President Trump is still facing a torrent of criticism for his responses to the Charlottesville violence.
After calling out the hatred and violence from “many sides” on Saturday, Trump finally did what the media demanded and condemned white nationalists and other hate groups by name.
Yet, that wasn’t good enough for the chattering class, and the new denunciation is not winning the president any goodwill.
While it’s certainly true the president could have articulated a better message over the weekend, his administration is taking a very hard line on the Charlottesville violence. The Department of Justice is launching a civil rights investigation into the matter and Attorney General Jeff Sessions described the car attack that left one woman dead as domestic terror.
But the president continues to be barraged with accusations that he’s basically letting white nationalists get away with murder. In light of the criticism against the current president, it’s worth remembering how the previous president dealt with an act of domestic terror committed by a racial nationalist.
In July of 2016, an avowed black nationalist murdered five police officers during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Dallas, Texas. The act of violence was well-planned and was motivated entirely by the hate-filled ideology of the shooter, Micah Xavier Johnson.
With several officers dead by the hand of a committed black nationalist, one might think the Obama administration may have considered the assassinations domestic terror and launched an investigation into groups associated with this ideology.
Not at all.
Barack Obama condemned the shootings, but he did not call out or even allude to Johnson’s hateful views. He did, however, blame “powerful weapons” for the violence.
In her statement on the shooting, then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch exploited the tragedy to push for gun control and praise the cause of Black Lives Matter. No mention of Johnson’s ideology or “hate” in was made in her statement, but she did manage to directly name multiple cases of police-involved shootings — all after cops were the ones murdered.
Trump and his administration were urged to speak strongly against the alt-right on the presumption that there would further violence if none was taken.
In the case of the Dallas shooting, there was further violence from black nationalists following the attack. In the same month, three officers were gunned down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana by an adherent to this radical ideology. (RELATED: Baton Rouge Shooter Gavin Eugene Long Was Nation Of Islam Member, Railed Against ‘Crackers’ On YouTube Channel)
In a less violent case that also occurred in July of 2016, several churches in the area of St. Louis, Missouri, were vandalized and graffitied with rhetoric associated with black nationalism.
Once again, no demands for the Obama administration to condemn these actions — quite unlike how Trump is browbeaten to do so any whiff of extremism from the Right.
This violence has continued into the Trump era as well. A black Muslim, Kori Muhammad, murdered three white men in Fresno, California back in April, because of the color of their skin. Muhammad openly admitted this racial motivation in interviews with police and laughed about his murders. Prior to the killings, the shooter had made numerous anti-white social media posts and rap videos. (RELATED: Anti-White Fresno Killer LAUGHED About Murders During Police Interview)
In May, a black nationalist, Derrick Lamont Brown, shot a paramedic and opened fire on police. The authorities were responding to Brown killing his roommate and shooting a neighbor. This black nationalist was associated with the Huey Newton Gun Club, to which Micah Johnson also had ties. (RELATED: FBI Was Investigating Black Nationalist Leader Who Shot Dallas Paramedic, Cops)
Based on this evidence, there seems to be a lot of violence associated with black power ideology. But there has hardly been any mention of it by the press. In the case of Kori Muhammad, most major outlets ignored the violence entirely, in spite of its clearly hate-filled nature. No condemnation was made of it by Trump or any other politician.
A clear contrast to the violence in Charlottesville.
The federal government has a responsibility to look into groups that may be responsible for violence. But it appears the chattering class only considers groups that can be tied to Trump — however distant or non-existent of a link there may be — as threats worth pursuing.
As left-wing demonstrators are emboldened and getting more aggressive following the violence in Charlottesville, this avoidance could continue to cost lives.
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