Republican Lies About Obama Contributed to the Climate of Murder and Hate That Just Exploded in SC

The white supremacist gunman told his black victims “you rape our women and you’re taking over our country” as he massacred nine people inside a historic African-American church in the southern city of Charleston, according to news reports. The killer said he thought blacks were trying to take over America. Then he killed the pastor and eight other “invaders.”

( This April 2015 photo released by the Lexington County Detention Center shows Dylann Roof, 21. Photo / AFP)

The young suspect seems to have been steeped in white supremacist culture and the FBI said the killings were being treated as a hate crime. He posed in a jacket with the insignia of Apartheid South Africa and had the flag of the Confederacy on his car’s registration plate.

The white supremacist movement that fostered the killing of nine people by a young white man thrives on the lies told by “mainstream” Republican Party leaders, the same leaders who defend flying the slave flag. For instance when white idiots in Texas said that our black president was planning to use Army exercises to “invade Texas” the governor and Senator Cruz did not denounce the lying idiots but endorsed their views and said they understood them.

As many news reports (including Forbes) noted, Responding to conspiracy theorists jamming the Internet with their fears that the military exercise, dubbed “Jade Helm 15”, was nothing more than a ruse designed to hide the true intentions of the federal government—the invasion of Texas—Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas State Guard to carefully monitor the military training exercise—looking for signs that the military is planning to confiscate Texans’ guns or impose martial law.

Members of the public grew so upset by the suggestion that Obama was coming to take physical and legal control of Texas that more than two hundred people packed a meeting room in Bastrop County, Texas, where they grilled a U.S. Army commander over what his true intentions were with respect to the great State of Texas. Not only was the gathering concerned about a mass taking of their guns and the imposition of martial law, it is reported that there were concerns that the military was going to import actual ISIL fighters to the State of Texas. This is how an Army commander had to spend his day because our military officers have nothing better to do than deal with such ridiculous concerns on the part of a public who , apparently, have little concern for or understanding of what these military leaders really do to keep all Americans—including Texans—safe.

And…

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz told Bloomberg Politics’ David Weigel on Saturday that he understands why Texans are concerned that the 2-month-long joint military exercise known as Jade Helm 15 might signal the end of their state’s sovereignty.

“My office has reached out to the Pentagon to inquire about this exercise,” Cruz said. “We are assured it is a military training exercise. I have no reason to doubt those assurances, but I understand the reason for concern and uncertainty, because when the federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in this administration, the natural consequence is that many citizens don’t trust what it is saying.”

The Tea Party has lied for seven years about our black president saying he wasn’t born in America, hated the country is really a Muslim and so on. The Republican leadership has played this game. They too (like the alleged killer) have said that our black president is trying to “take over” the country. The “open carry” movement is part of this reaction to a black in the White House.

It is the anti-gun control, pro-lies about Obama, Republican leadership who are morally responsible for stirring up the hate and acute stupidity of the actual killer through a drumbeat of hate directed at a president they have tried to discredit, defame and verbally kill again and again. They have contributed to a climate of hate against not just President Obama but all black and brown people. The only surprise in the latest killing of black people is that the white murderer was not a cop—for once.

This violence has a long history. It is a history aided and abetted by a morally bankrupt lying Republican Party that has refused to take on American Right wing extremists, mostly because it is led by people just like them. Their overriding theme has been the “take over” of America by the “Other.” Their lies about President Obama and their words were echoed with gunfire today. The greatest threat to American security is not Islamic terror but American Right Wing lies.

Frank Schaeffer is a writer. His latest book —WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

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