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion."
And now, this:
To my colleagues - get off your ass and do something.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) August 3, 2019
Stop pretending like your only responsibility is to offer sympathy.
You got elected to fix things. And this is fixable. But not if all you do about this is tweet.
When a mass shooting happens Fox News has the same reaction
— Lis Power (@LisPower1) August 3, 2019
Every. Single. Time.
- Blame video games
- Bring up ISIS/‘radical Islamic terrorism’
- Say “now’s not the time to talk about guns”
-Ignore links to white nationalism/Fox’s own rhetoric
Fuck that shit and fuck Fox News https://t.co/rX5cjgISzz
Here’s a picture from Patrick Crusius’ Facebook page. Pretty clear who his hero is. #ElPasoShooting pic.twitter.com/cJBQKB898U
— Sean Kent (@seankent) August 3, 2019
Bill Clinton banned assault weapons in 1994; mass shootings dropped by 43%.
— Hillary Warned Us (@HillaryWarnedUs) August 3, 2019
Bush and the GOP let the ban expire in 2004; they went up over 230%.
I knew the El Paso shooter was a white man when they started talking about how the brain isn’t fully formed at 21. Because they treat black children like adults at 9, 10, 11, and 12.
— Black Identity Extremist (@WilGafney) August 3, 2019
Looking at how they casually arrest a white man who just killed 19+ americans vs how they treat an unarmed black man for "selling cigarettes" tells you everything you need to know about the current state of America#walmartshooting pic.twitter.com/HMRDY5CSRG
— Yvonne 🌐 (@Yvonne_Nicole_) August 3, 2019
#ElPaso terrorist kills 19
— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid) August 3, 2019
•Arrested alive
Parkland terrorist kills 17
•Arrested alive
Charleston terrorist kills 9
•Arrested alive
Aiyana Jones, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner,Stephon Clark—unarmed
•Killed
Cops more afraid of unarmed Black ppl than of armed White supremacists
Video games aren’t causing mass shootings, white supremacy is.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) August 4, 2019
Sadly the GOP refuse to acknowledge that, bc their strategy relies on rallying a white supremacist base.
That‘s why the President hosts stadiums of people chanting “send her back”& targets Congress-members of color. https://t.co/8F51h46bOO
America's Insane Gun Laws, Hate Ideologies, Mass Shootings: Recipe For Domestic Terrorism https://t.co/yYkMsDxdVy #ElPasoTerroristAttack #daytonshooting @BernieSanders @ewarren @KamalaHarris @AndrewYang @PeteButtigieg @AOC @IlhanMN @RashidaTlaib @RepPressley @justicedems
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) August 4, 2019
The ugly truth is this:
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) August 4, 2019
White supremacist terrorism is a real and present danger.
When the President and other leaders use racist or dehumanizing language to describe immigrants and Muslims as invaders, angry and isolated men with guns are listening.
And acting.
White nationalist terrorism is a national emergency.
— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) August 4, 2019
The Republican Party is enabling white supremacy in our country. As a lifelong Republican, it pains me to say this, but it’s the truth.
— Senator McCollister (@SenMcCollister) August 5, 2019
I of course am not suggesting that all Republicans are white supremacists nor am I saying that the average Republican is even racist.
19 out of 20 murderers have no mental illness diagnosis.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) August 4, 2019
4 out of 5 mass shooters have no mental illness diagnosis, and half showed no signs on a prior, undiagnosed illness.
Framing this as just a mental illness problem is a gun industry trope. Period. Stop.
🇬🇧Pop. 65 million
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) August 4, 2019
🇺🇸Pop. 330 million (5x)
🇬🇧Video game revenues: ≈$5 billion
🇺🇸Video game revenues: ≈$25 billion (5x)
🇬🇧Gun homicides (2017): 31
🇺🇸Gun homicides (2017): 14,542 (469x)
Stop blaming the video games you absolute morons.
Why would Trump — or his aides -- be deleting his tweets that refer to immigrants as ‘invaders” if they have nothing to be guilty about?
— Michelangelo Signorile (@MSignorile) August 4, 2019
And do they seriously think there aren’t records, screen caps of all of his tweets of the past?
