Politics –
Pizzagate And Other
Trump Inspired Violence

Riddle me this:  What do you get when you mix Trump Republicans, guns, and outlandish right-wing conspiracy theories?  Pizzagate, that’s what!

Politics
For months, Donald Trump and various right-wing bloggers and media personalities spent the better part of the presidential campaign creating conspiracies and their own versions of the truth (Translation: lies). Their actions were paramount to pouring gasoline all over town, then appearing shocked to hear that someone lit a match and burned the entire town to the ground.

Such is the case of Pizzagate.

Days before the presidential election, James Alefantis, owner of Washington, DC’s Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant, noticed an unusual spike in Instagram followers.  Soon after, he began receiving menacing messages via text, Facebook, and Twitter saying “We’re on to you,” and “I will kill you personally.”  Then, this past weekend, a lone lunatic showed up to Comet Ping Pong determined to make good on those threats.

Why was the unassuming local pizza parlor suddenly receiving a multitude of death threats???

Earlier this year, conservatives birthed a rumor that Hillary Clinton and her former campaign manager, John Podesta, were operating a child sex ring out of the basement of Comet Ping Pong Pizza. Right-wing radio nut job Alex Jones, Breitbart News (led by Donald Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon), and others ran with the alleged story as if it were absolute fact. Naturally, their “not-so-bright” followers — who frequently believe any and everything Fox News and other conservative media outlets tell them — took the rumor as truth and took matters into their own hands.

On Sunday, 28-year-old Edgar Welch walked into Comet Ping Pong brandishing a gun, hell-bent on putting an end to Hillary’s supposed sex trafficking of children.

Welch casually walked into the local pizzeria and immediately headed for the basement… except he quickly learned that the restaurant doesn’t have a basement. He also learned that the restaurant has no connection to Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, or an alleged child sex ring. There was no Pizzagate. There were no children being held in bondage in a dark basement. The restaurant was really just a restaurant.

Welch appeared shocked as police arrived to arrest him. He was convinced the words and warnings from the right-wingers he closely followed to the point of near worship were accurate. How could they have possibly been wrong?

.

I won’t stop tweeting about #PizzaGate until I know for a fact that there aren’t children in danger being covered up by the US government

— Skye (@TradSierraHotel) Nov. 20, 2016

.

Politics
Pizzagate is not the only instance of Donald Trump and right-wing conservative nut jobs inventing their own versions of the truth, then spreading it around for dumb saps like Welch to absorb as accurate.  Sadly, it’s a dangerous practice that continues to produce dangerous results.

After Donald Trump labeled all Muslims as the “boogeyman” and promised to end terrorism by denying them entry into the U.S., Muslim hate crimes rose to epic proportions. In fact, hate crimes are up 35% from last year, in what officials attribute to Donald Trump’s rhetoric.

In New York City, a Muslim off-duty police officer was threatened recently by a man who yelled, “I will cut your throat. Go back to your country.”

According to Officer Aml Elsokary, who is Muslim-American and an 11-year-veteran of the NYPD, a man approached her and her 16-year-old son in Brooklyn Saturday evening and began arguing with the teen. When Elsokary, who was wearing a hijab at the time of the incident, intervened, the man  told her, “ISIS [expletive], I will cut your throat, go back to your country,” before fleeing the scene.

On Monday, an off-duty Muslim transit employee was assaulted by a male passenger at Grand Central Terminal in New York City. The man called the uniformed employee a “terrorist” before pushing her down a flight of stairs.

In California, a group calling itself “Americans for a Better Way” sent a letter to at least 5 mosques and addressed it to “the Children of Satan,” calling Muslims “a vile and filthy people” while advocating genocide.

“There’s a new sherriff [sic] in town — President Donald Trump,” the letter read. “He is going to cleanse America and make it shine again. And, he’s going to start with you muslims [sic]. He’s going to do to you muslims [sic] what Hitler did to the jews [sic]. You muslims [sic] would be wise to pack your bags and get out of Dodge.”

According to The Southern Poverty Law Center, there have been 867 cases of hateful harassment or intimidation in the United States in the 10 days following the November 8th election. No matter if you call it Islamophobia, Xenophobia, or Pizzagate, all roads lead back to Donald Trump and his ilk.

Despite vowing on election night to “bind the wounds of division,” Donald Trump has done virtually nothing to make himself into a president for all Americans.  In fact, “The Donald’s” racist supporters seem much more encouraged by his oblivion to engage in acts of violence and hate crimes, then announce it in the name of Trump.

So, what is the president-elect’s reaction to all of this? Instead of addressing the vitriol, Trump has launched a victory tour to boast on his win and stroke his oversized ego.

“Hashtag, he’s your President,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told a group of Harvard University students last week, who dared to question Trump’s silence on the uptick in hate crimes. Her “get over it” words are living proof  that no one in the Trump camp is at all interested in promoting unity.

If there was ever a “Pandora’s Box,” Donald Trump certainly opened it with all the negative rhetoric he spewed during the presidential election. Except now, it may be too late to put the genie back in the bottle.

.

OK WASSUP! discusses politics:
Pizzagate and Trump-related hate crimes.