New York Times (Editorial)
November 24, 2015
America
has just lived through another presidential campaign week dominated by
Donald Trump’s racist lies. Here’s a partial list of false statements:
The United States
is about to take in 250,000 Syrian refugees; African-Americans are
responsible for most white homicides; and during the 9/11 attacks,
“thousands and thousands” of people in an unnamed “Arab” community in
New Jersey “were cheering as that building was coming
down.”
In
the Republican field, Mr. Trump has distinguished himself as fastest to
dive to the bottom. If it’s a lie too vile to utter aloud, count on Mr.
Trump to say it, often.
It wins him airtime, and retweets through the roof.
This
phenomenon is in fact nothing new. Politicians targeting minorities,
foreigners or women have always existed in the culture. And every
generation or so, at least
one demagogue surfaces to fan those flames.
Here’s
Donald Trump on Sunday: “When the Syrian refugees are going to start
pouring into this country, we don’t know if they’re ISIS, we don’t know
if it’s a Trojan horse.
And I definitely want a database and other checks and balances. We want
to go with watch lists. We want to go with databases. And we have no
choice. We have no idea who’s being sent in here. This could be the —
it’s probably not, but it could be the great
Trojan horse of all time, where they come in.”
Here’s
Joseph McCarthy in 1950: “Today we are engaged in a final, all-out
battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern
champions of communism have selected
this as the time, and ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down — they
are truly down.”
Here’s
Donald Trump last Tuesday: “We’re going to have to do things that we
never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I
think that now everybody
is feeling that security is going to rule. And certain things will be
done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of
information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to
do certain things that were frankly unthinkable
a year ago.”
Here’s
George Wallace in 1963: “We must redefine our heritage, re-school our
thoughts in the lessons our forefathers knew so well, in order to
function and to grow and
to prosper. We can no longer hide our head in the sand and tell
ourselves that the ideology of our free fathers is not being attacked
and is not being threatened by another idea ... for it is.”
Mr.
Trump relies on social media to spread his views. This is convenient
because there’s no need to respond to questions about his fabrications.
That makes it imperative
that other forms of media challenge him.
Instead,
as Mr. Trump stays at the top of the Republican field, it’s become a
full-time job just running down falsehoods like the phony crime
statistics he tweeted, which
came from a white supremacist group.
Yet
Mr. Trump is regularly rewarded with free TV time, where he talks right
over anyone challenging him, and doubles down when called out on his
lies.
This
isn’t about shutting off Mr. Trump’s bullhorn. His right to spew
nonsense is protected by the Constitution, but the public doesn’t need
to swallow it. History teaches
that failing to hold a demagogue to account is a dangerous act. It’s no
easy task for journalists to interrupt Mr. Trump with the facts, but
it’s an important one.
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