The weirdo came back to my page calling me a “one world order globalist.” He claimed the refugees were actually “an army ten thousand strong” meant to inflict communism or something of that sort, and my skepticism that this could be the case was because I was brainwashed by “propaganda.” Oh, and then he accused me of being Antifa and called me “Sweet Cake.”
I am not a member of Antifa, for the record, nor am I in any way sweet.
As laughable as these rantings are, as much as I’d like to just thumb my nose and move on, I need to address them. Or, rather, I need to address why this type of lunacy is dangerous.
I live less than an hour from Squirrel Hill and the Tree of Life Synagogue. I’ve been to that part of Pittsburgh several times– I was there two weeks ago, as a matter of fact.
Last month, a terrorist attack was committed in Squirrel Hill, practically in my back yard. A white supremacist screaming “All Jews must die” massacred eleven people at a bris on Shabbat in the Tree of Life Synagogue.
Do you know how attacks like that happen?
Often enough they start with cranks like my commentator, making up conspiracy theories. They start with unhinged, hateful people like Larry choosing a minority that’s already the victim of prejudice– Jews, Latinos, Catholics, poor people, black people, refugees– and stoking the flames. Cowardly people try to justify their fear by claiming that the groups they’re afraid of are violent and dangerous. You could dismiss it as silly at that point. But then clever, self-serving people start spreading these conspiracy theories that cowards so desperately want to hear, in order to consolidate power by demonizing minorities and ignoring or excusing violence against them. Our president does it all the time, but he’s not the only one by a long shot. Most powerful people do something like this– powerful politicians, powerful businessmen, powerful news commentators, powerful religious leaders as well. They take conspiracy theories against minorities and repeat them, making them sound credible. And then people who are less off the wall– not openly racist but respectable folks who say “I’m not racist, but…” find themselves on the band wagon too. Maybe they would have seen through such nonsense if the nonsense hadn’t been repeated so prominently and so many times, but there they are. It suits them, and with enough repetition they believe it. And then it becomes something that’s widely believed. People who refuse to believe the nonsense are the ones accused of being a dangerous fringe group. And then someone decides that words aren’t enough to keep them safe. And then someone picks up a gun.
That’s why I’m not going to let some racist get away with this kind of hate speech. I’m going to keep exposing and denouncing such evil.
He is wrong, he is dangerous, and the migrant caravan at the border is not our enemy.
Refugees and migrants are not a threat to us, even if they should commit misdemeanors trying to get here. Yes, misdemeanors. That’s what an illegal border crossing is– not a serious crime but a misdemeanor, like a parking violation. The way to combat illegal border crossings is to make it easier and faster to process the applications of asylum-seekers, and instead our government is making it as hard as they can, driving people to desperation, feeding the notion that they’re violent in the first place. That’s another real danger here, that and people like Larry. An imaginary “army” of communists is not.
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