First they came for the Mexicans. Then they came for the Muslims. Who's Next?

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Tuesday September 22, 2015 · 7:54 AM PDT

2015/09/22 · 07:54

Who's next on the target list of the party that wants to divide and conquer the US (literally in the case of the Confederate sympathizers among them)?

The FT notes the Republican front-runners, Trump and Carson, are retuning their dog whistles and outright anti-immigrant, anti-Latino/a hate, to gather in the anti-Muslim haters too. The article is: Fears over Muslims stirred by Republican candidates. The GOP base is rallying to their new clarion call:

Several hundred people gathered in Duncan, South Carolina, on Sunday to protest any resettlement of [Syrian] refugees, according to one woman who attended. A flyer for the meeting that was being handed out in nearby Spartanburg as most of the GOP presidential contenders spoke at a Heritage Foundation event, said “dozens of terrorist sympathisers have already been resettled in Minnesota, Maine, Ohio, and Virginia”.

One hopes these reactionaries represent the vocal cohort of non-egalitarians which has been shrinking over the past few years:

Gallup released a poll in June which showed that 60 per cent of American adults would support a Muslim for president, but that number fell to 44 per cent when the people polled were protestants.
In contrast, 73 per cent of respondents said they would back an evangelical Christian and 74 per cent said they would support a gay candidate, an increase of almost 20 points from eight years ago.

I fear though, that the Republican candidates are not just tapping into existing anti-minority sentiment. They might actually be fertilizing and growing new and more virulent strains. We need to work harder to ensure their weeds don't take over.

PS. I just gave to Bernie's campaign, and they had a pop-up asking me to explain why I contributed. I've been leaning in his direction for weeks, and I had to think for a minute about what pushed me over the edge. It took a few minutes, but here's my reasoning:

Bernie is the only anti-war candidate in the race.

I spent part of last night trolling it out with a couple of enthusiastic bigots on twitter. Just killing time in between rocking my younger daughter to sleep. In a discussion about relative enthusiasm for violence between nominal Muslims and nominal Christians, I suggested they count up the dead from WW-1, WW-2, Vietnam, European colonialism and then start working backwards to the Spanish inquisition.

I also noted that after the reconquista ended, many Jews fled Spain for the relative safety of the Ottoman empire (as an example of European intolerance). Which prompted this response:

"The Spanish inquisition was to route dhimmi's, Muslims and usurpers. Horrible but needed. History will repeat" [sic]
"yes the Jews were dhimmi's and heavily involved in your occupation of Europr" [sic]

People who say a Muslim shouldn't be president will also skip Bernie for the same reason. And that is when it hit me in the face:

Racism, Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism go together like Burgers, Fries and Ketchup.

This is probably what multiple Jewish friends (on both right and left) are thinking of when they say they believe Bernie has no chance. I can see what they're saying, when push comes to shove, the "Judeo-Christian" mantra the right recites will lose the "Judeo" part right quick. One colleague related a story of their young nephew traveling to western Pennsylvania for a minor league game. He was asked (in all seriousness apparently) how he could be a Jew, since he didn't have visible horns. It's Pennsyl-tucky, so I write it off, but I was genuinely surprised to hear it.

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