Resurgent nationalism

We are told it's about racist and ethno-nationalist reaction to mass immigration from outside Europe and the lesser migrations of Europeans among the nations of the EU.

The ethno-nationalist right believe they can do a better job maintaining national identity - and that's not just about keeping out the blacks - outside the EU than in.

That's a big part of it.

And they are probably right.

We are told that, in most European countries where nationalism is resurgent, it's about the right believing they can keep economies more business-friendly out of the EU than in it.

That's part of it.

But it's all a bit dicey, since some of the left notably think exactly the opposite, that they could take their societies further left outside the EU than in.

And anyway the whole trade picture makes it all a bit foggy; broadly speaking, free trade among the states of the EU is better for business than dealing with a lot of real borders and the various forms of trade restrictions that accompany them.

Last, a really big part of it that seems under-reported is resistance to the cultural revolution taking place in all Christian and post-Christian lands, perhaps only excepting Africa.

The soft spot in the heart of the American right for Putin is all about that.

So it's about abortion, yes, but also gay marriage and other offences against the traditional European morality, which is, of course, the traditional Christian morality.

It's about lots of people believing that they can keep their laws and their culture more in tune with traditional European morality out of the EU than in it.

And how far that is true may vary considerably by country.

PS. Didn't the left media used to rage it was all about Islamophobia?

There was truth to that, too, though it's not as though there wasn't plenty of reason to fear Islam.

Haven't heard much about that in a while, at least in the US.

You think he minds much they were Hindu?

Veteran Rams Hindu Family, thinking they were Muslims

Perhaps he's more disappointed nobody died.

It appears he was willing to hit several people other than his targets in order to hit his targets.

Collateral damage.

An Iraq War veteran, who had spent 5 years in that country, was arraigned Friday.

On Tuesday, he had plowed into 8 people in an intersection in Sunnyvale, California, particularly aiming at a South Asian family who he assumed to be Muslims. 

They weren’t. 

The names indicate that they are Americans of Indian Hindu heritage (a minority in the US of about 1 million people). 

The veteran has been charged with a hate crime and with 8 counts of attempted murder.

Witnesses say that after his crime he acted strangely, saying “Thank God for giving me this opportunity!” and “I love you, Jesus, I love you, Jesus.”

The victims included a 13-year-old girl, Dhriti and her father; her young brother Prakhar, 9, was hurt, but not by the car. 

Dhriti experienced swelling of the brain and bleeding, so that physicians had to take off the side of her skull, and she is fighting for her life in critical condition. 

Others hurt by the car ramming were Marina Reimler, 32; Soeren Reimler, 33; Ping Lu, 51; Rajesh Narayan, 45; Eric Nava, 24; and Miguel, 15.

. . . .

The enraged vet managed to wound Americans of German, Indian, Chinese and Latino heritage in his fruitless search for other Americans to kill, of Muslim heritage.

John J. Kless, terrorist and right wing Jihader

Florida Man Charged in Racist Threats Against Cory Booker and Rashida Tlaib

Federal officials charged a Florida man on Friday with leaving threatening phone messages laced with racist slurs at the offices of Senator Cory Booker and two House members, including Representative Rashida Tlaib.

The man, John J. Kless, 49, made three phone calls within 30 minutes, starting at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, according to court records. 

Mr. Kless, of Tamarac, Fla., about 15 miles northwest of Fort Lauderdale, was charged with interstate transmission of threats, according to court papers.

In the first call, to the office of Representative Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat who is running for president, Mr. Kless said that “the day you come after our guns” would be the day “you’ll be dead,” court papers said.

About nine minutes later, in a voice mail message to the office of Ms. Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, he began with, “Hey, Taliban.” 

Mr. Kless, referring to Representative Ilhan Omar, the freshman Democrat from Minnesota and one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, then said, “Tell your Taliban friend” to stay silent about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, court records said.

. . . .

Mr. Kless said in the voice mail to Ms. Tlaib’s office that “this ain’t Trump’s fault,” court records said, adding, “It’s all your people’s fault.”

Mr. Kless said that “the day when the bell tolls” and “this country comes to a war, there will be no more threats,” court records said. 

He also said, “There’s people like me out there, millions and millions of us, who hate you” for the 2001 attacks.

Mr. Kless’s arrest came after a 55-year-old New York man was charged this month with threatening Ms. Omar. 

Federal agents charged that man, Patrick W. Carlineo Jr., after he reportedly called her office, described her as “a terrorist” and promised, in an expletive-laden threat, to “put a bullet in her skull.”

