ARYAN NATIONS DEFLATES ‘SOVEREIGNS’ IN MONTANA

AP IMAGES/TONY GUTIERREZ (RALLY); AP IMAGES/DOUG STRICKLAND, CHATTANOOGA TIMES FREE PRESS (SERVICEMEN)
Other GOP presidential candidates were little
better. On Nov. 15, responding to Democratic candidate
Hillary Clinton’s avoidance of the term “radical
Islam” to describe Islamic State terrorists, Marco
Rubio compared Muslims to Nazis: “I don’t understand
it. That would be like saying we weren’t at war
with the Nazis, because we were afraid to offend
some Germans who may have been members of the
Nazi Party, but weren’t violent themselves,” he said.
“This is a clash of civilizations.”
On Nov. 16, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie,
another GOP presidential candidate, said the
United States should not admit a single refugee
from the Syrian civil war — not even “orphans
under age 5.” He was quickly joined by more than
half of the nation’s governors, including fellow
GOP presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John
Kasich, in saying Syrian refugees would not be welcome
in their states.
Republican presidential hopefuls Ted Cruz and
Jeb Bush, meanwhile, proposed the use of religious
tests to bar Muslim Syrian refugees while admitting
Christian ones. “We can’t roll the dice with
the safety of Americans and bring in people for
whom there is an unacceptable risk that they could
be jihadists coming here to kill Americans,” said
Cruz. But, he added, “there is no meaningful risk of
Christians committing acts of terror.”
GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee
seemed to agree, saying, “I don’t know of any other
group of people uniquely that are targeting innocent
civilians and committing these acts of mayhem.”
Cruz’s and Huckabee’s assertions about the supposedly
unique danger posed by Muslims are telling in
light of the fact that since Sept. 11, 2001, domestic
right-wing extremists have been responsible for
about the same number of deaths in the United States
as radical Muslims (48, as opposed to 45 killed by
jihadists, according the New America Foundation)
— including, most recently, the November murder
of three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood
clinic (see story, p. 7) by a man who had earlier professed
admiration for anti-abortion terrorists.
Trump, meanwhile, continued to ratchet up
his rhetoric. On Nov. 21, he revived a completely
debunked anti-Muslim myth when he claimed
to remember seeing “thousands and thousands”
of Muslims in New Jersey cheering as the World
Trade Center collapsed following the 9/11 attacks.
Confronted with police and media investigations
that concluded decisively that such celebrations did
not happen, Trump simply refused to back down.
On Dec. 7, he made his most extreme proposal yet.
“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete
shutdown of Muslims
entering the United States
until our country’s representatives
can figure out
what is going on,” began a
press release that Trump
read aloud to a crowd.
“It is obvious to anybody
the hatred is beyond
comprehension. Where
this hatred comes from
and why we will have to determine. Until we are
able to determine and understand this problem and
the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot
be the victim of horrendous attacks by people that
believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason
or respect for human life.”
That announcement set off a firestorm of criticism.
Some leaders within the GOP establishment,
which previously trod very lightly on the subject
of Trump, spoke out forcefully. Even some archconservatives
condemned the proposal, including
former Vice President Dick Cheney, who said:
“[T]his whole notion that somehow we can just say
no more Muslims, just ban a whole religion, goes
against everything we stand for and believe in. I
mean, religious freedom has been a very important
part of our history and where we came from.”
GOP National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus
echoed him, saying, “We need to aggressively take
on radical Islamic terrorism but not at the expense
of our American values.”
Islamist attacks like
the one that left five
servicemen dead in
Chattanooga, Tenn.,
helped spark anti-
Islam rallies like a
recent gathering in
Garland, Texas.
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