Editor’s note: This commentary is by Bill Dunkel, of Windham, who is a retired teacher, coach and high school administrator.
[I]n an effort to deflect attention from the striking similarity between the language President Donald Trump uses to describe immigrants and the screed posted by the mass shooter in El Paso, the White House is spinning the latest round of mass shootings as a mental health problem. According to Mike Mulvaney, the president’s chief of staff, the core of the problem is a few, isolated, sick individuals who occasionally go off the rails. That explanation, at least in the case of El Paso, is inaccurate and even disingenuous.
At least as far back as the founding of the KKK in the 1860s, and arguably earlier, the U.S. has had a hard core of white nationalists, xenophobes and proto fascists who have been willing to resort to violence to, in their view, protect the racial and ethnic purity of the nation. In the 1920s, when hostility toward immigrants from southeastern Europe was at flood tide, thousands of hooded klansmen paraded openly in the streets of Washington, D.C. The rise of the civil rights movement after World War II marginalized white nationalists. Many of them retreated into the dark corners of America’s underbelly, but they did not cease to exist.
Today, they are emerging from the shadows and becoming more open and aggressive, for several reasons. First, they are emboldened by a president whose power is based, in part, upon demonizing immigrants. The El Paso shooter referred to a Hispanic “invasion” of Texas, exactly the phrase Trump used to describe immigrant caravans from Central America. Trump and Fox News have repeatedly stereotyped immigrants from Mexico and Central America as criminals, rapists and drug dealers.
Words matter, especially the words of the president of the United States. It is no coincidence that hate crimes have increased dramatically since Trump took office. Trump’s language has encouraged right wing extremists and seemingly legitimized their concerns. It is nothing but hypocrisy for the president to tweet that hate has no place in America. He has deliberately played upon the fears and prejudices of his political base for his own political advancement. His chosen strategy is the exact opposite of Abraham Lincoln’s appeal to the “better angels of our nature.” Make no mistake, Trump will continue on this course until voters hold him accountable for his cynical manipulation of their emotions.
A second reason for the resurgence of white nationalists is the easy availability of the internet as a tool for spreading their ideology and recruiting followers. Twitter, blogs and especially websites like 8chan provide a forum where white nationalists can easily communicate and feed off of their mutual hatred. Disaffected young men can be radicalized on 8chan, just as Islamic terrorists have been recruited and radicalized by internet imams. Indeed, a recent study found that more Americans have been killed by domestic terrorists than by foreign terrorism since 2001. White nationalism is an ideology, a network, and an increasingly organized political movement. The problem is larger and more deeply rooted than a few isolated, sick crackpots.
Finally, of course, there is the ugly reality that America is awash in guns. All three mass shooters, who killed 32 people and wounded 66 others within a week, used semi- automatic rifles. The easy availability of weapons of war may not be a cause of the far right’s resurgence, but it certainly is a factor in its growing lethality. Our country has far more mass shootings than any other nation on Earth because we make the most lethal weapons available to everyone.
Trump already is blaming video games as the cause for mass shootings; anything to divert attention from his own provocative statements. No doubt the NRA and gun rights advocates will recite their shopworn lines about the sacredness of the Second Amendment and will repeat their mindless trope that “guns don’t kill people, people do.” Actually, people with guns kill people, and people with high capacity semi-automatics kill a lot of people very quickly, as in Dayton where the gunman killed nine and wounded 27 in less than a minute.
Polls indicate that a majority of Americans want sensible gun control, including universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Despite this, we are constantly stymied by politicians, like Sen. Mitch McConnell, who are in the pocket of the NRA, which has given him over $1.26 million in campaign contributions. McConnell’s sanctimonious call for thoughts and prayers for the victims of the recent bloodbaths also is hypocritical. The House of Representatives has passed gun control legislation that McConnell refuses to bring up for debate and a vote in the Senate. If he really cared deeply about the latest victims and their families, he would call the Senate back from its six-week summer break to address this national crisis.
McConnell, like Trump, will continue with business as usual unless his constituents rise up and make him pay politically for his utter failure to protect the public welfare.
If you are tired of the same old, dead end, scripted responses to yet another round of mass slaughter, speak up! Write a letter, call the White House, join a public demonstration, challenge Fox News. Better yet, contribute to the Ditch Mitch Fund, which is raising money for Amy McGrath, a former Marine combat pilot, to challenge McConnell, who is up for reelection in 2020. Or, contribute to the Moveon.org fund to erect gun control billboards on busy highways in Kentucky, or in the home districts of other Republicans who stonewall reasonable gun control laws and make excuses for Trump. Even a small contribution will help because a large grassroots movement sends a powerful message. Do not be naive; if there are no serious political consequences for doing nothing, it is only a matter of time before we relive this national nightmare again. Dump Trump! Ditch Mitch!
