Category: Intolerance

Steve Bannon Described U.S. Jews as ‘Enablers’ of Jihad

In a treatment describing a documentary on a purported Muslim plan to take over America, Stephen Bannon, now President Donald Trump’s top strategic adviser, described the “American Jewish community” as among unwitting “enablers” of jihad.

Bannon, a former banker who transitioned into a career as an ultranationalist propagandist, culminating in his becoming a top adviser to the Trump campaign, made several right-wing documentaries in the 2000s.

The Washington Post reported Friday on a 2007 proposal for a documentary that was never made called “The Islamic States of America.” It would be comprised of interviews of people who, like Bannon, believe that the threat posed to the West is broader than Islamist extremist terrorists, embracing an array of Muslim advocacy groups.

It describes as “enablers among us” – albeit with the “best intentions” — major media outlets, the CIA and FBI, civil liberties groups, “universities and the left” and the “American Jewish Community.”

It also describes “front groups and disingenuous Muslim Americans who preach reconciliation and dialogue in the open but, behind the scenes, advocate hatred and contempt for the West.”

Among these named by Bannon as “cultural jihadists” are the Islamic Society of North America, a group that had associations with the Muslim Brotherhood at its founding in the 1960s, but in recent years has worked closely with Jewish groups, including in combating anti-Semitism and raising Holocaust awareness among Muslims.

Before joining Trump’s campaign last summer, Bannon helmed Breitbart News, a site that is stridently pro-Israel, but which also has featured white nationalists and which Bannon once described as a platform for the “alt-right,” a loose-knit alliance that includes within it anti-Semites as well as right-wing Jews.

(h/t Times of Israel)

The White House Cited the Quebec Mosque Attack by White Supremacist to Justify Trump’s Policies

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is citing the Sunday attack on Muslims in Quebec City as an example of why his own policies are needed.

“We condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms. It’s a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant, and why the president is taking steps to be proactive, rather than reactive, when it comes to our nation’s safety and security,” press secretary Sean Spicer said at his daily briefing on Monday.

Spicer did not specifically identify the policies he was referring to.

But the “proactive, rather than reactive” language is similar to the rhetoric Trump and his allies have used in defending his “temporary” ban on refugees and by visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries, which has caused a worldwide uproar.

Spicer used similar words when asked directly about the travel ban later in the briefing, saying Trump was not going to “wait and react.”
“There is nothing nice about searching for terrorists before they can enter our country. This was a big part of my campaign. Study the world!” Trump himself wrote on Twitter earlier Monday.

The Quebec City massacre killed six Muslims who were attending a mosque for evening prayers. Trump’s policies have been condemned by Muslim groups and many others around the world as discrimination against Muslims.

Trump spoke to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier on Monday.
Spicer said Trump offers “his condolences as well as his thoughts and prayers to the victims and their family and to all Canadians.”

He noted that Trudeau was “cautious to draw conclusions of the motives at this stage of the investigation.” He said “the president shared those thoughts.”

(h/t Toronto Star)

WH: No Mention of Jews on Holocaust Remembrance Day Because Others Were Killed Too

The White House statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day didn’t mention Jews or anti-Semitism because “despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered,” administration spokeswoman Hope Hicks told CNN on Saturday.

Hicks provided a link to a Huffington Post UK story noting that while 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, 5 million others were also slaughtered during Adolf Hitler’s genocide, including “priests, gypsies, people with mental or physical disabilities, communists, trade unionists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, anarchists, Poles and other Slavic peoples, and resistance fighters.”

Asked if the White House was suggesting President Donald Trump didn’t mention Jews as victims of the Holocaust because he didn’t want to offend the other people the Nazis targeted and killed, Hicks replied, “it was our honor to issue a statement in remembrance of this important day.”

The presidential reference to the “innocent people” victimized by the Nazis without a mention of Jews or anti-Semitism by the White House on International Holocaust Remembrance Day was a stark contrast to statements by former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Anti-Defamation League Director Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted that the “@WhiteHouse statement on #HolocaustMemorialDay, misses that it was six million Jews who perished, not just ‘innocent people'” and “Puzzling and troubling @WhiteHouse #HolocaustMemorialDay stmt has no mention of Jews. GOP and Dem. presidents have done so in the past.”

Asked about the White House explanation that the President didn’t want to exclude any of the other groups Nazis killed by specifically mentioning Jews, Greenblatt told CNN that the United Nations established International Holocaust Remembrance Day not only because of Holocaust denial but also because so many countries — Iran, Russia, Poland, and Hungary, for example — specifically refuse to acknowledge Hitler’s attempt to exterminate Jews, “opting instead to talk about generic suffering rather than recognizing this catastrophic incident for what is was: the intended genocide of the Jewish people.”

