In a series of tweets on Friday morning anti-racism activist and author Tim Wise made a direct connection between President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement that propelled him into the White House and the rise of white nationalism that appears to have played a major role in the slaughter of 49 Muslims gunned down in a New Zealand mosque.
While the motives of the suspect behind the killings are still being investigated, Wise notes that Trump's tepid response due to the religion of the victims is completely unsurprising.
"I think we all know that if a Muslim had gone into a church and massacred 49 Christians the president would be tweeting non stop, and not using the passive voice ("people died senselessly") and naming Muslim extremism as the culprit, and renewing his call for bans/profiling," Wise wrote.
He continued, "But when a white racist massacres Muslims, or a white racist massacres Jews (In Pittsburgh), he offers prayers and generic condemnations, with no reference to the hateful ideology at the root of the violence. The enemy is white supremacist/nationalist ideology."
Wise then checked off multiple examples of white racists who have been exposed in the age of Trump, adding, "It is white racists who see Donald Trump as their avatar: an avatar of rage and nostalgic rebirth."
In summary, he concluded, "It is a fight for the very soul of America. A fight for whether we go backwards to a time of white domination and racial fascism (which is what the MAGAts desire) or forward to multiracial democracy. Time's up. Pick a side. Because they already have."
You can read his whole series of tweets below:
