Horror in El Paso
The shooting was domestic terrorism. We must confront our gun crisis and white supremacy.
El Paso. Dayton. Gilroy. Parkland. Dallas. Santa Fe. Sutherland Springs. Las Vegas. Orlando. Sandy Hook. The list could continue to the bottom of this page and the names of the victims nearly fill this newspaper. After so many mass shootings, can there be any question that this country has a gun crisis?
We also have a domestic-terrorism crisis. Too many of the shooters carry inside their fevered minds a shared ideology and, these days, a growing sense that they’re on the march.
Both crises are connected to a leadership crisis.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick responded to the El Paso shootings by telling us the problem lies with video games. Gov. Greg Abbott summoned that useful catch-all phrase “mental illness.” President Donald Trump blamed a smorgasbord of random factors, including video games, mental illness and the “fake media.”
This craven foolishness endangers the lives of men, women and children across the nation.
The same elected officials are downplaying the domestic-terrorism crisis. The young man at the Gilroy Garlic Festival had posted whitenationalist ideology on Instagram and had white-nationalist materials at his home. Shortly before the El Paso gunman opened fire, he posted a vicious screed decrying the Hispanic “invasion” of Texas, using rhetoric similar to Trump’s.
FBI Director Christopher Wray knows what we’re up against. He told Congress recently that the majority of domestic-terrorism arrests since last October have been linked to white supremacy.
A study by the Anti-Defamation League confirmed that. In 2018, 50 people were murdered in 17 incidents by extremist groups in the U.S. White supremacists were responsible for 38 deaths. One victim was killed by a domestic Islamic extremist. That tracks with data going back to 2009: The ADL says white supremacists were behind the deaths of 76 percent of the 313 extremist murders in America since then.
American history is full of such crimes, but it has also been the story of overcoming that hate to build a diverse nation we should all be able to call home. The difference today is the ubiquity of social media and the power of instantaneous, worldwide communication. The difference, also, is a president playing with fire.
In his brief remarks on Monday, Trump decried hate in language that many Americans have longed for him to use. Racism and hate, he said clearly, have no place here.
They were welcome words, but he’s said the right things before, and usually backslides soon after. This is the same man who identified “very fine people” among the neo-Nazi in Charlottesville and said not long ago that white nationalism is confined to a small group of troubled individuals. Nothing really to worry about.
Here in Texas, fortunately, a couple of the president’s fellow Republicans were willing to address the domestic-terrorism threat. Land Commissioner George P. Bush, whose mother is a Mexican immigrant, described domestic terrorism as “a real and present threat that we must all denounce and defeat.”
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz also labeled the El Paso shooter a domestic terrorist. “As the son of a Cuban immigrant, I am deeply horrified by the hateful anti-Hispanic bigotry expressed in the shooter’s so-called manifesto,” he said. He called the massacre a “heinous act of terrorism and white supremacy.” These remarks offer a glimmer of hope that Americans, left and right, can come together to stand up to terrorism in all its forms.
They also mark the first and easiest step toward combating the threat. Republicans must denounce vile racist statements, no matter who is speaking. Republicans need to remind this president regularly that his racist invective gives license to the deranged among us and emboldens racists. They also need to remind him that the FBI and other federal law-enforcement agencies need his support, not his disparagement.
Beyond words are deeds. Banks, business leaders, local law enforcement and particularly technology companies need to be on the alert to identify and to thwart domestic terrorism. Social media platforms must begin treating white-nationalist screeds the way they do rhetoric from Islamist extremists.
Congress should take up swiftly two bills—the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act and the Domestic Terrorism DATA Act — that would give authorities more tools to track and counter domestic terrorists before they act. In short, America needs to begin treating domestic terrorism as the threat it really is.
“In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated,” the president said Monday, as El Paso and Dayton mourned their dead. He’s exactly right. Now it’s up to us, his fellow Americans, to hold him to it.