Trump’s Joint Session of Congress Performance Gave “VOICE” to Hate

If you put lipstick on a pig, it remains a pig. Similarly, hate speech remains hate speech even when read from a teleprompter and spewed with a smile. Surrounding hate speech with images of patriotism and lip service to acceptance of people who look and pray differently than the majority doesn’t change the fact that it is hate speech. We saw that first-hand the other night, as Donald Trump delivered his Joint Session of Congress speech.

During the period since Trump took the oath of office, he has made it abundantly clear that he is not America’s president and he doesn’t want to be. Trump is and will continue to be his base’s president and only his base’s president. Consider just a few of the events since Trump took the oath on January 20th.

He indulged in Holocaust denial on Holocaust Memorial Day. Not only did he omit any mention of Jews in his own statement, Trump nixed the State Department’s statement that reportedly did mention Jews in favor of one that did not.

He never did condemn a Trump fan’s hate crime against Muslims in Canada. Trump remains silent about the dramatic surge of hate crimes since he took the oath of office.

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As noted by Teen Vogue

The rise in hate crimes in New York City correlates with a national increase since the election. And in addition to the uptick in crimes against Jews, there has also been a significant rising in crimes against Muslims. Researchers at The Southern Poverty Law Center attributed this rise to the rhetoric that has emerged from Trump’s campaign, as well as his presidency.

Until the other night, he was silent after a white man in Kansas shouted “get out of my country” before gunning down 3 people.

He gives “VOICE” to one set of victims of horrific crimes while condoning with his silence and inaction, horrific crimes against other victims.

Conversely, after Trump decided to pay some lip service to the condemnation of hatred during his performance; he introduced Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement or VOICE.

I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American Victims. The office is called VOICE –- Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media and silenced by special interests.

The real purpose of VOICE is to distort the facts by taking isolated incidents and raising them to levels to suggest that criminal behavior is a general trend among immigrants.

It’s also straight out of the Nazi handbook as explained by Andrea Pitzer
.

And we see back in Nazi Germany there was a paper called—a Nazi paper called Der Stürmer, and they had a department called “Letter Box,” and readers were invited to send in stories of supposed Jewish crimes. And Der Stürmer would publish them, and they would include some pretty horrific graphic illustrations of these crimes, as well. And there was even a sort of a lite version of it, if you will, racism lite, in which the Neues Volk, which was more like a Look or a Life magazine, which normally highlighted beautiful Aryan families and their beautiful homes, would run a feature like “The Criminal Jew,” and they would show photos of “Jewish-looking,” as they called it, people who represented different kinds of crimes that one ought to watch out for from Jews.”

VOICE is nothing more than a contemporary version of Der Stürmer’s “Letter Box” with the intended target group being anyone who wasn’t born in America. Trump hopes or anticipates that VOICE will suffice as an alternative to studies conducted by his own DHS and the CATO institute which contradict the general premise that immigrants are bad people and bad for America.

DHS Intelligence destroyed Trump’s justification to ban people from seven predominantly Muslim countries by concluding that nationality is not an indicator of criminality.

The right wing CATO Institute points to two types of studies on immigration and crime. The first type analyzes survey data collected by the Census and American Community Survey, which concludes that immigrants are “less crime prone than the native-born population.”

The second type is a macro level analysis which examines the impact of immigration on the crime rate. Under this method, analysts concluded that immigration does not increase crime. It might even result in a decline in crime rates.

With VOICE, Trump can take isolated incidents and make it appear like they illustrate a trend. He can cite VOICE as “data” to justify his Muslim ban. He can go on with the con that ICE is only rounding up the violent criminals when the fact is ICE is also deporting victims of domestic abuse, and restaurant owners.

Donald Trump’s performance was a repeat performance of Trump spewing hate. The only difference is this time he did it with a teleprompter and a smile.

Adalia Woodbury

Former contributor.