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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"This isn't 'rough' language or 'hard edged' rhetoric. It's hate speech."
Trump's Blood Libel & Press FailureEven now, after all that's happened, most political reporters find themselves either unwilling or unable to identify Donald Trump's tirades as hate speech
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There's no question that what Trump's Wednesday night speech was was hate speech, a tirade filled with yelling, a snarling voice, air chopped to bits with slashing hands and through it all a story of American victims helpless before a looming threat from dangerous, predatory outsiders.
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...... Grief warps the mind. But there's no excuse for those who have themselves suffered nothing but exploit this suffering to propagate hate. That fact that we've become inured to this, that we now find it normal to see these cattle calls of grief and incitement as part of a political campaign is shocking and sickening. There's no other word for this but incitement and blood libel.
Watch Trump's speeches, with the yelling, the reddened face, the demand for vengeance and you see there's little to distinguish them from what we see at Aryan Nations or other white hate rallies that we all immediately recognize as reprehensible, wrong and frankly terrifying. This isn't 'rough' language or 'hard edged' rhetoric. It's hate speech. Precisely what policy solution Trump is calling for is almost beside the point. Indeed, it wouldn't be hate speech any less if Trump specified no policy solution at all.
This isn't normal. It was normal in the Jim Crow South, as it was in Eastern Europe for centuries. It's not normal in America in the 21st century. And yet it's become normalized. It's a mammoth failure of our political press. But it's not just theirs, ours. It's a collective failure that we're all responsible for. By any reasonable standard, Donald Trump's speech on Wednesday night should have ended the campaign, as should numerous other rallies where Trump has done more or less the same thing for months. There's a reason why the worst of the worst, the organized and avowed racists, were thrilled and almost giddy watching the spectacle. But it has become normalized. We do not even see it for what it is. It's like we've all been cast under a spell. That normalization will be with us long after this particular demagogue, Donald Trump, has left the stage. Call this what it is: it is hate speech, in its deepest and most dangerous form.
the rest:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-s-blood-libel-press-failure
Pakid
(478 posts)than all of the guns death in America. The American people and the media have become use to it and it has become acceptable to many of them. This is one of the many ways that a nation dies one by one the unacceptable become acceptable until it is to late to stop the hate from destroying the nation.
Jeffersons Ghost
(15,235 posts)world wide wally
(21,719 posts)complicit. Why has it become virtually impossible to have effective and dedicated news people?
heaven05
(18,124 posts)that should awake the sleeping. Not yet it seems. What will it take. Racist trumpshirts roving the streets with baseball bats and worse? Geez. What the fuck is it going to take to put these clowns back into the bottle? America you are heading toward THE BIGGEST TURNING POINT IN OUR HISTORY AS A COUNTRY. Will we have enough decent people with courage, integrity and will to stand in line for probably hours on end to defeat these demons from an historical hell? Given our history and recent cowering in the face of the racist, RW onslaught against every decent thing related to racial, gender and overall voting and civil rights since 2000, I wonder. and am goddamn well worried at Novembers outcome
alittlelark
(18,886 posts)First Speaker
(4,858 posts)martin mike
(82 posts)"Trump may be bad for the country, but he's great for CBS!"
Avalux
(35,015 posts)notion that they should actually be regarded as legitimate - I just don't know which end is up anymore.
Johonny
(20,684 posts)Trump lies in a mean spirited and hateful way. His lies are easily shown to be lies yet he simply repeats the lie anyways. Places like hate radio and FOX news allow candidates to lie out of hate and spite without having to come face to face with their lie. It is a great insulated system where people go to be lied to and love it.
ncjustice80
(948 posts)we can push through Hate Speech Legislation similar to what they have in Britain and throughout the rest of the world. Have a Supreme Court majority to make it challenge proof, and then have the DOJ start heavily investigating these hate crimes! This behavior is leading to real deaths, and our lack of Hate Speech laws make us a laughing stock to the rest of the world!
tritsofme
(17,323 posts)I am proud of our First Amendment protections on speech, I find your sentiment deplorable.
ncjustice80
(948 posts)In support free speech, but I do not support racist incitements.
tritsofme
(17,323 posts)You would have to repeal it. Good luck on that.
ncjustice80
(948 posts)Just need 5 justices who agree hate speech is a crime and not protected free expression.
tritsofme
(17,323 posts)It would take quite a perverted Orwellian war=peace mentality to read such restrictions into the First Amendment.