Let me get this straight ...the 2 United States Senators who represent the state that just had a mass slaughter refuse to go on air to discuss it? And the Governor? Texas are you paying attention? https://t.co/OWHXc4VeS7
— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) August 4, 2019
Trump can speak out against:
— Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) August 5, 2019
* The Squad
* CNN
* Elijah Cummins
* Don Lemon
* Bette Midler
* Mueller
* Schiff
* Paul Ryan
* John McCain
* climate change
* Mayor of London
* athletes who take a knee
* Baltimore
Trump cannot speak against: white supremacist domestic terrorism
These killers are so fucking young. These aren't old white men losing it, these are young white men, who feel it is their birthright to dominate others. The age of these killers is sobering as hell.
— Shay Stewart Bouley (@blackgirlinmain) August 3, 2019
According to Facebook's ad archive, Trump has run around 2,200 FB ads since May 2018 mentioning the word "invasion." Scrolling through, all of them seem to be about immigration. pic.twitter.com/0Q5TEewfL3
— Natalie Martinez (@natijomartinez) August 4, 2019
Who agrees with me that Donald Trump is a white supremacy cult leader?
— dylan🇺🇸 (@dylanmsmitty) August 3, 2019
When our children ask us what we did when innocents were massacred, the president fomented racism, and immigrants were caged and cast as sub-human, what will we tell them? Each of us owns our individual response. And our collective response answers who we are as a country.
— Sally Yates (@SallyQYates) August 5, 2019
While others were mourning their dead. https://t.co/r5Xs4KRDbP
— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) August 4, 2019
.@NRA A-rated Texas lawmaker blames gun violence on a lack of prayer in schools. After the Santa Fe mass school shooting, the same lawmaker blamed too many entrance and exit doors. It’s so weird how it’s never Texas’ lax gun laws. #txlege pic.twitter.com/2qj6HDdpB5
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) August 4, 2019
The shootings in Gilroy, CA and El Paso, TX are white supremacist, anti-Latinx racist hate crimes. Both shooters use the language of invasion, take-over, and infestation. Please don’t erase that in how you talk about these incidents.
— Vanessa Angélica | Abolish ICE. (@Vanessid) August 3, 2019
I’m a Mexican immigrant living in NYC who’s suffered from depression since been diagnosed with bladder cancer 4 times. I’ve also dealt with anxiety & PTSD. Yet guess how many people I’ve shot? NONE.
— Mauricio Martínez (@martinezmau) August 4, 2019
Don’t blame mental illness. Blame white supremacy, racism & easy access to guns.
The pain Mitch McConnell has inflicted is unforgivable.
— Anthony Breznican (@Breznican) August 5, 2019
The dead mom buying school supplies. The 6-year-old slain at a garlic festival. The man killed celebrating his 30th birthday in Dayton ...#MassacreMitch worked hard to make their murders possible: https://t.co/JBEQ8wTbKS
When you’ve come to grips with white supremacy being a problematic truth but are yet to understand it’s been a problem since this nation’s inception https://t.co/MZyY1ZTg1p
— Akhilesh (@AkhileshMenawat) August 4, 2019
The Death Rattle of White Supremacy In the past week alone, three American cities have experienced three mass shootings, with gunmen killing at least 32 people. Yesterday, police say that Patrick Crusius, 21, walked into a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, a border town with an 80 percent Hispanic population, opened fire, and killed 20 people. Several hours later, police say that Connor Betts, 24, shot and killed at least nine people in a busy downtown district of Dayton, Ohio. At the beloved annual Gilroy Garlic Festival, 19-year-old Santino William Legan allegedly opened fire on the crowd and killed three people. ....... The El Paso shooter allegedly wrote a four-page note to explain his deadly rampage. The author of the manifesto claimed that he was inspired to target Hispanics after reading the manifesto of the Christchurch, New Zealand, terrorist who attacked two mosques and killed 51 people in March. He wanted to kill Hispanic immigrants as an “act of preservation” to reclaim his country from “destruction,” he explained. He referred to Hispanics as “invaders with high birth rates” and expressed his fear of “shameless race mixers,” “the threat of the Hispanic voting bloc,” and the “cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by invasion.”...... President Donald Trump used invasion to describe a caravan of immigrants trying to cross the border. The Fox News host Tucker Carlson has called immigrants “invaders” who “pollute” the country and make it dirtier. In the past few weeks, President Trump told four congresswomen of color, all U.S. citizens, to go back to where they came from. He stood onstage at a campaign rally while the crowd chanted “Send her back!” for 13 seconds. He retweeted Katie Hopkins, a British extremist who has called migrants “cockroaches” and called for a “final solution” for Muslims. Some Trump supporters now openly flash white-power signs in front of cameras........