Downplaying or disregarding the degree to which Jews were targeted for elimination during the Holocaust is a common theme of nationalist movements like those seen in Russia and Eastern Europe, Greenblatt said.

Initially, after being asked about the ADL criticism and the omission of any mention of Jews or anti-Semitism, Hicks provided a statement from Ronald Lauder of the World Jewish Congress that seemed to criticize Greenblatt and the ADL.

“It does no honor to the millions of Jews murdered in the Holocaust to play politics with their memory,” the Lauder statement read in part. “Any fair reading of the White House statement today on the International Holocaust Memorial Day will see it appropriately commemorates the suffering and the heroism that mark that dark chapter in modern history.”

(h/t CNN)

Reality

The language used by the Trump White House echos antisemetic white power groups who try to de-Judiify the Holocaust.

Trump Signs Muslim Ban Order Limiting Refugee Entry

President Trump signed an executive order Friday instituting “extreme vetting” of refugees, aimed at keeping out “radical Islamic terrorists.”

“I’m establishing a new vetting measure to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America,” Trump said during his signing of the order. “We don’t want them here. We want to make sure we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas.”

According to drafts of the executive action, the order bars people from the Muslim-majority countries of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia or Yemen from entering the United States for 30 days and suspends the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days. The program will be reinstated “only for nationals of countries for whom” members are vetted by Trump’s administration.

In an interview Friday with the Christian Broadcast Network, Trump said he plans to help persecuted Christians.

“Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough, to get into the United States?” Trump said. “If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair.”

In a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union declared Trump’s action “just a euphemism for discrimination against Muslims.”

From both legal and historical perspectives, the plan to ban refugees from specific countries is within the powers granted to the president under current law and historical precedent, according to Charles Haynes, vice president of the Newseum Institute’s Religious Freedom Center. However, whether the president can limit the ban to one religious group is another question.

Many Muslims, especially Shiites, are among the religious minorities under attack, Haynes said. This “raises moral and humanitarian concerns about excluding them from entrance to the U.S. while permitting people of other faiths,” he said. “Whether this policy rises to the level of a constitutional violation is uncertain and will be debated by constitutional scholars in the coming weeks.”

Issues related to the Constitution and religion are usually associated with matters of sex, such as contraceptives and LGBT discrimination, but some observers said they expect Trump’s actions on immigration to raise new challenges for religious freedom, according to Chelsea Langston Bombino of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance at the Center for Public Justice. Several organizations, she noted, are speaking out against orders that “will hurt the very people that their organizations were established, out of a religious calling, to serve,” she said.

Trump’s actions have been decried by several religious groups this week. “The expected cutbacks to U.S. refugee programs and funding will compromise our ability to do this work and the infrastructure needed to serve refugees in the years to come,” evangelical ministry World Relief said in a statement.

And in a strongly worded statement, Rabbi Jack Moline, the Interfaith Alliance president, noted that this decision was announced on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“For decades, the United States has prided itself as a safe bastion for refugees around the globe escaping war and persecution,” he said. “President Trump is poised to trample upon that great legacy with a de facto Muslim ban.”

(h/t Washington Post)

Trump Rips ‘All Talk,’ ‘No Action’ Civil Rights Icon Lewis

President-elect Donald Trump harshly responded to civil rights icon and Georgia Rep. John Lewis on Saturday, calling him “all talk” and “no action” after Lewis said Trump was not a “legitimate” president.

“Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk – no action or results. Sad,” Trump tweeted Saturday, which happened to fall on the weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday.

Lewis — an ally of King who was brutally beaten by police in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 while marching for civil rights — represents a Georgia district that includes most of Atlanta. On the campaign trail, Trump regularly decried crime in urban areas while pledging to revitalize neighborhoods primarily populated by black Americans.

A Hillary Clinton supporter, Lewis criticized Trump’s ascension to head of state due to Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election.

“I don’t see this President-elect as a legitimate president,” the long-serving Democrat told NBC News’ Chuck Todd in a clip released Friday.

It was an astonishing rebuke by a sitting member of Congress toward an incoming President. Trump, however, largely launched his political career by calling into question the legitimacy of President Barack Obama’s presidency by repeatedly suggesting he wasn’t born in the United States.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Here is a photo of a young John Lewis being beating by police at Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic march to Selma.

Here is a photo of a young John Lewis with a bloody nose.

Here is John Lewis being yanked from a “white’s only” diner.

