Shortly after midnight this morning, Joshua Micah Marshall, founder and head of Talking Points Memo, put up a piece titled Trump's Blood Libel & Press Failure to which my wife just pointed me and which I think is perhaps as important as any piece written in response to the hate-filled rant by Trump in Phoenix two days ago.
First, for starters, the idea of “blood libel” comes from anti-Semitism, the false, hateful and dangerous notion that Jews needed the blood of a Christian in order to make the matzoh for Passover. It has been around for centuries, often with tragic consequences. Marshall, being of Jewish background as am I, is well aware of what the term is, and is using it deliberately.
You can get a sense of Marshal’s focus by his opening words:
Even now, after all that's happened, most political reporters find themselves either unwilling or unable to identify Donald Trump's tirades as hate speech. But they fit the textbook definition, inasmuch as it's even a useful concept.
He explores a bit the notions of what hate speech is, from familiar use of denigrating terms and beyond. He also calls to task the news media for not being direct enough on what the contents of the speech in Phoenix really were, writing
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.
One key part of the speech Trump gave was the parading of family members of people killed by undocumented aliens. Marshall thoroughly explores one example, noting the victim was killed by her live-in boyfriend, who had overstayed his visa, and thus might be better characterized as an example of “spousal/partner violence against women.” But Marshall is less interested in debunking or fact checking specific examples than in looking at a broader pattern.
One paragraph lays out the framework very completely:
These families have suffered horribly but no more than the families of victims of American murderers and Americans who committed DUI fatalities. If we went out and found victims who'd suffered grievously at the hands of Jews or blacks and paraded them around the country before angry crowds the wrongness and danger of doing so would be obvious. Now, you might say, that's not fair. American Jews and African-Americans are citizens, with as much right to be here as anyone else. But that's just a dodge. There's no evidence that undocumented immigrants commit more crimes than documented or naturalized immigrants. Indeed, there is solid evidence that immigrants commit fewer crimes than the native born. Simple logic tells us that undocumented immigrants face greater consequences for being apprehended by police and thus likely are more careful to avoid it. They're likely more apt to avoid contact with authorities than the rest of us.
We are presented with detailed data to demonstrate this point.
Marshall then carefully makes a distinction, using the campaign by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) that has led to changes in law that have resulted in a major reduction of deaths due to drunk driving. His distinction is thus:
But of course this is demonizing a specific activity which has caused thousands of deaths. The action itself is the cause of death and suffering. There is no comparable argument to be made about immigration status. It is simply blood libel and incitement.
Marshall discusses a loss he experienced, and the desire he felt to find a scapegoat or someone to blame. That is a normal human reaction. But it does not justify the kind of hate-filled rhetoric that has been an essential component of Trump’s campaign. Trump realistically offers no policies that truly address this pain, instead relying upon his rhetoric as a means of riling up his crowds against some “other” to be demonized as a means of generating support for his campaign. And as Marshall writes at the end of his penultimate paragraph,
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.
All of this is preparation for a final paragraph that may leave you trying to catch your breath, because in it Marshall challenges our political press and ourselves, and warns very pointedly of the possible permanent damage we are experiencing:
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.
We need to call it by its true name.
We must hold to account our political press that they do so as well.
And I absolutely agree with this statement:
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.
That it has not is a serious failure of our American polity, one that threatens the very nature of our liberal democracy.
Go read the entire piece.
Pass it on.