Last night, a gunman opened fire on people praying at the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Center, leaving six dead and five critically injured. Somehow, I didn’t hear about it until this afternoon, when I was listening to audio of Trump press secretary Sean Spicer’s surreal and rambling press conference. Spicer, for those of you who may have missed it, referred to the shooting as “a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant and why the President is taking steps to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to our nation’s safety and security.” Yes, what happened in Quebec, according to Spicer, was justification for Trump’s ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries… a terrifying illustration of what might happen of only we were to let the wrong Muslim into the United States. The only problem is, the shootings appear to have been the work of a white nationalist Trump supporter [seen above], and not a Muslim, as had been reported by Fox News and others. [A Muslim man, who had been praying at the Mosque, had apparently been questioned by authorities, but he was later released.]
[Fox News got it wrong, as did several others on the right wing, including anti-Muslim activist Pamela Gellar, who said earlier today, “As I predicted last night, the shooters in the Quebec mosque attack are Muslim, as is generally the case in these circumstances.”]
The following comes from Glenn Greenwald
…The actual shooting suspect is 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette, a white French Canadian who is, by all appearances, a rabid anti-immigrant nationalist. A leader of a local immigration rights groups, François Deschamps, told a local paper he recognized his photo as an anti-immigrant far-right “troll” who has been hostile to the group online.
The Globe and Mail added that he “was known in the city’s activist circles as a right-wing troll who frequently took anti-foreigner and anti-feminist positions and stood up for U.S. President Donald Trump.” And Bisonnette’s Facebook page – now taken down but still archived – lists among its “likes” the far right French nationalist Marine Le Pen, Islam critics Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the Israeli Defense Forces, and Donald J. Trump…
So, where does that leave us now? If, as Sean Spicer noted, what happened in Quebec proved the need for executive action, will President Trump, now that we know what really happened, take swift action to block his white supporters, who, like Alexandre Bissonnette, have engaged in online trolling against Muslims and women, from entering the United States? After all, as journalist Shaun King just pointed out, “This white man murdered 6 more people than EVERY refugee from Donald Trump’s banned nation list combined.”
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I suspect well hear more about this in the coming days, but I found it interesting that the accused shooter was a student at Laval University, where one of his victims, Khaled Belkacemi, was a professor. One wonders if there’s a connection.
Can you imagine what the Republicans would have said if Obama had signed an executive order denying access to white, Christian Internet trolls at our borders?
I like the color photo of this guy better, because one can see his lovely blue eyes.
Ban all young male white nationalists! We would certainly be safer.
Did you see that Justin Trudeau made them take it back? HOT!!!!
The Independent: “Donald Trump administration ‘wants to cut white supremacism from counter-extremism programme'”
Read more:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-cut-white-supremacism-countering-violent-extremism-programme-neo-nazi-counter-extremism-a7558796.html
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[…] Muslim ban to defend, and, as it turns out, the last big mass shooting we had – the one the administration had been using to demonstrate how critical it is that we keep Muslims out… – turned out to have been the work of a white, conservative, Trump supporter. [Ooops!] […]
[…] it’s not the press that’s ignoring them. It’s the White House. Take for example the recent murder of six Muslim men in Quebec that was perpetrated by a white Trump supporter. For some reason, Trump has yet to mention it, choosing instead to talk at length by a non-deadly […]
[…] not the press that’s ignoring them, though. It’s the White House. Take for example the recent murder of six Muslim men in Quebec that was perpetrated by a white Trump supporter. For some reason, Trump has yet to mention it, choosing instead to talk at length by a non-deadly […]