Luckily there are zero justices on the Supreme Court that believe such nonsense.
TipTok
(2,474 posts)... they assume the cracking will be against someone else now and forever.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Which is probably for the best, because if I said anything, you'd just want to see me thrown in prison for it anyway.
ncjustice80
(948 posts)power minorities?
Just look it up, "Hate speech, outside the law, is speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation."
It should absolutely not be covered by the 1st Amendment, and the majority of our allies all ban it in one form or another. The fact that the U.S. DOESN'T enforce Hate Speech laws is a violation of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which we are signatories (albeit with a bunch of bullshit riders because the U.S. always has to be a special snowflake).
TipTok
(2,474 posts)If the law is applied equally you'd be next on the docket for talking about "white morons" etc...
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Language like that makes this sort of agenda absolutely transparent. It has nothing to do with respecting the dignity of individuals or groups, and everything to do with using the power of the State to censor those ideologically opposed to you. If you wanted it to apply to everyone, things like "Die cis scum" and "white tears" would be valid targets for prosecution.
Article 20 is so vague it can easily be interpreted to enforce blasphemy laws, something the civilized world did away with long ago and for good reason. Frankly, with the current climate of hypersensitivity and political correctness that judges anything and everything that could be offensive as some form of hatred or bigotry, what you're calling for is goddamn terrifying.
Throd
(7,208 posts)tritsofme
(17,323 posts)The authoritarian streak running through the left and right these days is terrifying.
Throd
(7,208 posts)GoDawgs
(267 posts)And television & politics are our manifestation of the Krell Great Machine
With apologies to the classic Forbidden Planet, of course
lunatica
(53,410 posts)And I'm showing my age by knowing what that picture is about!
GoDawgs
(267 posts)Seriously, it was classic before I was even born, and I bet it will still be a classic long after i'm gone. I've just been a SciFi geek since soon after birth.
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)Trump is a monster, dredged up from the darkest corners of the American subconscious. The demons lurking in that subconscious are racial bigotry, xenophobia and a particularly virulent form of misogyny; but, they also include years of frustration from working people who understand that they're losing ground year by year.
GoDawgs
(267 posts)Your last line is especially critical to keep in mind, its a component of what's happening that rarely gets discussed on these boards....
Behind the Aegis
(53,833 posts)I will disagree, slightly, that his rhetoric isn't "normal" now. What it isn't is as "common in public" nor "polite". It hasn't become "normalized" recently, it has been a long tradition in the media, and from politicians. His type of 'hate speech' has long been the "norm" if you are a GLBT person, and, in some cases, if you are a woman.
I can't understand why anyone is in the least bit surprised by this given the 8 years of Obama's presidency. Hate groups and anti-government groups skyrocketed after this election and during his presidency (check the SPLC graph related to this, but mind your jaw, as it will drop far and hard!). This isn't a comment on him, but it is one on the state of our country!
Finally, the author's calling this "blood libel" is off the mark. Despite many trying to warp this into something else, blood libel is fairly specific and nothing to date indicates this is in play. I wouldn't be surprised to see it eventually come into the arena, given the amount of hate, but, as of yet, it hasn't.
Saphire
(2,437 posts)maybe when they start going a little bit more of mainstream during the debates, more people will see what he really is. It's enough to scare the pants off of anybody.
Hekate
(90,195 posts)pansypoo53219
(20,906 posts)follow the $$$$$$$$$.