Yesterday, a lunatic driving a Home Depot rental truck, barreled down a bike bath alongside the Hudson River, intentionally striking pedestrians and anyone else unlucky enough to be in his way.
Within a few minutes, eight would lay dead, along with another dozen or so injured. The attacker, who jumped out of the vehicle shouting, “Allahu Akbar,” while armed with only a fake weapon and a paintball gun, would be apprehended soon after taking a gunshot wound to the buttocks.
Once in custody, the assailant was identified as Sayfullo Saipov, a 28-year-old immigrant from Uzbekistan, who had moved to the United States in 2010. Authorities would disclose Saipov had declared allegiance to ISIS.
In summary, eight dead Americans, a foreign-born perpetrator, and a half-baked declaration of allegiance to ISIS. Cue Donald Trump.
I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!” tweeted Trump less than six hours after the attack.
Now contrast the above with Trump’s tweeted response to the Las Vegas massacre, which left 50 dead and nearly 500 seriously injured, “My warmest condolences to the victims and families of this terrible Las Vegas shooting.”
Yes, he used the phrase “warmest condolences.” But leaving aside his invented syntax, which somehow combines congratulatory exuberance with commiseration, the contrast between Trump’s responses to two tragedies could not be starker.
Why?
Well, that much should be obvious. A white guy carried out the Las Vegas attack, while an immigrant perpetrated yesterday’s attack in New York, and pretty much everything Trump says and does is aimed at galvanizing and securing support of that 30% of the country that hates anyone who doesn’t look or sound like Trump’s political base.
The phrases “build the wall,” “ban Muslims,” “Mexicans are rapists,” and “take America back” all serve as not so subtle overtures to the most racist and xenophobic corner of American society. His tweets serve as his dog-whistle.
But beyond the subliminal, yet still obvious racist demagoguery contained within Trump’s tweet lay far more serious implications, and it reads a little something like this when placed against his earlier response to Las Vegas:
When a white guy massacres 50 people, using high-powered automatic weapons, Trump tweets prayers and “warmest condolences,” but when an immigrant kills 8, using a rental truck, Trump calls for closing the border, upending the Constitution, and suspending human decency.
In other words, when white people kill, we do nothing other than hold candle light vigils and church services, but when non-whites kill we change laws, and implement new and draconian counterterrorism policies.
In fact, it’s almost impossible to think of a single piece of legislation or policy that has come into being as a response to a white perpetrated terrorist attack, which is extraordinary given attacks by white supremacists/nationalists outnumber attacks by Muslims on a scale of 3 to 1, alongside the fact 63% of all mass shootings are carried out by whites.
Not a single new law was legislated in response to a white guy walking into Sandy Hookelementary school and blowing away 20 young children. Not a single new law was passed after Dylann Roof, an avowed white supremacist, stepped into a church in Charleston and butchered 9 black worshippers.
When white nationalists bomb synagogues and mosques, we do nothing. When white guys massacre moviegoers, we do nothing, and we have done absolutely nothing in response to the more than 1,500 mass shootings that have occurred on US soil since Sandy Hook.
But while public discourse is confined to “thoughts and prayers” in the aftermath of a white man’s terror, demands for policy proposals follow in the wake of an attack carried out by a Muslim or immigrant.
A distinction that has resulted in counterterrorism policies that include invading and occupying Muslim countries, torturing Muslim suspects, Muslim travel bans, profiling and harassing Muslim communities, and counter-violent-extremism programs that not so subtly depict Islam as a gateway to terrorism.
Five new laws, including the civil rights busting PATRIOT Act, were passed in response to 9/11, alongside changes to another existing 15. The CISPA Security Bill was passed in response to the Boston Marathon bombing, and Trump, of course, called for a “total ban on all Muslims entering the United States” in the wake of the Orlando shooting.
These are the types of civil rights violating measures Trump is implicitly calling for when he tweets, “Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!”
Ultimately the record is clear: when whites carry out acts of terror, we seek to distance ourselves or excuse the attacker, but when a Muslim is the perpetrator, we seek vengeance.
Top photo | A photo of Sayfullo Saipov is displayed at a news conference at One Police Plaza Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017, in New York. Saipov is accused of driving a truck on a bike path that killed several and injured others Tuesday near One World Trade Center. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
CJ Werleman is a journalist, political commentator, and author of ‘The New Atheist Threat: the Dangerous Rise of Secular Extremists.
American Herald Tribune is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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