Trump and the GOP are campaigning on hate

Why not?

It's what he did the last time.

Muslim ban, wall, deportation police, cancel DACA.

Ilhan Omar has become the target of a dangerous hate campaign

By now, she is accused so often of various speech and thought crimes that she almost seems like a figure in the Two Minutes Hate, the daily ritual used to whip party members into a frenzy in George Orwell’s novel 1984. 

In Orwell’s dystopia, the enemy of the people was the very Jewish-sounding Emmanuel Goldstein. 

If you believe some pundits, today’s enemy of the people is the very Muslim-looking Ilhan Omar.

. . . .

In scoring their cheap political points, Fox News and the New York Post and the president of the United States himself are directly contributing to a perilous climate of vigilantism that threatens not only Omar but really every Muslim in America today.

On one level, it’s clear why Omar is subject to these attacks. 

Omar is black, a woman, an immigrant, a refugee and a Muslim. 

The fact that racism, sexism and bigotry drive a double-standard where Omar faces criticism while others received little to no scrutiny for the same comments is self-evident.

But that’s also not the full explanation. 

This double standard that is applied to Omar is meant to keep us from listening to what she is actually saying and doing. 

To call Stephen Miller a white nationalist, as Omar did, is to state an obvious truth. Omar added that “the fact that he still has influence on policy and political appointments is an outrage.” 

Rather than paying attention to her words, Omar was again caricatured as an anti-Semite. 

“Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has a well-documented history of antisemitic comments, social media posts and relationships,” the White House said, “so it’s not surprising that she would wildly attack a Jewish member of the administration.”

In fact, we should be paying all kinds of attention to Omar’s words and actions. 

She is principled and outspoken against all types of human rights abuses, having criticized Saudi Arabia for its war in Yemen, spoken out against Chinese repression of the Uighur population, stood with the Sudanese people in their uprising, opposed American intervention in Venezuela, grilled Elliott Abrams about his atrocious human rights record, and more. 

She is a cosponsor of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, and has already introduced the Protect Against Unlawful Lobbying Act of 2019, and the Federal Worker Childcare Protection Act of 2019. 

Most recently, she cosponsored a bi-cameral bill to end Donald Trump’s Muslim ban. 

And she only began her job in January.