Hate that was once hidden has now been given permission to come out of the closet and drop its white robes and masks. This has real-life consequences for communities of color, Jews, and immigrants.
Robert Bowers, the terrorist who shot and killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, wanted to punish Jews for allegedly helping to bring “invaders”—immigrants and Muslims—into the country.......My local mosque now has an armed guard with a bulletproof vest standing outside our weekly Friday prayers.
My Jewish friends say their synagogues have amped up security in the past year. We no longer feel safe in our houses of worship. .......If you have been in power your whole life, equality looks like oppression.
Some white Americans feel that people of color are “replacing” them with each success, each publication, and each promotion. Those who have historically been marginalized, excluded, or cast as permanent sidekicks, though, finally feel that we have the chance to taste the American dream, which in my home tastes like goat biryani......For them, our success is the American nightmare.
...... the FBI has recorded about 100 domestic-terrorism arrests in 2019, most of them involving ties to white supremacy ...... As a Muslim American, I have been asked for 18 years to denounce violent Muslim extremism done by terrorists I’ve never met. My loyalty and patriotism are interrogated, questioned, and treated as suspect. So what do we say to those who enable and promote a white-nationalist ideology?He’s Getting Worse Trump is turning the American presidency into a platform for the wholesale demonization of minorities. ....... The current, and (to date) most debased, phase of the Trump presidency—the phase that includes the unceasing demonization of minority legislators and the endorsement of North Korean communism—began, in retrospect, on May 8, in the Florida Panhandle, at a rally in Panama City. It was there that Donald Trump gave tacit approval to the use of violence against immigrants. ..... His message was typically soulless. He tried to provoke feelings of deep insecurity among his followers ....... Late in his disorderly presentation, as he discussed the work of Border Patrol officers, he raised, and then dismissed, the idea of allowing them to use violence against migrants. ...... “And don’t forget—we don’t let them and we can’t let them use weapons,” he said. “We can’t. Other countries do. We can’t. I would never do that. But how do you stop these people? You can’t. There’s—” ...... It was then that he was interrupted by a woman in the crowd. “Shoot them!” she yelled....... The president found this funny, as did his audience...... he encouraged—in the greasy, joking-not-joking style he has perfected—the normalization of violence....... In March, in an interview with Breitbart News, he made it plain that he was sympathetic to those of his supporters who might feel compelled to become violent on his behalf. “I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump. I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.” And he has spoken about the press in such a way as to possibly stimulate thoughts of violence among his more fervent adherents. ...... But in this latest phase, his rhetoric has become particularly sweeping. Brown people in general have become his targets. And there is no reason to hope that he will reform. His followers reward his radicalism, and his handlers are among the most cynical figures in American political history...... there is no one of any influence in his party who is willing to confront him. ...... As Trump faces the possibility that he will lose the presidency next year, he may become more enraged, and more willing to deploy the rhetoric of violence as a way to keep his followers properly motivated. The Panama City speech was an important moment in Trump’s ongoing effort to make the American presidency a vehicle in the cause of marginalizing and frightening racial minorities; the killings are a possible (and predictable) consequence of such rhetoric. ........ Three years ago, The Atlantic, in its endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president (an editorial motivated not by love for Clinton but by fear of Trump), stated, “In one of the more sordid episodes in modern American politics, Trump made himself the face of the so-called birther movement, which had as its immediate goal the demonization of the country’s first African American president. Trump’s larger goal, it seemed, was to stoke fear among white Americans of dark-skinned foreigners.” ....... It is depressing to realize that we were correct (though, if anything, understated in our analysis), and it is depressing to think that there is no immediate way out of this crisis.