The El Paso Walmart shooting, white nationalist manifestos, Nazi inspired tweets, and Donald Trump
Today, a twenty-one year old white man decided to shoot up a Walmart in El Paso, leaving at least twenty people dead and numerous more injured. There are a number of unconfirmed reports and alleged social media pages tying the shooter to white nationalism and to Donald Trump. While we wait for the confirmed facts to come in, at least some aspects of what happened today are undeniable.
This morning Donald Trump, in his capacity as President of the United States, posted two xenophobic retweets from a woman named Katie Hopkins, who has previously called for a Nazi-inspired “final solution” against immigrant minorities. This afternoon, a white man decided to murder as many people as possible in an American border city that’s full of immigrants. Maybe the former directly inspired the latter. Maybe it didn’t. Either way, we’ve got a huge problem on our hands.
A we sit here in shock, watching this nightmare play out, and waiting for answers, we’re left asking the horrifyingly valid question of whether the President of the United States caused this mass shooting to happen when he retweeted a Nazi sympathizer. The fact that we have to ask the question at all – and the fact that the answer may very well be yes – tells us all we need to know.
America needs far more comprehensive gun control and enforcement, because it’s the most concrete and effective step we can take to reduce the frequency and body counts of these mass shootings. America also needs to cease having a President of the United States who pushes the kind of racist rhetoric that can inspire these kinds of atrocities. It’s time for Donald Trump to be impeached.
