Hate Crimes on the Rise as Republican Rhetoric Reaches Epic Heights

The Southern Poverty Law Center is reporting that the number of hate crimes against Latinos has been rising for the last several years as right wing rhetoric has been getting more and more extreme and violent.

Anti-Latino crimes increased in each of the four years from 2003 through 2007, before dropping back slightly in 2008, according to FBI national hate crime statistics (2009 figures have not yet been compiled). In recent months, politicians and others have made statements that demonize Latinos and likely contribute to the atmosphere of violence. Two of the most outrageous recent examples: Texas Republican Congressmen Louie Gohmert and Debbie Riddle both claimed that pregnant terrorists plan to sneak into America to give birth to future terrorists who will automatically become U.S. citizens and eventually “help destroy our way of life,” as Gohmert put it. Both representatives claimed that former FBI officials divulged the terrorist baby threat to them. CNN asked Tom Fuentes, who served as the FBI’s assistant director in the office of international operations from 2004 to 2008 about the claims by Gohmert and Riddle. “There was never a credible report — or any report, for that matter …  to indicate that there was such a plan for these terror babies to be born,” he said.

SPLC refers to several anti-Latino hate crime attacks, including dozens of attacks on Staten Island, and the murder of a third generation native-born American.

In June, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in Phoenix said that the murder of a Mexican-American man a month earlier was a hate crime. Gary Thomas Kelley is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Juan Varela. He also is charged with menacing Varela’s brother with a gun. “Hurry up and go back to Mexico or you’re gonna die,” Kelley shouted at Varela before shooting him in the neck, police said. The dead man was a third-generation, native-born American.

In other words, this racist asshole killed an American citizen because he wasn’t white. Of course, this isn’t the only kind of hate crime that we’re hearing a lot about lately. There’s this week’s story of Michael Enright, who tried to murder a New York City cab driver because he said “yes” when Enright asked if he was a Muslim.

His diary equated Muslims with “killers, ungrateful for the help they were being offered, filthy murderers without a conscience.” A top Muslim American organization said the event shows the dangers of extreme anti-Islamic rhetoric.

An account by cab driver Ahmed H. Sharif said that Enright was asking him questions about how long he had been in the U.S., if he was Muslim and if he was fasting during Ramadan. Enright was silent for a few minutes before he starting cursing and screaming before the stabbing, according to a statement.

Enrigh yelled “Assalamu Alaikum”and “consider this a checkpoint” before attacking Sharif, police said. The taxi driver was scheduled to meet with Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday.

Mosques all over the country are being targeted with vandalism and protests. Many of these are incidences of hate crimes, and things only seem to be getting worse as the Glenn Beck crew keeps talking.

The other signs left at the Madera mosque read: “Wake up America, the Enemy is here. ANB” and “American Nationalist Brotherhood.”

ThinkProgress has previously noted that there has been a spate of hate crimes against mosques in America. For instance, a mosque in South Arlington, Texas, was vandalized earlier this month. “The vandals also cut a pipe, allegedly thinking that it was a natural gas line.” Also, the Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Nashville, Tennessee was vandalized with anti-Muslim graffiti. And in a Jacksonville mosque this year, a pipe bomb was set off and a “tissue stuffed inside with white powder” was sent in the mail to one of the community’s local religious leaders.

Right wing Republicans don’t just hate brown people though – they also hate gay people. The city of Covington, KY has seen a recent increase in attacks toward LGBT members of the community.

One particularly violent attack that has become a catalyst for greater awareness occurred at 1:00 a.m. on Aug. 15, when a group of men and women, both gay and straight, were attacked by four people, including a man with Swastika tattoos and Aryan Nation symbols all over his body.

…

Burke has a history of hate crimes, pleading guilty in 2003 to beating a man, who claimed that Burke and the other attackers were “yelling out racial slurs and telling me that they should kill me.” They were also using baseball bats reading, “Imperial Klans of America.”

There is a body count that is directly related to right wing Republican hate rhetoric and there needs to be some accountability before anyone else dies. Attacking and trying to intimidate and scare people because you don’t like the color of their skin or who they happen to love is hateful – and I’m just going to call it what it is – bigotry. If your goal is to terrorize those who aren’t just like you, then you are a terrorist.

Source