Here is John Lewis being arrested for fighting for civil rights.

 

 

Trump Fires Back at Meryl Streep Over Her Comments at Golden Globes

Donald Trump fired back at actress Meryl Streep on Twitter over her comments about him at the Golden Globes Sunday night, referring to her as “over-rated” and a “Hillary flunky” and complaining that, although she doesn’t know him, she attacked him.

Mr. Trump said much the same thing to the Times on Monday, adding, “And remember, Meryl Streep introduced Hillary Clinton at her convention (the Democratic National Convention), and a lot of these people supported Hillary.”

Streep, who was presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Award at Sunday night’s ceremony, took the president-elect to task during her acceptance speech over his remarks during the presidential campaign about a disabled New York Times reporter.

The actress called it “the one performance this year that stunned me sank its hooks into my heart.”

“It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life,” Streep said. “And this instinct — to humiliate — when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.”

During the campaign, Mr. Trump had criticized Kovaleski for backing away from a 2001 story that suggested Arab-Americans in Jersey City may have celebrated the 9/11 the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.  Mr. Trump hunched his shoulders and moved his arms in apparent imitation of the reporter, saying “the poor guy. You ought to see this guy. ‘Oh, I don’t know what I said! Ah, I don’t remember”’

Mr. Trump has denied repeatedly that he was mocking Kovaleski for his disability.

(h/t CBS News)

Trump Draws His Conclusions Quickly, Says “Civilized World” Must Fight Terror

Twitter

In addition to seemingly implying the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims may not be “civilized,” in his first Tweet after being confirmed as President, Donald Trump demand for the West to “change thinking.”

But the authorities in Germany have yet to announce a motive for the deadly truck-ramming of a Christmas market in Berlin. Speculation on the motives of the assassin who gunned down Russia’s ambassador to Turkey has ranged from Muslim rage over Russia’s military actions in Syria to a C.I.A. plot to undermine the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

And Islamist terrorism seems doubtful for an attack on a Zurich mosque frequented by Somali migrants.

But President-elect Trump tied together the three attacks on Monday, despite the 1,300 miles that separate Ankara and Zurich.

(h/t New York Times)

Trump Calls on Pennsylvania Crowd to Cheer African-Americans Who ‘Didn’t Come Out to Vote’

Donald Trump’s barnstorming tour across the states that won him the White House continues to feature far more taunts of triumph than notes of healing after a bruising election.

Thursday’s rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, found the president-elect calling for the mostly white crowd to cheer for African-Americans who were “smart” to heed his message and therefore “didn’t come out to vote” for his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

“That was the big thing, so thank you to the African-American community,” Trump said.

He also edged closer Thursday to completing his Cabinet, announcing his choice for interior secretary: Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, who should fit smoothly into an administration favoring more energy drilling and less regulation.

The president-elect — who also found time to hit Twitter, playing media critic and then stating anew his doubts about charges that Russia hackers tried to disrupt the U.S. election — boasted to the crowd in Pennsylvania that he captured a state that for many Republicans was “the bride that got away.”

“Everyone leaves Pennsylvania, Republicans, thinking they won Pennsylvania. And they never do. They just don’t win Pennsylvania,” said Trump.

Pennsylvania had not gone for a Republican candidate since 1988. But the Trump campaign staff long thought that the state, rich in white working-class voters, would be receptive to his populist message and not be part of Clinton’s hoped-for firewall.

Trump repeatedly campaigned there, drawing some of the largest and loudest crowds of the campaign. He won the state by less than 1 percentage point, giving him a vital 20 electoral college votes.

The evening rally in Hershey also featured a nearly 20-minute recap of Trump’s election night win with the crowd cheering as the president-elect slowly ticked off his victories state by state, mixing in rambling criticisms of incorrect pundits and politicians from both sides of the aisle.

Trump earlier praised Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, as having “built one of the strongest track records on championing regulatory relief, forest management, responsible energy development and public land issues.” Zinke, 55, was an early supporter of the president-elect and publicly expressed his interest in a Cabinet post when Trump visited Montana in May.

As with several other Cabinet selections, Zinke has advocated increased drilling and mining on public lands and has expressed skepticism about the urgency of climate change. House Speaker Paul Ryan praised the pick, saying Zinke “has been an ardent supporter of all-of-the-above energy policies and responsible land management.”

But his nomination could have a ripple effect on control of the Senate, since Zinke now may forgo what was once a near-certain challenge to Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in 2018.

The president-elect also tapped attorney Daniel Friedman, his adviser on Israeli affairs, to be U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Friedman, in a statement, said he would help fulfill Trump’s promise to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Many Republican presidents have made a similar vow without success.

