The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Violent Trump meme video must be denounced
Let’s call this “Enemy of the People,” Part 2. Or, more likely, Part 4,002.
The “Enemy of the People” is not poverty or cancer or nuclear weapons, in the view of President Donald Trump. No, it’s the people who bring you the news every day. With the exception of commentators on the conservativeleaning Fox News broadcast, that is, although he’s been ripping them lately, too.
Back on Aug. 23 in the column “Trump is wrong to rail against a free press,” I took on the president’s disdain of the media and discussed the tenet of objectivity in reporting. (I made the distinction between news and opinion — this column is my opinion and much like commentary on the Opinion page is not meant to be objective.)
Trump’s “enemy of the people” label — he loves throwing pejorative taglines — first surfaced in this tweet April 5: “The press is doing everything within their power to fight the magnificence of the phrase, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! They can’t stand the fact that this Administration has done more than virtually any other Administration in its first 2yrs. They are truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
It was a step further along the “Fake News” road he went down during his campaign for the nation’s highest office. I would hope that most people could see through calling anything you disagree with as “fake news” — but not so.
What happened recently shows the extended consequence of Trump’s blatantly false labels. He has enabled an atmosphere of demonizing the news media.
I’m talking about the video shown at a convention of Trump supporters (at his Miami resort) recently in which the president’s image is pasted on a killer who is shooting people — with logos of news organizations and photos of opponents superimposed on their heads.
The video has been removed from YouTube. Here is part of the description in The New York Times, which received a phonerecorded copy from someone at the convention:
“The video depicts a scene inside the ‘Church of Fake News,’ where parishioners rise as Mr. Trump — dressed in a black pinstripe suit and tie — walks down the aisle. Many parishioners’ faces have been replaced with the logos of news media organizations, including PBS, NPR, Politico, The Washington Post and NBC.
“Mr. Trump stops in the middle of the church, pulls a gun out of his suit jacket pocket and begins a graphic rampage. As the parishioners try to flee, the president fires at them . ...
“Some of those in the church try to apprehend Mr. Trump. He fends them off and makes his way toward the altar, knocking over several pews. He wrestles a parishioner with a Vice News logo as a face to the ground and then shoots the person at pointblank range. ...
“From there, Mr. Trump attacks a range of his critics. He strikes the late Arizona Sen. John McCain in the back of the neck. He hits the television personality Rosie O’Donnell in the face and then stabs her in the head. He strikes Rep. Maxine Waters, Democrat of California. He lights the head of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential rival, on fire . ...
“The clip ends with Mr. Trump putting a stake into the head of a person with a CNN logo for a face. Mr. Trump then stands on the altar, admiring his rampage, and smiles.”
This is what we’ve come to in this country? It’s not satire. It’s not funny. It’s sickening.
No one, that I’ve seen, is taking responsibility. The organizer of the event by the proTrump group, American Priority, said the video clip was part of a “meme exhibit” submitted by third parties and not associated with the conference in an official capacity.
“American Priority rejects all political violence and aims to promote a healthy dialogue about the preservation of free speech. This matter is under review,” Alex Phillips told The New York Times.
A White House spokesman said Trump “strongly condemns” the violent video.
But guess who hasn’t personally denounced it? Yep. The president of the United States tweets on all sorts of issues, but is silent so far on this one.
I hesitated to write about this, not wanting to give attention to something disgusting. And with the administration lurching from one outrage to another, soon this will quickly become “old news.”
But ignoring something wrong ultimately normalizes it.
On Thursday, I had the opportunity to chat with a Danbury resident and local businessman who is registered unaffiliated and voted for Trump. Stephen Griffing came to a “Coffee with the Editor” gathering hosted by The NewsTimes’ Managing Editor John Alcott. Steve reminded me that he had taken issue with one of my columns from 2011 and wrote a Letter to the Editor.
I asked him what he thought of the video. Absolutely inappropriate, he replied. He had seen it before it was taken down and did not condone it in any way.
So this gives me hope that our country is not so completely polarized. Reason and decency still exist.
Aside from denouncing the demonization of the media, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal is calling on Congress to pass the Journalist Protection Act, which he cosponsored and reintroduced in March. It would make physical attacks and threats of attacks against journalists a federal crime.
Though a coalition of journalism organizations, such as News Media for Open Government, support the act, I’m not convinced. Once something is law, it can be changed. The First Amendment protects a free press, and as part of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution cannot be diluted. That’s powerful.
What journalists need is for the public to understand that we are not the “Enemy of the People.” History has shown that efforts to delegitimize sources of news is one of the first steps to totalitarian government.