Donald Trump is criticized and lambasted every day in almost all languages because of his controversial racist sexist statements. His comments forced The president of the United States Barrack Obama to publicly denounce Trump in many occasions, and made a prestigious publication like the Foreign Policy feel the necessity to make an endorsement of Hillary Clinton because "A Donald Trump presidency is among the greatest threats facing America, and the Republican standard-bearer is the worst major-party candidate for the job in U.S. history".
Everyone is blaming Trump for fear-mongering but is he really responsible for the hate circus we are witnessing?
Trump is speaking the mind of millions of Americans who share his ideas and thoughts. Their top concern is immigration, which even topped the issue of terrorism according to PEW research center. 79% of Trump supporters favor building a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border and 59% associate unauthorized immigrants with serious criminal behavior. Trump did not plant these ideas in the heads of Americans, he is simply using them for his own advantage.
The world has been suffering from terrorism for quite some time now and it is only logical that people feel scared for their lives, but stereotyping the innocent and putting them in the same group with the terrorists only serves in breeding more terrorists. 3 Kansas men who called themselves "The crusaders" were plotting a bomb attack targeting an apartment complex home to a mosque and many Muslim immigrants. One of the men believed that "The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim". I think those 3 men are victims of faulty media propaganda like the ones Fox News made. Fox used old footage of Muslims chanting on a train as an evidence in the refugees crisis (2015) although the video dated back to 2010 which was long before the crisis even began. Moreover they used a title "Terrorists inbound?" though nothing in the video indicates anything linking people in the video to terrorism!
We have to stop blaming Trump, the real culprits here are media outlets and politicians who kept trumpeting over many years that immigrants were stealing jobs, Mexicans were rapists and Muslims were terrorists. Americans were fed poisonous racist rhetoric every day, till they became so filled with fear of the other. Now we see stories that were to be considered silly or even insane not so long ago but now they became our everyday norm. A woman detained for reading an Arabic book, an Emirati man was arrested because he was dressed in traditional clothes, a UK student was stabbed in neck for speaking Polish and the list goes on. This is what fear does to people.
Brexit is a proof of what the inflammatory false stereotyping can lead to. The former British Prime Minister David Cameron who was criticized for dehumanizing immigrants was the same person who was shocked by the result of the referendum.
For this hate and xenophobic rhetoric to stop there must be a moment of truth. Those media outlets and politicians who spent years sowing this in the minds of people must take their responsibility for making someone like Trump a candidate in the American presidential elections. Media must learn that publishing sensational stories for the sake of distribution is not only unethical but also harmful to the present and future of nations.
"Fear makes people do terrible things" - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
This might be a line from a movie but I think it is absolutely true.
