White supremacist terror can no longer be ignored

[riversedge]

White supremacist terror can no longer be ignored
https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/434302-white-supremacist-terror-can-no-longer-be-ignored


By Abbas Barzegar, opinion contributor — 03/15/19 04:00 PM EDT


This morning, before I could digest what happened in New Zealand and mourn the victims of the mosque massacre, I was tasked with the unfortunate duty to read through the murderer’s hate manifesto.
................................................

While the world categorically rejects this type of ideology and violence, as global citizens we must do all that we can to take back control of our public spaces. Whether in media, popular culture, or politics we need to be vigilant and not allow the poisonous rhetoric of ethno-nationalist extremism invade our public square.

Many will look to this incident as an act of one isolated, deranged killer. However, we should take proactive steps to isolate this hateful rhetoric and push it back into the caves that it came from.



The first way to do that is to invest in understanding the problem. It is compounded by the fact that a number of states don’t even have hate crimes legislation on the books. Just recently a young Indiana man of Afghan heritage was murdered in cold blood while his killer was hurling anti-Muslim slurs. The case barely received national attention.

But while we wait for Congress to strengthen hate crime legislation and perhaps one day, lead by example, there are many things we can do in the private and community spheres to ensure that these ideas are shunned.

Just this week Fox News received yet another set of bruises to its reputation when two of its anchors — Jeanine Pirro and Tucker Carlson — were both found guilty in the public court for advancing seemingly anti-immigrant and Islamophobic ideas.

Fox didn’t fire either of them and while some advertisers have walked away, they are moving slow. This sort of complacency sends a not so subtle signal, a green light, to those who indulge in white supremacist rhetoric. But there are others who can help as well. Social media platforms and internet service providers are starting to move in the right direction by flagging more hateful content and now allowing their platforms to be exploited by far-right groups.......................