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Nevertheless, some of the claims of the president and his allies seriously. On Saturday morning, Shabbat morning, a gunman on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and killed 11 people. The massacre capped off a week of terrorism, in which one man sent a bombshell to 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, Jewish group 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." And then he wrote, "HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can not sit and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in. "
The people killed on Saturday were killed to make the world a better place, 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 can not be responsible for the actions of a deranged follower. Ordinarily, politicians who do not like supporters who have mercilessly beaten a Latino man, have "very passionate." Ordinarily, they do not offer to pay their supporters' legal bills if they assault protesters on the other side. They do not pray acts of violence against the media. They do not defend neo-Nazi rioters as "fine people." They do not think sending bombs to their critics by blaming the media for airing criticism. Ordinarily, there is no surge in anti-Semitism, much of it targeted at Jewish criticism, coinciding with a politician's rise. And ordinarily, presidents do not blatantly exploit their authority in an effort to terrify Americans into voting for their party. For the past few decades, most of the American politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, have taken care of their supporters to take care of their own hands. Trump did everything he could to fan the flames, and nothing to restrain those who could take him at his word.
Many of Trump's defenders argue that his rhetoric is mere shtick. That his attacks, but cruel, are not taken 100 percent seriously by his supporters. But to make this argument is to be conceded that Trump's statements to their logical conclusion, that it is the only one of its kind, that the political violence is committed to it. currently is.
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