In the message left at Mr. Booker’s office on Tuesday, Mr. Kless referred to the senator, a Democrat from New Jersey who is running for president, as a “disgrace.”

“Don’t you worry, you government officials will be in the graves” where they belong, he said, according to court records.

. . . .

Mr. Kless was involved in making harassing calls to Ms. Pelosi’s office in Washington in February, according to court papers. 

It was not immediately clear what actions, if any, were taken by law enforcement in that case.

“This early 2019 case included voice messages by Kless concerning taking away his guns, abortion, illegal immigration and Muslims in Congress,” Agent Evans wrote.

Marlene Fernandez-Karavetsos, special counsel to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, said one gun was seized from a backpack of Mr. Kless’s and others from a gun safe at his home. 

Ammunition was also recovered. Information about the kinds of weapons was not immediately available.

United States Magistrate Judge Barry S. Seltzer ordered Friday that bond be set at $25,000. 

Trump, GOP have pretty good ammo

They'll run against the Democrats for their real or alleged socialism, anti-Semitism, faint and weakening loyalty to Israel, Islamophilia, and palling around with terrorists, or at least terrorist sympathizers.

We're going to hear a lot about Ilhan Omar, if she's not a tragic victim of stochastic right wing terrorism.

In Attacking Ilhan Omar, Trump Revives His Familiar Refrain Against Muslims

Mr. Trump and his team are trying to make Ms. Omar, one of a group of progressive women Democratic House members who is relatively unknown in national politics, a household name, to be seen as the most prominent voice of the Democratic Party, regardless of her actual position. 

And they are gambling that there will be limited downside in doing so.

. . . .

Mr. Trump is banking on painting the entire Democratic Party as extreme. 

And Ms. Omar has become a point of contention for some members of her own party, after remarks she made about the Israel lobby were condemned as anti-Semitic by some long-serving Democrats, as well as by Republicans and Mr. Trump.

But Mr. Trump’s electoral success in 2016 was based partly on culture wars and fears among an older, white voting base that the country it knew was slipping away. 

Like his hard line on immigration, his plays on fears of Muslims — including inaccurately conflating them with terrorists — proved polarizing among the wider electorate, but helped him keep a tight grip on his most enthusiastic voters. 

In the South Carolina Republican primary in February 2016, for instance, exit polls showed that 75 percent of voters favored his proposed Muslim ban.

Now, as he looks toward 2020, he is betting that electoral play can deliver for him again. 

It is a strategy that risks summoning dark forces in American society, a point Ms. Omar made in a statement Sunday evening.

If some wingnut kills her, will that hurt Trump or the GOP?

Nah.

Trump aides and allies say they are pleased that some of the Democratic hopefuls for the 2020 presidential nomination are defending her against the president’s attacks, claiming they think it will be damaging for them in the general election.

Ms. Omar “is the perfect embodiment of the sharp contrast President Trump wants to paint for 2020,” said Sam Nunberg, a 2016 campaign aide to Mr. Trump. 

He added that Mr. Trump is tethering Ms. Omar to more visible Democrats, like her closest ally in Congress, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, whom Republicans have sought to make a boogeyman.

. . . .

Geoff Garin, a veteran Democratic strategist, said the Democratic presidential candidates who had responded to Mr. Trump’s latest attacks on Ms. Omar were keeping the focus on his tactics. 

And he predicted that the use of such graphic images from one of the nation’s darkest days would backfire for the president.

“Voters are turned off by the use of 9/11 for political purposes, and my guess is that moderate voters are going to see Trump’s use of that as both ugly and extreme,” Mr. Garin said. 

“I think his over-the-top exploitation of 9/11 is going to turn more voters off than he wins over by attacking the Democrats on this.”

Dream on, fool.

They are really going after Ilhan Omar. And Trump is lower than dog shit.

The entire Republican Party is lower than dog shit.

They are painting a target on her back.

Ilhan Omar defended by Democrats after Trump uses 9/11 video in attack

President Dogshit's tweet

[CAIR was not founded after 9/11 but in the 1990s, by the way.

And that "some people did something" was odd, though the point she was making was valid.]

And Pelosi seems to have a problem with her.

Up to now I have resisted use of "Islamophobia" since the term has been all too often used to deflect and stigmatize legitimate and fair criticism of Islam, Islamism, or Jihadi ideology, as "anti-Semitism" is frequently abused to deflect and stigmatize criticism of Israel or Zionism, and was recently abused in exactly that way by Trump, numerous Republicans, and some Democrats, against Congresswoman Omar.