Trump also added to his national security team by announcing the appointments of retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg as chief of staff of the National Security Council and Monica Crowley, a Fox News analyst, as the organization’s director of communications. Kellogg spent more than 35 years in the Army and, in 2003, oversaw the efforts to form the new Iraqi military after it was disbanded. Crowley and Fox ended their relationship on Thursday.

Trump has two Cabinet selections yet to make though he also needs to fill out much of his White House staff. And he was busy on Twitter Thursday morning.

He again cast doubt on U.S. intelligence assertions about Russia election hacking, writing: “If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?”

That assertion is untrue. A month before the election, the Obama administration bluntly accused Russia of hacking American political sites and email accounts to interfere.

Trump has repeatedly said he’d like to improve ties with Russia, a hope that has been echoed in Moscow. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday lauded Trump’s Cabinet selections, and particularly Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State, as people with no “anti-Russian stereotypes.”

The Kremlin has cheered Trump’s victory although some Russian officials have recently said they are not expecting relations between Russia and the U.S., which were battered after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, to improve overnight.

Trump also tweeted, “The media tries so hard to make my move to the White House, as it pertains to my business, so complex – when actually it isn’t!” His declaration came on the day he was supposed to hold a news conference, now postponed until January, to reveal how he plans to distance himself from his business. Aides said more time was needed to finalize the complicated arrangement.

(h/t Chicago Tribune)

Trump’s Chief Strategist Steve Bannon Suggests Having Too Many Asian Tech CEOs Undermines ‘Civic Society’

President-elect Donald Trump’s chief strategist seems to think there are too many immigrants leading Silicon Valley. Steve Bannon, who previously served as Breitbart News Network’s executive chairman, hinted at some of his views on foreign workers at technology companies in the past. In an interview between Trump and Bannon that took place last year, and that The Washington Post resurfaced yesterday, Bannon alluded to the idea that foreign students should return to their respective countries after attending school in the US, instead of sticking around and working at or starting tech companies.

Trump voiced concern over these students attending Ivy League schools and then going home: “We have to be careful of that, Steve. You know, we have to keep our talented people in this country,” Trump said.

When asked if he agreed, Bannon responded: “When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think . . . ” he didn’t finish his sentence. “A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.”

While Bannon didn’t explicitly say anything against immigrants, he seemed to hint at the idea of a white nationalist identity with the phrase “civic society.” Taken in tandem with the stories Bannon allowed to go up on Breitbart News, including pieces that attacked women, feminists, political correctness, muslims, and trans people, Bannon’s comment wouldn’t come as a surprise.

(h/t The Verge)

Reality

As we explained in our blog about Steve Bannon and his ties to the white supremacist alt-right movement, they whole-hardheartedly believe that other races and cultures are inferior to a white western democracy. Bannon’s comments would absolutely be in line with these unfounded beliefs.

Media

Trump Supporter Cites Japanese Internment ‘precedent’ in Backing Muslim Registry

A spokesman for the pro-Trump Great America PAC cited World War II Japanese internment camps as “precedent” for President-elect Donald Trump’s discussed plan for a Muslim registry system.

Carl Higbie, a former Navy SEAL, appeared on Fox News’ “The Kelly File” to argue in favor of the plan, which Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said in a Reuters interview is being modeled after the highly controversial National Security Entry-Exit Registration System implemented after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Confronted with questions about the constitutionality of such a plan, Higbie cited history, in particular the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II.

“We’ve done it based on race, we’ve done it based on religion, we’ve done it based on region,” he said. “We’ve done it with Iran back — back a while ago. We did it during World War II with [the] Japanese.”

Pressed by host Megyn Kelly on whether he was suggesting re-implementing the internment camps, Higbie said no, before adding: “I’m just saying there is precedent for it.”

Kelly then swiftly rebuked his suggestion.

“You can’t be citing Japanese internment camps as precedent for anything the president-elect is gonna do,” she said.

The conversation around a proposed registry comes less than one year after Trump first proposed a “complete shutdown” on Muslims entering the United States. Since announcing it, Trump has reiterated his support for a ban, but also rebranded it as “extreme vetting” and proposed narrowing its scope to persons from “territories” with a history of terror.

Trump has himself said that he may have supported internment during WWII. “I certainly hate the concept of it. But I would have had to be there at the time to give you a proper answer,” Trump told TIME in December 2015. Then-candidate Trump also said during an appearance on MSNBC that he viewed internment and a ban on Muslims as “a whole different thing.”

(h/t Politico, NBC News)

Media

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