Not surprisingly, a key member of the ADL has found that Trump’s racist rhetoric has sparked a massive increase in hate crimes across the nation and world.
Sharon Nazarian, political science professor and board member of the Anti-Defamation League, told Salon Friday that Trump's rhetoric, such as when he described some of the white supremacists who marched at an infamous 2017 rally in Charlottesville as "very fine people," to a stark increase in anti-Semitic attacks.
" Trump continues to tell anti-Semites that it is fine to operate out in the open and radicalize people through their use of disinformation and misinformation on the internet," Nazarian told senior writer Chauncey DeVega. "We are in a moment of crisis."
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Nazarian reveals the ADL's recent audit of anti-Semitic incidents found a 140 percent increase "year over year" in the U.S. with about 5,000 attacks between October — when the Israel-Hamas War erupted — and December.
The report also found a global increase in anti-Semitic attacks with numbers quadrupling in France and Germany and raising a stark 589 percent in Great Britain, Nazarian reports.
And this is merely the tip of the iceberg.
There was also the rise in attacks on Asians following Covid-19 and Trump calling it the “Kung Flu.”
Amid widespread reports of discrimination and violence against Asian Americans during the coronavirus outbreak, 32% of Asian adults say they have feared someone might threaten or physically attack them – a greater share than other racial or ethnic groups. The vast majority of Asian adults (81%) also say violence against them is increasing, far surpassing the share of all U.S. adults (56%) who say the same, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
The new survey was conducted April 5 to 11, after the fatal shooting of six Asian women and two other people in the Atlanta area on March 16 and assaults on Asian Americans that occurred that same month (Asian adults were interviewed in English only). President Joe Biden spoke out against anti-Asian discrimination and violence a few days after the shooting.
Overall, 45% of Asian adults say they have experienced at least one of five specific offensive incidents since the start of the coronavirus outbreak. At the same time, 32% say someone has expressed support for them since the start of the pandemic.
Some 27% say people acted as if they were uncomfortable around them, down from 39% who said the same in June 2020. Another 27% say they have been subject to slurs or jokes, the same share as in 2020. Meanwhile, lower shares say someone has made a remark that they should go back to their home country (16%) or that they are to blame for the coronavirus outbreak (14%).
We’ve had Trump’s constant drum-beat about “crime in Democrat cities” which he really means “Black Crime” when in fact crime in general has been dramatically falling.
Misleading statements about crime and public safety are already proliferating in this election cycle. As November draws closer, misinformation is likely to intensify. That makes it even more important to take a close look at what the best and most recent crime data tells us. One major trend is becoming clear: violent crime dropped in 2021 and 2022 — and then declined again, significantly, in 2023. We’ll have to wait until the fall for final government data to confirm this trend. Until then, here’s what we know, how we know it, and what it means — drawing on both city data and the most recent information from the FBI.
City-level data shows declines in violent crime
City-level crime reports are the best places to look for up-to-the-minute crime data. Combining enough city-level crime data can, in turn, approximate national trends. Two research teams have used this approach to give a sense of crime in 2023. Both show sharp declines in violent crime.
- Drawing on data from 38 cities across the country, the Council on Criminal Justice reported that homicide declined by 10 percent in 2023. It also noted declines in assaults, gun assaults, burglary, and larceny, but a sharp spike in motor vehicle thefts.
- Similarly, Jeff Asher, a researcher and expert in data on crime and public safety, studied murder data from 175 cities and found a 7 percent decline in murders through December 7, 2023, compared to 2022. These cities are from across the country and include jurisdictions led by Republicans and Democrats alike.
A murder decline of this magnitude would be historic; the sharpest one-year drop on record occurred in 1996 when the number of murders nationwide fell by a little more than 9 percent compared to 1995.
More specifically, crime is far more common and concentrated in Red States rather than Blue. This was true even when Trump was in the White House,
Mr Trump has repeatedly said that the 10 most dangerous cities in the US are all run by Democrats.
We asked The White House press office what the president's data source was for his claim, and they directed us to a Washington Post fact-check article on crime in cities.
That article uses Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) crime data from the first half of 2019 - the most recent official data source on US cities with populations over 100,000.
The top 10 cities for overall violent crime, which includes major urban areas New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, are all run by Democrats.
The Republican-run city with the highest number of cases of violent crime is Jacksonville in Florida, which is 17th on the FBI list.
However, if we look at violent crime cases per 10,000 people, Mr Trump's claim isn't quite correct.
Springfield in Missouri is run by an independent mayor. The rest, though, have Democratic administrations.
Most large cities in America, however, are run by Democrats.
As of September 2020, the top 100 largest US cities are run by 64 Democrats, 28 Republicans, three independents and four non-partisans.
As a matter of fact, Crime rates are higher in Red States.
