RNA - The first video retweeted by Trump, originally shared by Britain First's deputy leader Jayda Fransen's account, claimed to show “Muslim migrants beating up a Dutch boy on crutches”. A second re-post was captioned “Muslim destroys statue of Virgin Mary”, while a third read “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death”.
These tweets featuring anti-Muslim fake videos promoted by the Islamophobic far-right group in Britain were so vile that they even forced British officials to react with outrage. It is rare for British authorities to publicly condemn the US, but the UK government said that Trump should not have shared the tweets.
In a statement it said: “Britain First seeks to divide communities by their use of hateful narratives that peddle lies and stoke tensions. They cause anxiety to law-abiding people. British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far right which is the antithesis of the values this country represents, decency, tolerance and respect. It is wrong for the president to have done this.”
The content of the videos have been forged as the video purporting to show a boy thrown off a roof was taken in Egypt in 2013 and the guy that pushed a youngster off the roof has received a death sentence and been executed for criminal action. The video showing a Virgin Mary statue being destroyed was posted on YouTube four years ago, but without any context. And the video featuring a Dutch boy being attacked was posted on a Dutch website earlier this year; two men were charged in connection with the beating, but none has been a Muslim.
By all accounts, it is obvious that Trump is racist with every intention to legitimize the far right and spread hatred and anti-Muslim sentiments in the West. He should be ashamed of himself. It is obvious that his mind is brimming with a racist belief that white people are superior to other races. His retweets confirm all that and more. They are an attack on humanity, idealism and democracy, and they demand an outright global condemnation.
Trump’s affront is much more profound, though. His awful extension of an unsettled and unsettling political moment, his slide from civilization to barbarism is shorter than his American supporters might like to imagine. It taints the ideal of an orderly global community, a crime committed against the people who want to be at peace with themselves and the rest of the global community.
Add in one more thing: This is a time to pause in the United States and to ask what its politics, its foreign policy in particular, is becoming. This is a time when a divisive hate-mongering president is seeping into the mainstream. His crude anti-refugee and anti-Muslim politics are on display for all to see. Even his own party members hold back from the sort of entirely post-moral politics that Trump is involved in creating the great humanitarian crisis of our time, and then whipping up hostility to the Muslim victims as a means of chivvying far right voters into turning their backs on the civilized world.
The world community is right to be concerned. Trump has played fast and loose with his anti-Muslim politics, and his presidency has stirred crude resentment against refugees and immigrants, against Muslims, and against any UN member state that has the guts to challenge the racist president and his extremist administration and agenda.
Seen in historical perspective, it is vital the international civil society recognizes, clearly and unequivocally, that a racist and divisive government in the United States threatens not just Muslims, but civility and democracy in the Western world. People of good conscience in the West must speak out and take meaningful actions.
They must speak today of the need to keep the Trump White House, their war-on-terror con job, and their global politics of divisiveness, barbarism and shame at bay. There are legal and constitutional tools that can help dismantle this dangerous president and his hateful narratives that peddle lies and stoke global tensions.
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