The way that President-elect Donald Trump responded to the terrorist attack in New Orleans on New Year's Day says a lot about how he is likely to behave when it comes to terrorism in his second term.
Writing for The Guardian, Robert Tait said that Trump's reaction "especially when combined with his false accompanying message that the episodes confirmed his frequent warnings against open borders and illegal immigrants."
Trump's post on Truth Social claimed "the USA is breaking down" and claimed only "strength and powerful leadership" will stop it.
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Tait recalled the 20% increase in anti-Muslim hate that erupted after a radicalized Islamist husband-and-wife team killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California in 2015 after Trump took to social media and ranted about it.
Professor Brian Levin of the California State University and founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism recalled that after Trump lashed out at the Black Lives Matter movement, anti-Black crime surged.
“It’s about the most extreme language you can get when it comes to anti-immigrant comments,” Heidi Beirich told The Guardian. She co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which tracks far-right movements.
“The attacks on immigrants, coming from Trump for a long time now, and inflamed by the situation where the person who did the [New Orleans] attack is not even an immigrant, are certainly going to raise the level of violence and attacks on immigrants in the country," Beirich added.
“Statements by presidents and other political leaders have a violent impact downstream,” Levin said. “Those toxins surface elsewhere."
The former New York City police officer said that a president's use of stereotypes and conspiracies reverberates into aggression.
The danger, he warned, is that Trump's comments will inspire vigilante attacks from his supporters.
“We’re concerned that this will in some way be taken as a message to folks who think they’ve been deputized to go after people who they think are undocumented,” Levin said.
He claims that there will still be far-right terrorism but that there's a rising threat "likely to emerge from the hard left." He used the U.S. response to President Richard Nixon from defunct groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Weather Underground as examples.
“Couple that with what we have going on internationally, where we have the highest frequency of conflicts we’ve seen in some time; add in idiosyncratic extremists, either their single-issue or idiosyncratic prejudices and hatreds, then you see there really is a perfect storm. The key words going forward are everything, everywhere, all at once. We’re diversifying and evolving with regard to extremism," he predicted.