- The red state murder rate was 33% higher than the blue state murder rate in both 2021 and 2022.
- 2022 was the 23rd consecutive year that murder plagued Trump-voting states at far higher levels than Biden-voting states.
- 8 out of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2022 voted for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020.
- From 2000 to 2022, the average red state murder rate was 24% higher than the average blue state murder rate.
- Red states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama are America’s murder capitals and have had the highest three murder rates for 15 of the last 23 years.
- The excuse that sky high red state murder rates are because of their blue cities is without merit. Even after removing the county with the largest city from red states, and not from blue states, red state murder rates were still 20% higher in 2021 and 16% higher in 2022.
House Republicans held three field hearings on violent crime last year in New York City, Chicago, and Washington DC. These hearings should have been held in the murder-plagued states of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. In 2023, Speaker Johnson’s hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana had a murder rate 8 times higher (41.1) than Minority Leader Jeffries’ hometown of Brooklyn, New York (5.0), 6 times higher than Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco, California (6.6), and more than 7 times higher than the national average (5.5). Our 2023 report in the Red State Murder Problem series found that murder rates were significantly higher in red states than blue states every year from 2000 to 2020. Over these 21 years, the red state murder rate was 23% higher than the blue state murder rate. Our analysis of the latest CDC data found that 2021 and 2022 were no exception.
All of this is designed to spark fear and panic about Black people. Trump has repeatedly made similar falls claims about “MIgrant crime.”
In the past few months, politicians and certain media outlets have latched on to a narrative that recent immigrants, especially undocumented ones, are causing spikes in crime. Instead of gathering data and examining the issue empirically, they are making this broad assertion based on highly publicized individual incidents of crime by undocumented immigrants. All acts of violence must be taken seriously. But policymakers should not attribute blame to entire classes of people when individuals commit crimes.
The research does not support the view that immigrants commit crime or are incarcerated at higher rates than native-born Americans. In fact, immigrants might have less law enforcement contact compared to nonimmigrants. Focusing on the facts is imperative, especially given that immigration has become a top issue for voters ahead of the election.
Substantial research has assessed the relationship between immigration and crime. Numerous studies show that immigration is not linked to higher levels of crime, but rather the opposite. Studies have also examined the impact of the concentration of immigrants in a community on crime patterns, finding that immigration is associated with lower crime rates and an increase in structural factors — such as social connection and economic opportunity — that are linked to neighborhood safety.
Time after time, Trump has excused and ignored White Supremacists and Anti-Semites including Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, those who were part of the “Unite the Right Rally” and the Proud Boys — who he told to “Stand back and Stand By” — those who attacked the Capitol and those who are part of the Lunatic Q-Anon movement.
He’s always been anti-Islamic, particularly with his Muslim Ban which also kept the translators who worked with our Troops in Afghanistan from escaping the Taliban. He’s attack Asians blaming them personally for Covid-19, and he constantly attacks black people and migrants and “Criminal and thugs” without any real factual evidence to back any of that up.
All of this has had an impact, while general crime has gone down — Hate Crimes have gone up.
Data from the FBI’s annual crime report shows an overall dip in US violent crime, but a stark increase in hate crimes.
The new statistics from the federal agency, released on Monday, show that in 2022, violent offenses decreased to pre-pandemic levels.
Violent crime dropped by 1.7%, in stark contrast to claims from politicians in both political parties that crime is rising.
Murder and non-negligent manslaughter decreased by 6.1% compared with the previous year. Rape and assault also decreased, by 5.4% and 1.1% respectively.
But property crimes and hate crimes increased significantly in 2022. Property crimes increased by 7.3%, with instances of robbery increasing by 1.3% nationwide.
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Hate crime incidents also increased, according to the FBI’s data.
Over 11,634 hate crime incidents were reported in 2022, compared with 10,840 the previous year.
A majority of hate crimes targeted Black people, with 51.9% of hate crime victims targeted due to “anti-Black or African American bias”, the report said.
The 2022 data also showed a sharp increase in anti-Hispanic bias.
There were also an increasing number of hate crimes against LGBTQ+ individuals, with 1,947 hate crime incidents in 2022 targeting an individual in relation to their sexual orientation, versus 1,711 the year before.
Joe Biden issued a statement from the White House, which said: “Antisemitic hate crimes rose 25% from 2021 to 2022, and antisemitism accounted for over half of all reported religion-based hate crimes. Anti-LGBTQI+ hate crimes rose 16%, and Muslim Americans and African Americans continue to be overrepresented among victims.”
The US president added: “The data is a reminder that hate never goes away, it only hides. Any hate crime is a stain on the soul of America.”
Trump and his MAGA flock are a clear threat to the rest of us in America. That threat needs to be recognized and dealt with (at the ballot box).