But the lies and accusations and almost constant abuse of this young woman are incitements to hatred of her because she is a Muslim, because she is not white, because she is not a Christian, and because she speaks up in defense of Islam and of Muslims.

These incitements are acts of hatred aimed at inciting hatred.

Acts of Islamophobia aimed at incitement of Islamophobia.

[Update. She is rather an annoying person, I'll give you that. Doesn't make her a terrorist, traitor, Islamist, secret member of the Muslim Brotherhood, or enemy of us fine white Christian folks.]

Democrats including leading candidates for the presidential nomination have fiercely condemned Donald Trump and other Republicans’ efforts to smear the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, while urging other party leaders to do the same.

Attacks labeling one of two Muslim women in Congress as unpatriotic are “dangerous” and risk “inciting violence”, prominent progressives said on Friday, after Trump shared a video attacking Omar that included graphic footage of the 9/11 terror attacks.

. . . .

Just last week, a Trump supporter in New York was charged with threatening to kill Omar. On Friday, Trump escalated attacks on Omar, tweeting “WE WILL NEVER FORGET!” with a video edited to suggest Omar was dismissive of the September 11 attacks.

The video used part of a speech last month to the Council on American-Islamic Relations in which Omar discussed the problem of Islamophobia, describing “the discomfort of being a second-class citizen”. After September 11, she said, advocates “recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties”.

Rightwing politicians focused on the line “some people did something” and suggested Omar was dismissing the gravity of 9/11.

Republicans falsely claim Ilhan Omar denied 9/11 attackers were terrorists

These lies are incitements to violence, and who can seriously say the perps don't know or intend that?

Google stochastic terrorism.

A Republican congressman has spread false allegations that the US representative Ilhan Omar denied the September 11 hijackers were terrorists, as part of a new wave of abuse directed at her by some conservatives.

Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas shared a tweet falsely reporting that Omar had said she “does not consider [September 11] a terrorist attack on the USA by terrorists”, while accusing the Minnesota congresswoman of playing down the attack.

Crenshaw was responding to a short video clip of a speech given by Omar in California last month, when she complained that all Muslims suffered the consequences of the actions by a small group of them on 11 September 2001, when al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four passenger jets and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon building outside Washington, while one crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

Crenshaw was joined by Ronna McDaniel, the Republican party chairwoman, who claimed Omar had shown she was “anti-American”, and the Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, who questioned Omar’s loyalty to the US during a broadcast on Wednesday morning.

Omar described the attacks against her as “dangerous incitement” and urged colleagues to condemn them. 

She said: “My love and commitment to our country and that of my colleagues should never be in question. We are ALL Americans!”

Trump under fire over Islamophobia after man threatens to kill Ilhan Omar

Subtitle: Ocasio-Cortez also makes direct link between controversial remarks by Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro and threat against Omar

Donald Trump and Fox News are coming under fire for contributing to a climate of Islamophobia, following the arrest of a supporter of the president who threatened to kill Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota who was one of the first Muslim women elected to the US Congress.

Ilhan Omar: man arrested after he made death threat – then left contact details

Patrick Carlineo, from Addison, New York, was arrested on Friday and charged with making a threatening phone call to Omar’s office. 

According to the FBI, Carlineo told a staff member: “Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood? Why are you working for her, she’s a fucking terrorist. I’ll put a bullet in her fucking skull.”

Though Fox News was not mentioned in the complaint against Carlineo, the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew a direct link between controversial remarks made by the network’s presenter Jeanine Pirro and the threat against Omar.

Last month Pirro attacked Omar’s wearing of the hijab, asking if it was indicative of “her adherence to sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States constitution”.

. . . .

Last month, in the wake of the shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 50 people, Omar accused Trump of whipping up the hatred that lay behind such violence. 

She said Trump was a president who “publicly says Islam hates us, who fuels hate against Muslims, who thinks it is OK to speak about a faith and a whole community in a way that is dehumanizing, vilifying”.

The Somali American Muslim who represents Minnesota’s fifth congressional district is one of a group of dynamic Democratic women swept into Congress in November’s midterm elections. 

As an outspoken critic of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians, she has become a lightning rod for rightwing claims of antisemitism.

She was particularly heavily rounded upon after she highlighted the lobbying work of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Aipac, which she implied paid US politicians to take a pro-Israeli position.