A rather disturbing response to the Paris attacks, building upon his previous advocacy of a mass expulsion program that would necessitate an unprecedented militarisation of US society for logistical reasons, let alone ideological ones:
Donald Trump would not rule out tracking Muslim Americans in a database or giving them “a special form of identification that noted their religion”, Yahoo news reported on Thursday in an interview with the Republican presidential candidate.
He said he would consider warrantless searches of Muslims and increased surveillance of mosques. “Certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy.”
Asked whether this might mean registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion, the candidate would not rule it out.
“We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
This is a great piece on the political context to these remarks by Trump and the discursive similarities between what we’re now seeing and pre-holocaust rhetoric in the United States:
During the 1930s and early 1940s, the United States resisted accepting large numbers of Jewish refugees escaping the Nazi terror sweeping Europe, in large part because of fearmongering by a small but vocal crowd.
They claimed that the refugees were communist or anarchist infiltrators intent on spreading revolution; that refugees were part of a global Jewish-capitalist conspiracy to take control of the United States from the inside; that the refugees were either Nazis in disguise or under the influence of Nazi agents sent to commit acts of sabotage; and that Jewish refugees were out to steal American jobs.
Many rejected Jews simply because they weren’t Christian.
In recent days, similar arguments are being resurrected to reject Syrian refugees fleeing sectarian terrorists and civil war.
From talk radio to the blogosphere to leading American politicians, anti-Syrian rhetoric claims that refugees are simply ISIS infiltrators; that migrants are Muslim invaders seeking to establish a “global caliphate” and impose Sharia law on America; and that Syrian refugees are lying about escaping violence and are focused instead on abusing the American welfare system.
Mark Carrigan 