By: Reem Hussein
Former President Barack Obama’s tweet on the Charlottesville attacks becomes the most liked tweet ever on the social network.
It’s actually a quote from Nelson Mandela’s 1994 autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom” that states that “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
What is White Supremacy?
White supremacy is the ideological view that white people are worthy of being considered a superior race that should be protected in order to remain pure.
White supremacist groups include the historical Ku Klux Klan (an extremist hate group) and neo-Nazis; and they sometimes go by names like Alt-Right.
Why are we bringing this up?
The recent Virginian incident of Charlottesville: clashes broke out last week over the taking down of Confederate monuments (monuments that are believed to be symbols of slavery). A car driven by a man who has ties to Ku Klux Klan drove into the demonstration and caused the death of a peaceful lady.
The angry clashes in Charlottesville prove to us that terrorism is not unusual in the US. On the contrary, the new group known as “American Nazis” were chanting “blood and soil” copying the Nazi slogan of “Blut and Boden” that means that the blood should be pure and the land must belong to the racially pure i.e. the whites. The enemy from their perspective are black people who hinder their race from being pure.
What does Donald Trump have to do with this matter?
It is believed that Trump’s rhetoric has recently revived racism in Virginia. For example, check these earlier statements by Trump. On Mexicans: “They are not our friend, believe me,” he said. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” on Muslims on Sept. 17, 2015: “We have a problem in this country; it’s called Muslims.”
Trump’s earlier tweets further emphasize his hate speech:
Some of these extremist protestors are fans of Donald Trump who in the early 1970s was sued for discriminating against black people in housing rentals. Trump holds a long history of racist attitude. In fact, David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan said that the marchers are fulfilling Trump’s promises of “taking our country back”.
Response by Trump:
Trump has announced that “both sides” are equally responsible for the bloodshed and hatred, which is a big failure to properly put things into perspective because there’s no equivalency between a group of racists and a group of Americans trying to oppose any hatred or bigotry. Instead of attacking the white supremacists, Trump added: “What about the alt-left? Do they have any guilt?”
It seems like whenever we hear terrorism, we tend to associate it with Muslims or Arabs, but here’s why terrorism can also be WHITE.
