WARNING: This video contains descriptions of terrorism and murder.
To deny them notoriety, names and faces of terrorists are intentionally not used.
On September 15th, 2001, a white man shot and killed a Pakistani immigrant outside of
a grocery store in Texas.
On September 21st, 2001, that same white man shot a Bangladeshi immigrant in the face.
On October 4th, 2001, that same white man shot and killed an Indian immigrant.
In 2002, he sent a letter from jail in which he said the attacks were revenge for 9/11.
He called himself an "Arab slayer" and said he did what every American wanted to
do but was too afraid to do.
Rais Bhuiyan, the Bangladeshi immigrant, survived the shotgun blast to the face and went on
to try to prevent the execution of the white man who shot him.
He said, "According to my faith in Islam, there is no hate, no killing.
It doesn't allow anything like that.
… I strongly believe executing him is not a solution.
We will just simply lose a human life without dealing with the root cause, which is hate crime.
... In Islam it says that saving one human life is the same as saving the entire mankind."
On July 27th, 2008, a white man went into a Unitarian Universalist church in Tennessee,
shot and killed 2 people, and injured 7 others.
Police letter found a letter in which he said that liberals were destroying the country,
and he needed to kill all the liberals and gays.
The church was targeted for its liberal stance on various issues, including gay rights.
Police found several books in his home that he was clearly a fan of, including "Liberalism
is a mental health disorder" by Michael Savage, as well as books by Sean Hannity and
Bill O'Reilly detailing their disdain for the left.
On August 5th 2012, a white man went into a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, shot and killed
6 people, and injured 4 others.
He didn't leave a manifesto, but he was a known Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist, who
likely killed these people because he thought they were Muslims.
On June 17th, 2015, a white man went into a Black church in North Carolina, shot and
killed 9 people, and injured 1 other.
He left a manifesto in which he described how the Trayvon Martin case made him "racially
aware" and how he supported George Zimmerman.
He described his hatred for Black people in detail and believed that white people were
the ones who were really being discriminated against.
On January 29th, 2017, a white man went into a Muslim Mosque in Quebec, shot and killed
6 people, and injured 17 others.
He was a supporter of Donald Trump and far-right French politician Marine Le Pen.
He was a far-right white nationalist who often expressed anti-Muslim, anti-refugee, and anti-feminist views.
In the last 40 years, zero Americans have been killed by terrorists from Iran, Iraq,
Syria, Somalia, Sudan, or Yemen.
Yet, on January 27th, 2017, Donald Trump issued an executive order banning all immigrants
from those 7 countries.
He says that it is not a Muslim ban, but it targets Muslim-majority countries, and makes
exceptions for Christian refugees.
Plus, he has previously stated that he wanted a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims
entering the US."
However, this is counterproductive to the end goal of protecting the United States.
Part of ISIS's propaganda is the idea that Muslims aren't welcome in the West.
They want to create an Islam vs. the West dichotomy because it helps them recruit vulnerable Muslims.
We cannot give them that.
We have to be better than that.
We have to prove to them that Muslims are welcome in the West.
The US is not at war with a religion; it's at war with ISIS.
And ISIS does not even come close to representing all Muslims.
There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, and to lump them all together and claim that
they believe all the same things is ridiculous.
Everybody has their own interpretation of their religion, and the vast majority of Muslims
follow a peaceful interpretation of Islam.
Sure, you can point to violent rhetoric in the Qu'ran, but you can do the same for the
Bible, yet nobody would dare suggest banning Christians.
However, there is one group that regularly spews violent rhetoric and commits acts of
terrorism in the name of its ideology: the far-right.
In the last 15 years, 50 Americans have been killed by right-wing terrorists.
These terrorists are often radicalized in online communities with connections to neo-Nazism,
the very same communities that now use the term "alt-right" to describe themselves.
They have a deep hatred of refugees, immigrants, and Muslims.
They use phrases like "white genocide" as coded language to reference their White
Supremacist/White Nationalist views.
They complain about "PC culture" and feminism.
And when they do commit an act of terrorism, the media calls them lone wolves, but they're not.
They're inspired by a far-right movement that encourages racism, islamophobia, and xenophobia.
Alt-right White Nationalists are a bigger threat to American safety than Muslim extremists.
We need to be talking about the radicalization of white men into these White Nationalist
communities, not banning innocent Muslims.
If you're still afraid of Muslims and immigrants, here are some facts for you.
The Cato Institute, a typically right-leaning Libertarian think tank, found that your chances
of being killed in a terrorist attack by a foreign-born terrorist are 1 in 3.6 million per year.
Your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack by a refugee are 1 in 3.64 billion per year.
And your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack by an undocumented immigrant are 1
in 10.9 billion per year.
In fact, the Cato Institute says, "The annual chance of being murdered by somebody other
than a foreign-born terrorist was 252.9 times greater than the chance of dying in a terrorist
attack committed by a foreign-born terrorist."
The risk of being killed by terrorism committed by an immigrant is astronomically low, but
with the rise of the White Nationalist movement in recent years, hate crimes against Muslims
and Jews have also been on the rise, though hate crime data is hard to come by and not
tracked very well at the national level.
I'm afraid that if we don't address White Nationalist terrorism, we're going to see
more domestic hate crimes and acts of terrorism like the one in Quebec City.
And it doesn't help that the White House Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, is a known
White Nationalist and now has a seat on the National Security Council.
I care about the safety and wellbeing of all Americans.
Trust me, I'm an American -- I very much would like to stay safe.
But I don't think an irrational fear of foreigners is going to keep us safe.
I think our policies need to be based on data and empirical evidence, and the data shows
us that banning immigrants, refugees, and Muslims is a mistake.
Thanks for watching this episode of Politics with Riley. I'll see you next time.
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