Unbelievable as it sounds, the media may actually miss Donald Trump if he departs the White House in January – who else will they blame hate crimes on if he’s no longer in office? New York Times reporter Tim Arango jumped on what may be the paper’s last chance to blame physical assaults against minorities on the president, in Tuesday’s: “Hate Crimes At Highest Since 2008, F.B.I. Reports.”
The notorious, discredited Southern Poverty Law Center also had a feature role. Here was The Times's four lead graphs (click “expand”):
Hate crimes in the United States rose to their highest level in more than a decade last year, while more murders motivated by hate were recorded than ever before, the F.B.I. said on Monday.
The sharp rise in homicides driven by hatred -- there were 51 last year, according to the F.B.I. -- was attributed in large part to the mass shooting in El Paso in August 2019. In that shooting, the authorities say a 21-year-old gunman motivated by hatred toward Latinos stormed a Walmart and killed 23 people and injured many more.
The death toll in the El Paso attack more than doubled that of 2018’s deadliest hate-motivated crime, the mass shooting targeting Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
“It’s important to note that, because of the nature of hate crime reporting, the F.B.I.’s annual report vastly understates the real level of hate crimes in the country,” the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, said on Monday.
Hmm. Let’s look at just who The New York Times considers a reliable source of information on hate crimes: The discredited, fundraising obsessed hysterics at SPLC actually put outspoken Muslim apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who still relies on security against death threats from Islamic radicals, on its blacklist of hatemongers. (They withdrew the smear under pressure, and had to settle a lawsuit by another ex-Muslim unfairly placed on the list.)
And when the SPLC labeled the conservative Christian lobbying group Family Research Council on a “hate group” map, it caught the attention of Floyd Corkins, who stormed the FRC’s headquarters on a mission of slaughter. (The Times ignored the connection.)
It’s no surprise who the paper blames for yet another alleged rise in hate crimes (which may be boosted by exploiting increased reporting during the term of a president loathed by the left):
The upswing in hate crimes last year underscored the upward trend in bias-motivated crimes during the Trump era, and the harsh rhetoric against Latino immigrants was seen as motivating the gunman in the El Paso shooting.
“Politics plays a role,” said Brian Levin, a professor at California State University, San Bernardino, and the director of the university’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
“The president’s rhetoric has been identified in a series of actual attacks,” Mr. Levin added, “but moreover the day-by-day ticks of F.B.I. hate crimes shows there are increases after sustained and fervent remarks by the president that enter into an online feedback loop that also ends up in other discourses, both at the water cooler and on television.”
Whether reporters are seizing on the FBI’s annual report or exploiting a tragic shooting, the Times has spent four years blaming Trump for "hate crimes."
Peter Baker and Michael Shear made clear who they thought shared the blame of the 2019 El Paso massacre in “In Texas Gunman’s Manifesto, An Echo of Trump’s Language." They lamented that Trump “uses the word ‘aliens’ to refer to immigrants long after it was deemed dehumanizing even by other Republicans[.]”
A week later the paper filed a long front-page investigative report: “How the El Paso Gunman Echoed The Words of Right-Wing Pundits.” Yet the paper made no mention of the radical environmentalist streak of the killer's manifesto. It even shared a title with a climate change documentary by Al Gore: “The Inconvenient Truth.”
Trump has also been held responsible for hate crimes against U.S. Muslims, said reporter Eric Lichtblau in “Level of Hate Crimes Against U.S. Muslims Highest Since After 9/11 – Some Tie Attacks to Trump’s Statements.”
