Monday, October 5, 2020

the last book I ever read (Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth by Brian Stelter, excerpt twelve)

from Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth by Brian Stelter:

Apocalyptic “invasion” rhetoric richocheted all around the right-wing media world. The calls from spitting-mad listeners to talk radio and the hateful comments on hyperpartisan websites were worse than what was being spouted on Fox—but it was all connected. In Pennsylvania, forty-six-year-old anti-Semite Robert Bowers posted a message on a seedy Twitter alternative called Gab: “I noticed a change in people saying illegals, they now say invaders. I like this.”

Bowers fixated on HIAS, a Jewish refugee agency which gave life-changing help to refugees in America. On October 27 he wrote that HIAS “likes to bring invaders that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” Then he walked inside the Tree of Life synagogue and shot eleven people to death.



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