Legion Troll
A fine upstanding poster
Republicans now see significant electoral benefits to be found in demonizing an entire faith. We didn’t even have a body count in Brussels before Cruz and Trump started calling for a police-state trial run in America.
Within hours of the bombs there, the top two Republican presidential candidates here were duking it out to see who could pitch the most authoritarian crackdown on Muslim Americans.
Both leading Republican candidates endorsed having law enforcement officials crack down on "Muslim neighborhoods" — not because their residents are radical, but to prevent potential radicalization.
Cruz issued a statement a few hours after the bombings calling for enhanced police presence in Muslim-American neighborhoods.
“We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized,” he said.
On CNN, Trump said he concurred.
In an email, Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier added that Cruz favors preemptively sending police into neighborhoods because of their inhabitants’ beliefs.
It’s not surprising.
Over the past eight months, overt Islamophobia has become part of mainstream Republican thinking.
Though it isn’t written into the party platform, the majority of Republican primary voters currently back presidential candidates pushing to marginalize American Muslims—and they have hired America’s most virulently xenophobic voices to advise them.
Cruz has publicly associated himself with former Reagan official Frank Gaffney, a crackpot conspiracy theorist who has never seen a Muslim he didn’t think was secretly trying to infiltrate the government.
Gaffney was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for a few years. But he lost his cachet in the Pentagon and then started a think tank, the Center for Security Policy, that peddles goofball conspiracy theories and bad data.
Since then, Gaffney has pimped some truly intriguing notions about current events—including but not limited to the idea that anti-tax activist Grover Norquist is a secret mole for the Muslim Brotherhood; that Obama is the country’s first Muslim president; that Huma Abedin is a secret mole for the Muslim Brotherhood; that the Muslim Brotherhood had made inroads in CPAC leadership (see a pattern?); that Obama was maybe actually born in Kenya; and that a redesign of the Missile Defense Agency’s logo was an insidious sign of “submission to Shariah by President Obama and his team.”
And as a Senator, Cruz appeared on Gaffney’s radio show and at his events.
“Frank Gaffney, the one and only,” the senator said at one event, “you are a clarion voice for truth.”
Tt’s especially interesting because Cruz has made religious freedom central to his campaign.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/22/brussels-reveals-gop-police-state-dream.html
Within hours of the bombs there, the top two Republican presidential candidates here were duking it out to see who could pitch the most authoritarian crackdown on Muslim Americans.
Both leading Republican candidates endorsed having law enforcement officials crack down on "Muslim neighborhoods" — not because their residents are radical, but to prevent potential radicalization.
Cruz issued a statement a few hours after the bombings calling for enhanced police presence in Muslim-American neighborhoods.
“We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized,” he said.
On CNN, Trump said he concurred.
In an email, Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier added that Cruz favors preemptively sending police into neighborhoods because of their inhabitants’ beliefs.
It’s not surprising.
Over the past eight months, overt Islamophobia has become part of mainstream Republican thinking.
Though it isn’t written into the party platform, the majority of Republican primary voters currently back presidential candidates pushing to marginalize American Muslims—and they have hired America’s most virulently xenophobic voices to advise them.
Cruz has publicly associated himself with former Reagan official Frank Gaffney, a crackpot conspiracy theorist who has never seen a Muslim he didn’t think was secretly trying to infiltrate the government.
Gaffney was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for a few years. But he lost his cachet in the Pentagon and then started a think tank, the Center for Security Policy, that peddles goofball conspiracy theories and bad data.
Since then, Gaffney has pimped some truly intriguing notions about current events—including but not limited to the idea that anti-tax activist Grover Norquist is a secret mole for the Muslim Brotherhood; that Obama is the country’s first Muslim president; that Huma Abedin is a secret mole for the Muslim Brotherhood; that the Muslim Brotherhood had made inroads in CPAC leadership (see a pattern?); that Obama was maybe actually born in Kenya; and that a redesign of the Missile Defense Agency’s logo was an insidious sign of “submission to Shariah by President Obama and his team.”
And as a Senator, Cruz appeared on Gaffney’s radio show and at his events.
“Frank Gaffney, the one and only,” the senator said at one event, “you are a clarion voice for truth.”
Tt’s especially interesting because Cruz has made religious freedom central to his campaign.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/22/brussels-reveals-gop-police-state-dream.html
