Murdered, for defending refugees

People are easily suspicious of those who live apart, of immigrants, of refugees. They wear different clothes, they eat different food, they speak a different language, they listen to different music, they pray in different words or even to a different god, they organize their families in different fashion.

It doesn’t take much to turn that suspicion of strangers into fear and rage and violence. Some exaggeration and conspiracy theories will do. Paint them as criminal and diseased. Frame them as an economic burden. Fill their ranks with terrorists. Hint they are encouraged by some outside, monied conspiracy. Pretend concern for our own poor. Claim our native culture is at risk. Declare that their presence creates a national emergency.

Yesterday, Robert Bowers shot and killed eleven people in The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. He was steeped in conspiracy theories that are both anti-semitic and anti-immigrant: globalist Jews are encouraging immigration to destroy our nation. One of the groups he targeted on social media was HIAS, a Jewish oranization whose mission is to help refugees around the world. He murdered Jews because their religion teaches them to “welcome the stranger, protect the refugee.”

That part of the story has gone missing from much of the reporting. Bowers is a nationalist who wants a moat around America. He targeted Jews partly because he doesn’t like them inside that moat. And partly because he sees them as opposing that moat.

It is scary and strange that a nativist political movement has risen to power here, in a nation of immigrants. Next month, we celebrate a national holiday dedicated to refugees who came here centuries past. Like them, the refugees now in the caravan from Central America are fleeing violence and political persecution. They are taking signficant initiative and making a hard journey to create a better life for their families. They have to navigate both unknown land and unknown politics. They display far more traditional American values than do those who view them as a national threat.

In a few days, Trump will give a speech on immigration, carefully crafted by his speechwriters. He will tell lies. Because that is what Trump does. He will say those refugees present some emergency or crisis. Because that lie sounds presidential. He will generate fear and rage and obdurance in his base. Because that is his goal.

This nation is not threatened by some refugees at the gate, wanting to join our community, to work, and to build a life. It is threatened by a home-grown nativist movement, steeped in lies and fear and rage, eating at our own roots. Trump did not create that movement. He is the conman who saw it wanting a leader, able to step into that role because he so easily tells the lies they want to hear. Defeating that movement will require more than just getting rid of Trump.

Resist.

Vote.

Welcome the stranger, protect the refugee.

Update #1: Those in Pittsburgh mourning the lost understand the political alignment of this crime, urging all: Vote!

Update #2: James Hathaway since has tweeted an apposite NY Times headline from the 1930s, regarding refugees turned away at the German border with the Netherlands.