Trump's politics of division fuels a deadly hatred
By Eugene Robinson
The Washington Post
Hatred, resentment, white supremacy and victimhood are deadly political tools. President Trump wields them with no thought to the consequences; and people die.
The latest is Lori Gilbert Kaye, 60, shot and killed Saturday at the Chabad of Poway synagogue near San Diego. The shooter, a 19-year-old gunman armed with a military-style assault rifle, wounded three others. The assailant, who reportedly yelled anti-Semitic slurs, left behind an internet screed full of the same kind of paranoid vitriol about Jews that was used to motivate the Holocaust.
The alleged killer’s “open letter” voiced hearty approval of the massacre of 11 Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last October. He was apparently an equal-opportunity hater, however, since in the letter he confesses to an arson attack at a nearby mosque and claims to have been inspired by the anti-Muslim rampage in New Zealand last month that left 50 dead.
I should note that both the Pittsburgh and Poway shooters expressed criticism of Trump because they thought him too supportive of Israel. But Trump’s Mideast policy does not get him off the hook. At this point, no one can deny the obvious: The president, primarily through his unconstrained rhetoric, has fostered an atmosphere in which hate-filled white supremacists feel motivated, vindicated and emboldened to act.
In my lifetime, at least, we have never before had a president who deliberately exacerbates racial and religious tensions for political gain. We have had a few who winked at racists to get elected, a few who blew dog whistles about such issues as school desegregation and “inner-city crime.” But I can’t think of one of Trump’s predecessors who might have been capable of looking at a crowd of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members on the one hand, a diverse crowd of counterprotesters on the other, and saying there were “very fine people on both sides.”
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/robinson-trumps-politics-of-division-fuels-a-deadly-hatred/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=35a47f5cd6-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-35a47f5cd6-228635337