Editorial: Trump and Extremism
This twisted logic is what lies beneath the reported government plans to rename the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program created by the previous administration, replacing it with “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism.”
Crédito: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
President Donald Trump quickly tweeted a condemnation when an alleged Muslim extremist attempted to attack people with a machete near the Louvre Museum in France. However, he did not say a word when extreme right nationalist Alexandre Bissonnette killed six people while they prayed in a Canadian mosque.
Actually, the White House spokesman said that the Quebec incident demonstrated why the president’s actions on national security are justified.
In other words, the terrorist act committed by a confessed Trump fan motivated by his hatred of Muslims is supposed to be an example to support banning the entrance to followers of Islam.
This twisted logic is what lies beneath the reported government plans to rename the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program created by the previous administration, replacing it with “Countering Radical Islamic Extremism.”
The change goes beyond the wording, establishing a conveniently limited vision of the dangers leading to domestic terrorism.
By definition, it completely ignores the plot that killed 168 people in the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma in 1995 and the massacre perpetrated by a racist “lone wolf” in a North Carolina church. The same goes with the burning of two mosques last month and the Nazi swastika graffiti in Jewish temples.
The Southern Poverty Law Center says that there are 865 groups formed by neo-Nazis, anti-government militias, white supremacists, segregationists and the like. Their activities range from burglaries to operations such as the failed attempt to blow up a building housing more than 100 Somali immigrants in Kansas.
Like Bissonnette, one of the men arrested in this case –Curtis Allen, from a militia called the Crusaders– also said to be a Trump follower.
While Islamic extremism is an indisputable reality, the Trump Administration actions have a deliberate political goal to satisfy this nationalistic sector of its base, in addition to its national security objectives.
The CVE’s main focus is to work with the Muslim community, but the current name of the program is not “politically correct,” as the people trying to change it claim. It acknowledges that violence motivated by religion, politics and race has different origins.
The Trump Administration will be to blame for the growth of white nationalistic extremism for accommodating its ideology and for emboldening it with their actions.
