As protests about zionism and the situation of tens of thousands of people in Gaza increase in universities across the U.S., the right wing, led by House Speaker Mike Johnson, has suddenly become concerned about antisemitic speech across the country.
On May 1, Johnson rallied the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and some Democrats, to pass the Antisemitism Awareness Act. The irony is Johnson did not seem as concerned when QAnon was promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories disseminated via 4chan: denying the Holocaust happened and praising Adolph Hitler and the Nazis.
He did not seem that concerned when Donald Trumpeto hosted Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at his private Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022, nor is he very concerned over the White supremacists open promotion of swastikas or ongoing support of the Third Reich.
He also did not even seem concerned enough to pass such an act when antisemitic incidents, from bomb threats and cemetery desecration to assaults, bullying, and temple shootings, surged in the United States after the election of Trump.
However, now that the protests are young, independent minds using their supposed right to free speech as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution to speak up for the people of Gaza, suddenly Johnson and the right wing feel the need to jump on the antisemitic bandwagon.
Can we call it what it is? H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-S-Y.
Which brings me to the burning question that consistently seems to slip past the minds of many of the same hypocrites who are now so concerned about hate speech: What about xenophobic speech? That is, the kind that has been spewed daily by your good friend—the Republican presidential frontrunner and the indicted former GOP president, since he began campaigning for his first run for president.
Donald Trumpeto launched his campaign in 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” who are “bringing crime” and “bringing drugs” to the U.S. He continued the campaign by repeating that immigrants should go back to their countries of origin and to build his border wall to keep them out.
The next year, he claimed that Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was overseeing the Trump University lawsuit at the time, should recuse himself from the case because of his Mexican heritage.
In 2017, Trumpeto allegedly said that people who came to the U.S. from Haiti “all have AIDS,” and he lamented that people who came to the U.S. from Nigeria would never “go back to their huts” once they saw America.
On Oct. 31, 2018, Trump tweeted a new anti-immigration ad, paid for by his re-election campaign, characterizing migrants as extremely violent and showing masses of people pouring through broken-down barriers.
In Bemidji, Minn., the then-president injected eugenics into his speech, praising the mostly white crowd for their “good genes” while attacking Somali refugees.
Speaking about immigration at a bipartisan meeting in January 2018, Trump reportedly asked, in reference to Haiti and African countries, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”
He also vulgarly called for less immigration from Haiti and more from Norway. His specific point was that Haitians were inferior to Norwegians.
Before the mid-term elections in 2018, he used a Nov. 1, 2018, White House address to boast of crackdowns on asylum-seekers, even hinting that they might be fired upon by U.S. military personnel. He called Central American migrant caravans “violent” and threatened to hold thousands of participants indefinitely in “massive cities of tents.”
An Aug. 7, 2019, Vox story, detailed 24 instances of Trump calling Latinx immigration “an invasion.” The New York Times reported that up to that point, Trump’s campaign had purchased 2,000 online ads using the word “invasion” to describe immigration at the southern United States border.
The same rhetoric was repeated by a man who massacred dozens of people at an El Paso Walmart on Aug. 3, 2019, after posting a racist manifesto online. After the attack, the shooter told police he was specifically targeting Mexicans.
This is just a brief timeline of hate and xenophobia pushed by the indicted former president, who wants to be president again. All the while, Republicans, including Johnson, have stood silently by.
Given your sudden concern for anti-semitic speech, Mr. Speaker, how about the same concern for xenophobia? Can we get the Xenophobic Awareness Act soon on the House floor?
Felicia J. Persaud is the publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com, a daily news outlet focusing on Black immigrant issues.