OP-ED: A Simple Solution To Prevent Hate Talk
Arthur Solomon
Media coverage has been filled with suggestions on how to stop hate talk ever since the killing of Asian spa workers in Georgia.
Missing was a simple method of doing so: Muzzle former disgraced, twice impeached President Donald Trump, his surrogates and white supremacists.
White supremacist organizations have been a source of problems in the United States long before Trump became president. But it was his hateful rhetoric since 2015 that gave the haters a voice that led to the Trump-inspired insurrection and storming of the Capitol on January 6.
When he announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on June 15, 2015, Trump said, “The US has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. Thank you… When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Trump’s racist’s comments continued throughout his presidency and in March, 2020, he expanded his attack to another continent, saying that the coronavirus was the “China Virus” and also calling Covid-19 the “Kung Flu,” which many analysts believe resulted in the growing number of attacks against them.
But Trump’s racist remarks didn’t begin with his 2015 Trump Tower speech.
His bigoted remarks date back to at least the 1970s, when the U.S. Department of Justice sued him for racial discrimination for violating The Fair Housing Act.
There are also other examples of his KKK-like thinking:
In 1989, “Mr. Trump placed full-page advertisements in four New York City newspapers, including The New York Times, calling for the state to adopt the death penalty for killers” according to a Times article. “He made clear that he was voicing this opinion because of the rape and assault of Trisha Meili, a woman who had been jogging in Central Park”.
“I want to hate these murderers and I always will,” Mr. Trump wrote in the May 1989 ad. “I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them,” according to a 2019 Times article, even though it was subsequently proven that the wrongly convicted, known as the “Central Park Five” were later proven innocent of the crime and subsequently released. Even then he never apologized for his statements.
Trump’s racist barrage against Blacks went national with his embrace of “birtherism,” which falsely accused President Barack Obama of not being born in the United States. And he has insulted non-white American citizens ever since.
An August 13, 2020, Vox story titled, “Donald Trump’s long history of racism, from the 1970s to 2020,” detailed the former president’s record of bigotry “taken largely from Dara Lind’s list for Vox and an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times.” (Vox is an American news website.)
An example of the president’s racism in the Vox article was described by a former employee at Trump’s Castle who said, “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor.”… “It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put us all in the back.”
But the most damage that he has done with his mouth has been to the entire American public, regardless of the color of their skin. His condemnation of mask wearing during the coronavirus pandemic, claiming it was a Democratic hoax and contradicting his own medical scientists, has needlessly caused the deaths of thousands of Americans.
The simple way to end hate speech is to muzzle Donald Trump, his surrogates and followers and for people to take the inflammatory right wing commentary on Fox News and other far right cable channels for what it is – fiction.
Mad dogs are muzzled and put down. Donald Trump, his surrogates and his hate monger-followers can be put down by having the media ignore what they say and limit news reports to the activities of law enforcement agencies. Taking away the public platform from hate groups and the former president would be among the biggest punishments that can be inflicted upon them.
Poet James Whitcombe Riley is credited with writing, “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.” Donald Trump is certainly no duck but by his words and deeds he is a racist.
While certainly everyone who supports Trump is not a racist, all racists support Donald Trump. He is the most despicable animal in the swamp.
And he is also a proven fraud and liar.
About the Author: Arthur Solomon, a former journalist, was a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, and was responsible for restructuring, managing and playing key roles in some of the most significant national and international sports and non-sports programs. He also traveled internationally as a media adviser to high-ranking government officials. He now is a frequent contributor to public relations publications, consults on public relations projects and is on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He can be reached at arthursolomon4pr (at) juno.com or artsolomon4pr@optimum.net.
