The man who killed six and wounded eight others in a Quebec City mosque has been identified as a white, Canadian college student. Other students noted that he’d made right-wing statements and statements attacking women. Alexandre Bissonnette entered the Centre Culturel Islamique de Quebec during prayer and opened fire with a rifle.
[Bissonnette] “has right-wing political ideas, pro-Israel, anti-immigration. I had many debates with him about Trump. He was obviously pro-Trump.”
But none of that stopped Fox News from rushing forward with the idea that the attack was carried out by a Moroccan Muslim who was actually a witness. Hours later, the name and ethnicity of that witness is still being passed around the white supremacist “news” sites while information about the actual shooter is called “fake news.”
This situation was aggravated by White House press secretary Sean Spicer who attempted to use the attack in Quebec to defend Donald Trump’s Muslim ban.
“It’s a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant, and why the president is taking steps to be proactive, rather than reactive, when it comes to our nation’s safety and security,” press secretary Sean Spicer said at his daily briefing on Monday.
Yes, it is a terrible reminder, because it doesn’t resemble any policy Trump has either imposed or suggested … unless Spicer is saying that we need to keep Muslims out of the country now, so we don’t have to shoot them later.
Spicer’s statement somehow seems to imply that Muslims were responsible for the shooting.
The “proactive, rather than reactive” language is similar to the rhetoric Trump and his allies have used in defending his “temporary” ban on refugees and by visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries, which has caused a worldwide uproar.
Spicer used similar words when asked directly about the travel ban later in the briefing, saying Trump was not going to “wait and react.”