The following video was shot at a Tea Party protest of a fundraiser for homeless and domestic abuse shelters. The reason the Tea Partiers are there is because the fundraiser was hosted by Muslims. As you can see, they scream some of the most hateful things at the participants, including at young children.
The Orange County Register states that the original plan was to protest the speakers at the event, a fairly normal occurence in American civic life. I do not believe the American Muslim community should give a platform to people who support designated terrorist organizations, or espouse anti-Semitic rhetoric. The speaker in question, Amir Abdel Malik Ali, was cited by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “bigoted speaker.”
In this video, however, and by all reports, none of the protestors were actually protesting the speakers. They were yelling and screaming at people who had come to give money to help end domestic violence and homelessness. The protestors were saying that these were the actions of terrorists. They were cursing children as young as 4. As Glenn Greenwald says:
I think what was most striking about that video is that the presence of small children didn’t give these anti-Muslim protesters even momentary pause; they just continued screeching their ugly invective while staring at 4-year-olds walking with their parents. People like that are so overflowing with hatred and resentments that the place where their humanity — their soul — is supposed to be has been drowned.
There is no excuse for this behavior. It is pure, unbridled bigotry. There is no way to explain it away, and muddying the waters by saying there was anti-Semitic speaker there does not make it OK to call charity “terrorism,” or to terrorize young children.
The video also shows elected representatives speaking about a Muslim event—although it’s unclear if it is the same event. However, the point of these politicians is made succinctly by Villa Park Councilwoman Deborah Pauly, who said, “I know quite a few Marines who would be happy to help these terrorists to a, uh, early meeting in paradise.”
This is an elected representative presumably telling some of her constituents that US Marines should kill some of her other constituents—US citizens. For her, the people at the meeting were not human, were not citizens, were not constituents, but were “terrorists,” tried and convicted by her; and that is enough for her to call on the Marine Corps to exterminate them.
The fact that the Tea Party would be able to organize a hateful display should come as no surprise. As the foot soldiers of the Islamophobia industry, they were expected to be there. It goes to show how normal, and extreme, the hate has become. More worrisome is how elected officials not only do not see anything wrong with this, but are willing to throw out the Constitution to prove that they think Muslims need to be exterminated like vermin.
