Politics

David Sirota: Things would be ‘uglier’ if Sandy Hook shooter hadn’t been white [VIDEO]

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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On Sunday morning’s broadcast of “Up w/Chris Hayes,” liberal Salon.com columnist David Sirota suggested that Republicans will resist efforts to closely monitor and track dangerous mentally disturbed individuals, simply because many loners with mental illness are white.

“… The way we’ve accustomed ourselves to think about security post-9/11 … is: ‘OK, here’s what we need to do. We need to create a whole new profiling regime to keep track on people with diagnosed mental illness, and essentially follow them around like suspected terrorists to make sure they don’t do anything like this,'” Hayes said.

“And that is a really chilling thought, and also it doesn’t seem like a particularly productive policy, but I can see that being a very appealing policy,” he added.

But Sirota said that kind of profiling system would be politically untenable.

“The issue with it will be politically, I think, the profile is white men,” Sirota said. “The profile, that’s a profile that’s not essentially in America, allowed to be profiled. That’s the one profile in America that’s not allowed to be profiled. If this was any other kind of demographic, you would be hearing that I think, in a different way — a much uglier way.”

The columnist reminded viewers that Republicans trashed a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report that warned law enforcement officials about dangerous right-wing extremists.

“Will you see the same reaction from the Republican Party back when there was the … report [that] came out raising flags over right-wing militias and veterans? …” Sirota asked. “The Republicans said, ‘This is the way to demonize essentially white America or good God-fearing Americans.'”

(h/t Noah Rothman, Mediaite)

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