Don’t Blame Donald!

Yet another one. Close to fifty people murdered by a gun-wielding right wing white extremist, this time in New Zealand, of all places. The targets were Muslims, of course. Well, no, not of course, it could have been Jews or people of colour. Welcome to the Global Village, where toxic belief systems propagate at the speed of light across thousands of miles of empty ocean, and everybody, everywhere, gets the message. It comes over Facebook, or Reddit, or 4Chan, or 8Chan, or via the mainstream media as they do no more than report what the American President just said. The raving, frothing-at-the-mouth gunman who is today’s mass murderer du jour, still not officially identified, apparently took to social media himself to publish his hate-filled manifesto, and even to live-stream his assault. There was, early reports indicate, a decidedly familiar ring to the man’s professed motivations – this is from a posting on Salon:

That man appears to have posted his hate-filled manifesto online before the attack. In it, he rages against “Islamic invaders” who are “occupying European soil,” and specifically writes that he used guns to commit this massacre in order to call attention to debate about the Second Amendment in the United States. The alleged mass murderer also wrote that he had donated money to American white supremacist organizations, and quoted the “14 words” pledge often used by white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

The message goes out to all its eager recipients, all over the world, all at once, and everybody then sings from the same hymn book, and takes the same pledge. I know you’re desperate to find out what the “14 words” are, and you bet I’m going to tell you. Here: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.

I don’t think this means that they’re worried about climate change.

Where would this guy in New Zealand get such ideas? Everywhere, actually. You don’t even have to go looking for it – you can tweak the settings so that Facebook force-feeds it to you. OK, but why would he think it was now, suddenly, an urgent priority to take up arms in defence of White Western Civilization? Well, this isn’t a new idea, of course, what with the boys in pointy white hoods having flogged the message for over a century and a half, but the current bloodlust has a lot to with how, lately, some people in high places have dusted the old hatred off, tinkered with it a bit, and thrust it back to the forefront with a new veneer of respectability; the shooter is said to have praised Donald Trump in particular as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose”. Hey, when the President of the United States gives you the old wink and a nod, that’s official permission right there. That’s a call to arms, even. The guy who shot up the synagogue in Pittsburgh heard the same summons of the trumpet, and had it in his head that killing Jewish people would stop the assault on America’s borders by the brown hordes, then said by Trump to be streaming northward in their dreaded, terrorist-packed caravans.

What became of all those caravans, anyway? Did they turn around? We haven’t really heard much about them since the mid-terms. Odd.

Now, you and I may think that the roots of all this white rage are obvious, but somehow, they’re going to find a way to blame this latest rampage on liberals and the Muslims themselves. You know they will. They’ll deny that Trump, with his wall, and his Muslim ban, and his “very fine people on both sides” rhetoric, has anything to do with the worsening climate of hostility towards everybody who isn’t white as snow and as Christian as Oral Roberts. It isn’t the folks on the right who are violent anyway – did you know that? You’ve probably been misled by the Fake News into believing a patently false narrative, but let me set you straight – it’s actually those monsters on the left who’re violent. That’s right – it’s the Libs. They’re thugs, you know. This is what Trump was getting at yesterday when he talked about how the left was playing “tougher” than the right, but they better watch out, because he’s got the military, the cops, and the Bikers for Trump, by God, and it could get very bad. A Trumpanista talking head named Steve Cortes explained it all on CNN:

I think it’s very important to be very precise about what the president actually said. He did not in any way infer** or say that he was going to use the military — meaning, in an official capacity — or the police in any way. What he was saying is, among those groups, he has enormous support. And that’s very clearly true. And he’s saying that those groups can defensively act with force if they have to because there is no doubt that violence on the left –

At which point the CNN host cut him off and pretty much had an on-air nervous breakdown, holding her face in her hands. Steve persisted, though, and explained that if cops and soldiers became violent, they wouldn’t be doing it in any official capacity, no no, that’s not what Trump meant, not at all, it’s just that they’d be individually exercising their God-given right to quintessentially Murrican self defence, “as individuals, not as a military force, not as police forces, as individuals, if they need to, they will defend themselves. Because we’ve seen a marked rise in serious violence from the left”.

The rogue maniacs of the violent left are to blame! Can’t you see? Don’t you understand?

Now, bogus partisans with an axe to grind will tell you different, like these numbskulls:

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2019/03/07/467022/confronting-domestic-right-wing-terrorist-threat/

Don’t you believe it.

Also, let’s not make a big deal about this New Zealand thing, OK? That’s just what these guys want. Let’s just put it out of our minds. That’s what Donald Jr. says:

Or, as right wing pundit and author Ben Shapiro tweeted:

Move along, folks. Nothing to see here. If you talk about this sort of thing it just makes it worse.

Anyway, we can all agree: Trump is not to blame.

Meanwhile, back in New York:

Safety first. Even though all the real violence is perpetrated by the left, there’s always the exception that proves the rule, and here in the Global Village things that happen in far-away lands can inspire local copycats, so, you know, it’s one of those “abundance of caution” things. That’s all. I know how it looks, but America isn’t sick, except for the Libs, and things certainly haven’t taken a turn for the worse since 2016.

So let’s just leave Donald out of this, and shut up about the whole thing, OK? And let’s not hear any of you Libs making spurious connections between violence and intolerance at large, and the mere coincidence that Trump just vetoed the Congressional override of his national emergency, the latest battle in the endless struggle to build his physical bulwark against the brown people. The wall’s got nothing to do with some guy shooting up a mosque, OK? Trump and Mr. New Zealand are talking about two entirely different kinds of “invaders”.

IT’S NOT DONALD’S FAULT.

**I just hate the dumbasses who say “infer” when they mean “imply”. Really, that’s enough for me, and it’s just icing on the cake if you’re also an apologist for moronic right wing thugs and spout moronic right wing tropes.