It didn’t take days for the president of North and South Dakota to issue a stern statement against the terrorist attacks in Barcelona, Spain, which killed 13 people and left several dozen injured. Donald Trump didn’t need to get all the facts before he tweeted out his condemnation of the Islamic State group, often referred to as ISIS, the Islamic extremist terrorist group that took credit for the carnage. Trump didn’t note how “good” some of the reported terrorists involved in the Barcelona attack may have been, or claim that the violence was instigated by people on both sides.
That’s because Trump is a white supremacist who only considers terrorism to be terrorism when it’s committed by nonwhite men. Trump, like most white supremacists, believes that terrorism must be met with strong force, assuming, of course, that the terrorist has a brown face or doesn’t pray to a Christian god.
“The United States condemns the terror attack in Barcelona, Spain, and will do whatever is necessary to help. Be tough & strong, we love you!” That’s what Trump tweeted shortly after news of the attacks in Spain broke.
Here’s the funniest part: While Spain has not yet confirmed that the attacks in Barcelona were committed by radical Islamic extremists, that didn’t stop Trump from tweeting a xenophobic and widely known lie that white supremacists hold dear: “Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!”
The Pershing lie goes like this: Pershing, then an Army general, reportedly stopped “Muslim attacks in the Philippines in the early 1900s by shooting the rebels with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood (pork is taboo for Muslims),” the Chicago Tribune reports.
Not only has this story been widely proved to be false, but Trump, the president of 53 percent of white women (we can never forget this, y’all), knows that this story is a lie. He used it during his run for the White House and it was widely disproved then. So, not only is Trump spreading lies, which has become the norm for his administration, but he’s also spreading lies and hurtful rhetoric about Muslims, which is something that is commonplace in white supremacist/white nationalist propaganda.
But this is what happens when the president of Florida is at the helm; we run the risk of empowering domestic terrorism because we don’t condemn white boys with torches in this country.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had some strong words to say about the attacks in Barcelona.
“Terrorists around the world should know that the United States and our allies are resolved to find you and bring you to justice,” Tillerson said, the Tribune reports.
What Tillerson forgot to add is the addendum to that statement, which reads: “Unless, of course, you are a homegrown terrorist who wears ill-fitting khaki pants and cries when the police are looking for you. In that case, America will need to review all of the information, and the president will talk about how ‘good’ you are and how you had a permit to protest, and will victim-blame, because white violence is loved in this country, under this president, unconditionally.”
Read more at the Chicago Tribune.