Trump’s Tweets Hit Vile New Low.
British Government Condemns Presidential Tweets.
The day after a tweet exploited by slavers, the President of the United States managed to sink to an even greater evil. The President retweeted anti-Muslim propaganda from a British far right wing hate group responsible for the murder of a British Member of Parliament, earning an official rebuke from the British Government.
President Trump retweeted a series of anti-Muslim tweets from Jayda Fransen, the Deputy Leader of Britain First. The tweets contain videos of supposed Muslims doing bad things. In one a mob pushes a person off a building, in another a man breaks a statue of the Virgin Mary, and in the third a boy (falsely identified as a Muslim migrant) beats up another boy who is on crutches. Here is the hate propaganda the President has been pushing today.
How does the President, or anyone, know the attacker is a Muslim or migrant? In fact, the attacker was found and confirmed by authorities to be neither Muslim nor a migrant. More “fake news” from our President’s Twitter. He should give himself one of his proposed fake news awards. Presidential spokestoady Sarah Sanders declared it does not matter “whether it is a real video” because “the threat is real.” Seriously.
The Netherlands’ Embassy disagreed admonishing the President of the United States that “facts do matter.”
How self respecting Americans can’t find this humiliating is beyond me. On to the next Trump retweet.
My first question when I saw this video was “who owns this statue?” If the statue belongs to the man doing the breaking he is free to do what he wants with it and his breaking it is no different than Americans who delight in burning the Koran or creating “piss Christ” exhibits.
This video is from 2013 violence in Egypt associated with the overthrow of President Morsi. The perpetrators were caught and sentenced to death, just FYI.
Jayda Fransen is the original source of the tweets and she should not be regarded as reliable. Fransen has been convicted of religiously aggravated harassment for harassing a woman in her hijab while she was with her four children. She has charges pending for “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior.”
Her organization is probably most notorious for one of its supporters murdering Jo Cox, a British Member of Parliament, while shouting “Britain First.” The perpetrator was found by the court to have committed his crime to advance violent white supremacism, exclusive nationalism and Nazism.
Among the first to condemn Trump’s tweets was Jo Cox’s widower, Brendan Cox. He kind of said it all.
British Member of Parliament David Lammy suggested the President of the United States be barred from the country.
Mr. Lammy sentiments were echoed by another Member of Parliament, Chuka Umunna, who urged the State Visit invitation to Mr Trump be withdrawn. The leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, pushed the British government to condemn the President of the United States.
The British government officially condemned the tweets stating “It is wrong for the president to have done this” because it divided communities with “hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions.”
I do wish to give equal time to those who celebrated the President’s use of Twitter for this purpose. The President does have his fans. White supremacist and KKK leader David Duke was flat out giddy in declaring this is why we love Trump.
And of course Jayda Fransen herself could not contain herself. In addition to this tweet her Twitter feed now has dozens of posts retweeting news articles as she basks in the notoriety our President gave her.
Brendan Cox is right. The President’s words risk terrible consequences. They legitimize right wing extremist hate and the groups that advocate it. They risk encouraging anti-Muslim violence in our nation and in other nations. The President of the United States should be held accountable for that.
